Sex trafficking takes place in C-K

Human sex trafficking is a harsh reality in Chatham-Kent.

Vulnerable girls are being lured, coerced, intimidated and forced into being sex slaves for traffickers, and speakers at a public forum hosted by MPP Rick Nicholls Thursday night brought that fact home to more than 115 people in attendance.

Nicholls teamed up with Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock MPP Laurie Scott who spent two years researching and putting together the Saving the Girl Next Door private member’s bill to bring awareness to the issue of human sex trafficking and resources to the victims. The government took her bill and turned it into the Anti-Human Trafficking Bill 96.

Scott hosted the first Human Sex Trafficking Awareness Day in Ontario on Feb. 20. She is travelling the province to educate and inform people and advocate for more co-ordinated services between jurisdictions, service organizations, police and crown attorneys.

Trafficking, a form of modern-day slavery, is happening here. According to statistics Scott has compiled, 93 per cent of victims are Canadian-born, victims are an average age of 14, 60 per cent of all trafficking happens in Ontario, and Highway 401 from Windsor to Montreal is a major corridor for human sex trafficking.

One of the speakers, a sex trafficking survivor from the London area, riveted those in attendance with her story.

“My name is Carolyn. I went by many names but the majority of the time, I answered to the name ‘Ho,’” she said by way of introduction.

Over the next 18 minutes, the sex trafficking survivor told a disturbing story of how she was lured into a relationship with her trafficker while suffering from undiagnosed clinical depression and grief.

Carolyn was told she was loved, valued and taken care of until the day her trafficker expected her to “do her part” and she was forced to work in a strip joint, performing “extras,” with all the money going to her trafficker.

The method used to traffic her is called the loverboy/Romeo method of “love bombarding,” and her deceased husband’s best friend introduced Carolyn to her trafficker.

“I was a sky-diving instructor and held a Canadian record for many years. And this is important – I was 35 when I was trafficked. I was not young and naïve, so if it could happen to me, imagine how easily it could happen to a 12, 13 year old who has no life experience,” Carolyn noted. “These traffickers are astute and well aware of targeting who is vulnerable.”

She said she was with her trafficker for eight years before she was able to get away, with no identification, and suffering from degradation no human being should be subjected to. She began to drink to mentally escape her situation and her trafficker addicted her to drugs.

In one instance, she left the apartment to find food for herself and the traffickers’ son who she was caring for. When she returned, her trafficker broke all her toes to punish her. She said she felt responsible for the boy’s safety, which was another way the trafficker held her with what she referred to as “invisible chains.”

After this, the trafficker would bring men home to her all day long for her to service.

One question Carolyn said she always hears is why didn’t she just leave?

“Many people say ‘why doesn’t she leave?’ We need to change our lexicon to ‘why doesn’t he stop?’” Carolyn told the audience to head nodding and applause.

After being evicted with her trafficker for not paying rent, they lived in a hotel, and Carolyn escaped to a women’s shelter for help. She said at that time, the shelter had no room for her so she had to go back to him, with no ID and no money and no family.

She tried again at the shelter several weeks later, but he found her the same day at that shelter and harassed her. Citing safety issues for the other women, Carolyn was asked to leave the shelter and she was sent to another one. Falling ill with colitis, she had to go to the hospital, and the shelter was unable to hold her bed for her, so she was evicted.

“When I got out of the hospital, I was left standing on the steps, with the clothes on my back, two quarters and my addiction to crack. There was only one person in the world I knew would come and get me, so I had to call him,” she explained.

To punish her for leaving, she was forced to live and work out of a car because her trafficker decided she didn’t deserve to live under a roof. This went on for seven months before she was allowed to go back to the strip bar to work.

It took her two years after that to get away. She didn’t self-identify as a trafficked person and said she still believed he loved her. She didn’t know about social services or what help was out there for her.

“I didn’t see that I wasn’t loved. I was $250,000 (a year) to him and you are going to see this with trafficked women,” she said.

An astute security guard at the Salvation Army saw her being chased by her trafficker and got her behind a locked door, then got her connected with a social worker on the floor who got her into a women’s shelter.

“In London, because of cutbacks, you could only stay in the shelter for 32 days. How are you supposed to get your life back together in 32 days? I didn’t have a SIN card and without a SIN card, you don’t exist,” Carolyn noted.

The shelter let her stay longer, and after a great deal of difficulty, she got the keys to her own apartment, but even that safety didn’t last. One day, she found a bag on her balcony with rubber gloves, duct tape and a gun.

She knew she was being warned by her trafficker, who was involved with organized crime, not to talk.

Carolyn was finally moved to a safer location, but to this day, lives in fear of saying anything to identify her trafficker. She has however, received her Grade 12 diploma, completed three college programs, received two volunteer of the year awards from the Salvation Army and a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee award for her work with victims of human trafficking.

She also speaks at a school for men arrested for solicitation, humanizing the women they try to buy services from.