Human trafficking is one of the fastest-growing crimes in Canada, and anyone can be a target

There's a form of slavery that's alive and well in Canada: human trafficking for sexual exploitation. And it's at a crisis level in this country. 

For the perpetrators and pimps, trafficking is a lucrative business. But for the victims, it's a living hell of trauma and abuse with deep repercussions — including for those who manage to escape. 

In the documentary Trafficked Voices, three Canadian-born survivors tell their stories. 

It can happen to anyone

Human trafficking is a complex criminal operation, with targets everywhere.

"The victims of human trafficking are pretty much anyone who could be at the wrong place at the wrong time," said Kelly Beale, who runs a pro bono program through Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General, which offers free legal support to victims. 

"It's the university student who's at the bar on the university campus. It is the 13-year-old girl who's in care.… It is the high school girl who lives in my neighborhood." 

Everyone is vulnerable. Trafficking is one of the fastest-growing crimes in Canada, with victims anywhere from their early teens to age 24 and beyond. The process is surreptitious, manipulative and predatorial. 

If a young person is experiencing any kind of vulnerability — a breakup or a fight with family, for example — that's when a trafficker can insert themself in the person's life. "That's when everything spirals," Beale said.

"Think about the most vulnerable day in your life," said Sharon Hanlon of the Ontario Provincial Police. "If somebody had introduced themselves and walked you through whatever it was you were vulnerable [about] in that moment, that person would inherently become very important to you." 

That's exactly how many victims find themselves coerced into a relationship that can quickly lead them to being trafficked. 

Social media is a gateway

Social media is a valuable tool for traffickers. It offers anonymity and easy access to targets, and it allows unsuspecting victims to put the intimate details of their life on display without the oversight of parents or guardians — information that a trafficker can then use to lure them.

"My daughter was 16. She met a girl on Facebook and they became friends," Brenda, the mother of a trafficking victim, said in the documentary. During a family trip to Toronto, Brenda's daughter met up with that friend for some shopping. "She looked her age and she seemed fine," Brenda said. "I didn't have any bells or whistles and I got the friend's phone number." 

When it was time to meet up at the end of the day to travel home to Sudbury, Brenda's daughter texted to say she would get a ride back with her friend. But instead, she was held in the city for days and forced into sex work. 

A teen might receive several messages a day from a trafficker: compliments or offers of friendship aimed at making the trafficker important in the victim's life. This can lead to a romantic "Romeo" relationship, where a victim is enticed with affection, gifts and the promise of love. Or the trafficker might use a "guerrilla" style based on fear and intimidation. Both are effective.

It may take weeks or months of grooming before a teen is actively being trafficked, sometimes right out of their own home and without their parents' knowledge.

Victims are victimized again, even after they escape 

Once someone has been trafficked, it can be extremely difficult for them to escape. Many become physically and psychologically dependent on their trafficker. 

"I know for a fact that my mother reported me missing on more than one occasion," said Jeannie, an Indigenous victim of sex trafficking who was kidnapped from a party when she was 14. Jeannie was kept aboard ships on the Great Lakes for several months before making a dramatic escape. 

"I know that she called and made reports, and I was [later] told that no missing persons reports were ever filed and that those files didn't exist. So where did they go?" 

It's no secret that inequalities continue to exist in the justice system, and Jeannie's story shows how, even though people were looking for her, the authorities turned a blind eye to her disappearance.  

Jeannie is one of the few survivors to tell her story; the others share similar experiences of being victimized again after escaping. 

Many survivors find themselves deep in debt after being forced to take out loans for their abusers.

Richard Dunwoody, who's worked as a financial advocate for victims of human trafficking and helped relieve the debt survivors were forced to take on when they were being exploited. "Auto loans are taken out in their name. There are mobile phone accounts. And it's not unusual. It's typical in a trafficking exploitation that spans three, four years we're going to see eight or nine different cellular accounts.

"There are utility bills — including cable, heat, hydro — where they are being housed. Those bills are under their name and not being paid by the trafficker. This affects their credit rating when they try to restart their life."

Dunwoody has advocated for organizations and financial institutions to remove coercive debt from survivors' credit history. This helps them access housing, employment and student loans. 

The Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline, which can be reached at 1-833-900-1010, connects victims and survivors with emergency and social services and law enforcement and accepts tips from the public.