Documentary screening in London exposes sex trafficking along Highway 401 corridor
Dark Highway screens at the Forest City Film Festival on Saturday at 12 p.m.
A documentary film shedding light on the experiences of survivors of sex trafficking across the London region and beyond is screening at the Forest City Film Festival on Saturday at noon. Dark Highway exposes the sex industry along the 401 corridor through first-hand experiences from survivors.
"It's still such an invisible crime," said director and producer Anna Jane (AJ) Edmonds. "It's here and it's around us —and we just have to talk about it and be a part of making a change."
Human trafficking for sexual exploitation is at a crisis level in Canada and one of the fastest-growing crimes in the country, with victims getting younger.
The 401 corridor is a known hotspot for sex traffickers, according to the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking. London's proximity to the Highway 401 corridor is a factor in higher rates of sex trafficking in the region, also because of its proximity between Windsor and Toronto.
The film is screening at the Forest City Film Festival on Saturday, Oct. 26 at 12 noon at the Wolf Performance Hall.
Edmonds, a Western University grad, set out to make the film when she found out how close the crime was to her own life and the people she loves.
"I felt an intense responsibility that now that I knew, I had to do something about it," said Edmonds, who splits her time between Kingston, Ont., and California.
For Kelly Tallon Franklin, the documentary is personal.
"It's time for us to get ahead of this," said Franklin, who is a survivor of sex trafficking and runs an organization advocating for and supporting other survivors.
She was trafficked both in Canada and abroad in the '80s, she said, facing a lack of resources and support back then, and now runs support programs for survivors from equine theory to art and talk therapy.
From the London area herself, she's seen the crime increase in the region, she said.
"The average age of those that are victimized in the crime is lowering and that is problematic — and something that's covered well in this documentary," said Franklin. Most of the women she works with are between 12 and 17 years old.
"There's the inhumane and degrading treatment that just violates the rights of these kids in a way that we can't even understand, and we can not sanitize ourselves from the reality of this," Franklin said.
The film also covers the complexity and trends of the issues they are dealing with in real-time, along with who is being targeted and where legislation is failing, she said.
It's not only about listening to survivors, but "giving us the platform that gives the community some hope," she said.
For Edmonds, it's also about not letting the crime be forgotten, and talking about it in a way that's not fear-mongering. "We just have to keep talking about it and keep the conversation of protecting our young people at the forefront of our minds," she said.
LISTEN: Sex trafficking documentary focused on the 401 highway comes to London festival
Ontario has second highest trafficking rate in Canada
A Statistics Canada report published in December found that between 2012 and 2022, Ontario had the second-highest rate of police-reported human trafficking in the country, which is possibly due to the concentration of urban areas.
Ontario is made up of many urban centres that traffickers may use to avoid being noticed, including London, which had 130 reported incidents in 10 years, according to Statistics Canada.
Along the 401 is where everyone is passing through, said Franklin, and it's important for people to learn to keep their eyes open to signs of the crime.
If you are a victim or survivor of forced prostitution or forced labour, or believe someone else might be, you can call The Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-833-900-1010, which is available 24/7 from coast to coast in more than 200 languages.
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With files from Isha Bhargava