Learning Network 2013 Human Trafficking Conference Marty Van Doren

Up to now you've heard a number of academic-based presentations, and academia ready... that's all about to change. You're going to get a law enforcement perspective. It's very much a grassroots human trafficking 101 presentation, kind of give it to you from what's happening from our perspective, from the law enforcement perspective. But just to give you a little bit of a background, what I do is I do a lot of presentations at places, colleges. I teach at the Ontario Police College, sometimes at the OPP College, Criminal Intelligence Services of Ontario College, and sometimes the Toronto Police College. I do a number of workshops for law enforcement. They're full-day workshops, we do a number each year. It's a full day to kind of give them a paradigm shift from where they work to hopefully get to the point where they recognize people as victims as opposed to as criminals. So a lot of that goes on. I also work a lot in universities. I've been involved with starting up a number of human trafficking anti-trafficking groups at various universities. I spent a lot of time with non-government organizations, faith-based groups, anti-trafficking groups, sit on committees, spend time sitting at table with experiential women. So part of my presentation, I think you'll find, will draw some of those facts also into the presentation. Before I start the presentation, two caveats. As you heard throughout the day today, statistics are very, very elusive in this world. So you'll hear a number of statistics today. Take them for what they're worth. The ones I give you I'm comfortable with, but you have to make your own judgment on that. And the second area is that not all people involved in the sex trade are human trafficking victims. Some people are in the sex trade by choice, from my perspective, and they're not all human trafficking victims. A large amount of them are, and those are the ones that we're interested in trying to help out. So anyway, here we go. Human trafficking, it's nothing new. It's been around since pretty much we've been on this planet. We've called it a number of names, started that with slavery, now it's human trafficking. This slide depicts various types of human trafficking. Top left-hand corner, street prostitution. Pretty much happens in every community in our country. It certainly happens in London, Ontario. Top middle slide is a child fisherman. A number of fishermen, none of these kids are killed each year, but as fast as they're killed, more kids are coerced into the business by the fishermen or sold into the business by parents who are living in dire economic straits. Top right-hand corner, this is sex tourism. There are dirty old men and perverts and pedophiles from Canada traveling all over the world to have sex with very young boys and very young girls. Bottom left-hand corner, this is forced labor. Happens to be agriculture. Anywhere where you'll find the 3D work, the dirty, the dangerous, or the difficult work, there's a potential that you'll find human trafficking. Middle slide in the bottom, these are child soldiers. UNICEF advises there are about 300,000 child soldiers in the world today. But not only the boys are involved, so are the girls. Often the boys are the fighters, the girls are used as trophies to make the boys work a little bit harder, so they both go on. And the bottom right-hand corner, bonded labor, servitude. Some parts of the world today, you can still get a small loan, two or three thousand dollars. Because of the high rates of interest that's applied to it, you might indebt two or three generations of your family into a bonded labor type situation. So the key point to my presentation, and this is very much a condensed presentation compared to what you usually provide, but the key points are: human trafficking victims rarely, if ever, self-identify. And they don't self-identify because they're scared of the situation they're in, they're ashamed of the situation they're in, they don't realize the situation they're in, or they just don't have the mental capacity to figure out the situation they're in. And you gotta look beyond the obvious in order to identify a human trafficking victim. There's no signs on them. The chains on them often are invisible. It's like training a dog or an animal. When you beat somebody enough, they'll do what they have to do without having to use those corrective measures all the time. So you got to look beyond the obvious. And the most important part of all is: do not judge until you know the circumstances. Some of the girls that are working the street corners that people marginalize are not there by choice. They're forced to be there by pimps, by boyfriends, or by the economic conditions that they actually live in. So don't judge until you know the circumstances. I always was part of the TACKLE unit when I was with the RCMP. Psychologist kind of always live with a mission statement, kind of give you a prize where you wanted to get to and kind of kept you on track all the time. So I developed this one, has kind of been adopted universally throughout the law enforcement group now, and that is: the safety and the integrity of the human trafficking victim is law enforcement's first priority. It is not putting people in jail. It is removing people from the very dire circumstances that they're actually surviving in and trying to get them in some kind of a safe haven. It is very much a victim-centered focus, and that's the way it's got to be. So what is human trafficking? In my world, human trafficking is three words: control, exploitation, and profits. If you can invoke complete control over an individual, you can exploit their labor for profits. And that's what it's all about. The girls working in the high tracks in Toronto, they're making their pimps on average a thousand dollars a night. New young fresh girls are making a thousand dollars a night. So if you've got three or four girls and you're stable, you're bringing in a lot of money. There's a lot of money to be made in human trafficking. The UN says there's 27 million slaves in the world today. You've heard these figures before. A young girl that I talk with once in a while, she spent a lot of time working on the African continent. She disputes that figure. She thinks there's more than 27 million slaves on the African continent alone. So take it for what it is. US advises that it's a 32 billion dollar industry. 32 billion dollars. It ranges from very basic mom-and-pop organizations to very hierarchical organized crime organizations, depending on what the situation that's involved. So it kind of ranges right across the whole multitude. Human trafficking is nothing more than a modern day form of slavery. It is always the most vulnerable in society that are targeted: the poor, the weak, the oppressed, the challenged. 80% of all the victims are women and children. 50% of all the victims are children. The UN advises that it's the fastest growing economic crime in the world today, second only to drugs. Why? It is so difficult to identify and it's so difficult to prosecute. So people that were involved in other criminal industries are now getting involved in human trafficking and trafficking individuals because of the money that can be made and it's so hard to detect. Two types of human trafficking in Canada: domestic and international. Domestic is any human trafficking situation that starts in our country, regardless of the nationality of the person that's involved. If it starts and finishes within our borders, it's domestic. If it crosses an international border, then it's international human trafficking. From my perspective, our domestic human trafficking is much worse than our international. Not to say we don't have international human trafficking, because certainly we do, but from my perspective our domestic is much worse. Two groups in particular: aboriginals and vulnerable young females. Aboriginals have a real, real problem. And you heard a number of stats about the aboriginal community today, and I won't go over them again. But the Native Women's Association of Canada also says that 65% of aboriginal girls are sexually assaulted. That is huge. It is mind-boggling. It's scary. 65% of aboriginal girls are sexually assaulted. 80% of all aboriginal youth are physically assaulted. And they also indicate that 97% of aboriginal youth leave home at an early age. It's a perfect storm for exploitation. They get involved and they see it. And most of these youth, a lot of these youth live on isolated reserves. A lot of these reserves, there's no economic opportunities. A lot of physical and sexual assaults are going on. All they can think about is getting down to the parts of the worlds that we live in: the Thunder Bays, the Winnipegs, the Saskatoons. And unfortunately, people that are bringing them down, sometimes people waiting for them when they get there are waiting there to exploit them. You heard that in Vancouver, he cites 90% of the visible sex trade there are aboriginals. They represent 3 to 5% of the population, so they're overly, overly represented there. Average entry age: 7 to 12 years of age. My heart bleeds for these people. It's horrible what's going on in that world. And if that was happening in our mainstream world, we'd be doing a lot more about it than we're doing for these people that are on the reserve. So that's what to say there. The other area: young vulnerable females. Young females are being exploited, victimized, brutalized, and forced into the sex trade by pimps. Pimps are master manipulators, master motivators, and they're very good at identifying the vulnerable girls and very good at moving these girls from their mainstream lives into a life of exploitation and providing sex on demand. So those two areas are the worst two areas. 7 to 12 years of age for aboriginals, 14 to 16, 17 years of age for the girls that work that live in our mainstream communities.

So that video, another one you'll see shortly, I use in high schools once in a while. And you know what? It's radon. You have 250 people, kids in an auditorium, and you can hear a pin drop. They actually get it. So the kids are actually listening, which is good. The human trafficking laws in Canada came in place as a result of the Palermo Protocol that took place in 2000. You heard about that earlier. So we put legislation in place under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in 2002 and under the Criminal Code in 2005. We generally tend to use the Criminal Code legislation more because it took longer to develop, but I think it's a better legislation, at least in my perspective. And it also has the material benefit clause and the withholding and destroying documents clause, which are absolutely essential if you're going to make any kind of inroads into human trafficking. So we use that more. Under both of these legislations, if you're convicted of human trafficking, you can get up to 14 years in jail. If certain conditions apply, such as a serious assault, serious sexual assault, kidnapping, or death, you can get up to life imprisonment. So the sanctions are fairly significant. Also under the Immigration Refugee Protection Act, you can also get up to a one million dollar fine. Circumstances lead to victimization. All of these apply, but from my perspective, poverty and a desire for a better way of life are the number one motivator to get somebody involved in the human trafficking situation. Take an international refugee living in a refugee camp in a third world country that isn't able even to provide the bare necessities for himself and for his family, and somebody he knows, somebody he trusts, comes along and talks about a golden opportunity in a first world country like Canada or elsewhere in the world. They're very quick to jump at those kind of opportunities because all they want is what we have. They want a roof over their house, they want to go to bed feeling relatively safe, and they want to be able to provide bare necessities for their families. And that's very elusive in many parts of the world. But you don't have to go around the world. Go to our reserves in northern Canada. A lot of these conditions apply there. The young kids, they don't see any economic opportunities there. The abuse that's going on there. And there's over a hundred reserves in Canada where you can't drink the water. Can you imagine that in our country? Over a hundred reserves that you can't drink the water. No economic opportunities. A lot of them are floundering. They have to move out on a regular basis. So all they can think about is getting out of there. Makes them very, very ripe for exploitation. Most human trafficking victims are trafficked by people they know, by people they trust. Most often their own community, and quite often their own family. Hungarians traffic Hungarians. Nigerians traffic Nigerians. Quite often aboriginals traffic aboriginals. There's some exceptions to the rules, but that's kind of the way it is. People you know, people that you trust. So human trafficking is a four stage process: recruitment, transportation, exploitation, and isolation. Use your imagination and you'll find recruitment. If it's a country like Haiti where they had a natural disaster, because a lot of the parents have been killed, there's disarray in the country. Men would go down there and they'd buy young kids to have sex with while they're there. And you could buy a young child, I'm told, in Haiti for as little as five hundred dollars. Can you imagine? A human life for five hundred dollars. As long as you don't try to get them out of the country, you're okay. Former Soviet Union countries, where a lot of the girls that work in the GTA area came from, they were being kidnapped off the street, being sold into it by family members. Answering ads to come to Canada to work at one thing, when they come here they're forced into another type of industry, which is usually the sex industry. So use your imagination, it's there. Transportation: it can be around the world for an international human trafficking victim, or it can be across the street for a domestic human trafficking victim. Some of the girls working in the condos and the high rises across from the Square One Shopping Mall were actually recruited at the Square One Shopping Mall. So it could be long or it could be short. And remember your three words: control, exploitation, and profits. Here's your second word: if you can control them, you can exploit their labor for profits. And all human traffickers employ isolation. When they get the victims in their grasp, they isolate them away from anybody that can kind of remove them from that condition. They isolate them away from families, from friends, from law enforcement, from the support agencies and the various groups that are out there, because they don't want them to be taken out and moved around. If a girl is recruited in Scarborough, she'll probably be pimped out in Mississauga or another area. If a girl is recruited in London, she'll probably be pimped out in Windsor or in Kitchener. They want to get them away from where somebody else can actually get them back into the conditions or out of the conditions.

That video depicts a fair amount of violence. I cannot emphasize enough how much violence goes on in this industry. It is huge. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. So how do you control somebody? Remember your three words: control, exploitation, and profits. Here's control. You control them. All of these apply to international human trafficking victims, most apply to domestic human trafficking victims. International human trafficking victims: they take away their documentation, they take away their passports, any documents that allow them to work, their IMM 1000 card. They take them away from them. Domestic human trafficking victim: the pimps take away their driver's licenses, they have one social insurance card, they have one, any identification they have. Most importantly, they take away their OHIP or their medical card. Without these cards, we are very much a document-laden society. Without your documentation, you can't get the kind of services you need. So if you get injured or you get hurt and you have to go to a hospital or to a medical clinic, you've got to go to your pimp or your human trafficker in order to go there. That way they can completely control your life. Most international human trafficking victims don't speak English or French. Makes them very vulnerable. For those of you who have traveled, if you get off that beaten tourist trap and you can't speak the local language, it makes it very, very difficult to function. If you have no status in our country, if you're illegal in our country, you have a huge bullseye on you because human traffickers know you have little or no recourse. You don't think they can go to law enforcement or they can't go to immigration because they feel they'll be arrested and deported out of the country. And they do, perhaps they will be, depending on the circumstances. And the human traffickers know that. So when they get these people in their grasp, they can force them to do a lot more for a lot less because they just, they're not here legally and they don't feel they have the kind of legal opportunities that other individuals have. And I talked about the threats and the violence. Huge. There's huge, huge in this world. But there's threats against them, there's threats against individuals, threats against their families back home. Anything that the human trafficker can use to make you work, that's what they'll actually use. A lot of physical, sexual, emotional abuse that actually goes on. And in a lot of parts of the world, police and authorities are corrupt or involved in some complicity in the various criminal acts that goes on. And when individuals from that part of the world come here, they bring that mindset with them. So they think that we're pretty much the same. They're scared of people in uniforms particularly, and they're scared to go to law enforcement because they never could do that from where they're at. So when they come here, they don't see an opportunity to do those type of things. And only when they're here for a while that they can find out that maybe they will be able to confide in police and law enforcement. So it's all kind of all-consuming. It sounds very, very difficult, but it's very, very simple as I just laid out here. And the purpose from the beginning then is to exploit the labor for profits. Physical indicators of human trafficking: I talked about how horrendous the abuse is in this area. And there's some stats here, take them for what they are. But remember: the bodies are the recipients of the abuse, the minds are the recorders of the abuse. So when you abuse somebody long enough, they're going to do what you have to do without that corrective action because they know what's going to happen if they don't do it. Status of Women say that 50% of all sex workers in Canada have brain injuries due to beatings they get from pimps and johns, getting their hands slammed into doors or into walls or dashboards of cars. A very high rate of post-traumatic stress disorder. I sit on a number of committees. It's very, very obvious if you can recognize it. Prostituted women's mortality rate: eight times the national average. Eight times the national average. 35% of prostituted women are murdered by serial killers such as Picton. Very, very dangerous business that's involved in. Shouldn't be that way, but it is. It's a very, very dangerous business that's involved in. But you got to realize the abuse is not always evident. It's very much hidden. Those chains are hidden on them. And sometimes there's a lot of threats involved. One of the ladies that speaks at my workshop is Tamiya Nagy. She's from Hungary. She answered an ad to come to Canada to work as a domestic or in a restaurant. When she arrived at Toronto Pearson Airport, three men met her: two Hungarian gang members and a Canadian. They took her to a hotel, they introduced her into the sex trade and told her that's what she'd be doing from now on. She said, "I don't do that." They told her point blank: "Either you do it or we're gonna burn your mother alive in her apartment back in Hungary." It was as simple as that. She believed it. Whether they would have or not, I don't know. They could have. But she believed it. So that was enough to make her work for eight months. So she was involved in the business for eight months just based on those threats. So the point there being is they do use what they have to use to make you work. These are Canadian girls. The girl on the right is 15 years old. Her pimp was Imani Nak Pagani. We'll do a quick case study on that at the end. Pimps, particularly in the GTA area and a lot of places, they like to brand their girls as you would a domestic animal. First of all, it debases them. And then second of all, it tells the other pimps who they belong to. They feel like they own these people. They treat them as a chattel. They don't treat them as a human being. So it's very, very abusive. These girls are lucky ones. They actually went to a tattoo parlor to get their names put across their back. Some pimps like to burn it in their backs with cigarette butts or hot knives or something along that line. So a lot of abuse that actually goes on. And that girl on the right-hand side is 15 years of age. Pimping the game. It's self-named. The game is won between the ears, not between the legs. Pimping, folks, it is not a sex game. It's a mind game. Because if you control the mind, then you control the body. And then you actually can procure that body out there. So it's very, very much a mind game. The pimps go to where the victims are or to where the potential recruits are. And these are the kind of areas they go to. The RCMP did an analysis recently. Youth facilities is one of the biggest targeting grounds for pimps now. If you put these kind of girls into those facilities, all they're doing is recruiting other girls. And the pimps are actually there looking for them. In Ottawa, three girls were kidnapped outside of a youth facility and forced into the sex trade for a period of time. They go to the food courts, they go to the train stations, they go to wherever the young people congregate. And that's where they actually start recruiting them from. They're very good at what they do. They're looking for the individuals that are looking for attention, the vulnerable kids, the low self-esteem kids, the runaway kids, the throwaway kids that nobody wants, the kids that are out there practicing survival sex. They provide sex for something to eat and a place to stay for the night. And pimps are master manipulators and master motivators. And they sell them the dream. They sell them the dream: "Look how I live. I drive this nice vehicle. I live in this nice apartment. You can be part of my world." And they brainwash these young girls. And they really do. They brainwash them and they bring them into their world. And sometimes it's a slow process. Sometimes it's a long process. And there's people out there actually that do nothing but recruit girls. And once they recruit them and they get them set up, then they actually sell them for money to the pimps that are actually using them. So it's a very complicated world. Who are the victims? Studies indicate that this is where most of the human trafficking victims come from, but not always necessarily so. A conference that I attended a while back, there was a young girl. She was 18, well she was 24 years of age at that point in time. She got in the business when she was 18. Her father was a doctor, her mother was a professor. A very articulate, attractive young lady. And somehow the pimps got her into the business. I think she had some deep-rooted emotional problems. But she indicated that she got in the business willingly. Had some pimps kind of wandered in and out of that human trafficking world because sometimes she would freelance, sometimes she'd get involved with a pimp. So she kind of wandered in and out of that world. But she was 24 years of age and she on the stage estimated that she had sex with over 2,500 men in the six years that she was in the business. Can you imagine? Just makes you wonder. All pimps employ isolation. We talked about that. They control them by whatever means they have to. And quite often this starts out as a love equation. And it really does. The pimps really woo these young girls. And the girls fall in love with them because they may give them their first Coach purse or the most first piece of Gucci. If they come from an impoverished background, they really like what they get and all these gifts. But eventually you got to pay the piper. And then they have to start performing sex acts in order to pay their way in. And once they're in, they're trapped. They're very much trapped. It's a very, very difficult business to get out of. Quite often these girls are taped or videotaped or photographed. If they're going to get out of the business, pimps will use lines like, "Hey, I'm going to post it on YouTube. I'm going to send a copy to your mom and dad or send a copy to your friends." And they'll use whatever they have to use to keep them in there. Indicators of human trafficking: here are some of the indicators. As I said earlier, if they're recruited in one area, quite often they're actually pimped out in another area. Different. If they're in it on their own, but if they're being pimped, they quite often will move them into a different jurisdiction. Big age difference between the young girl and her so-called boyfriend. They all call them boyfriends. Young girl might be 14, 15, 16 years of age. The pimp could be 45 or 50 years of age. Young girls are very cooperative from a law enforcement perspective. They've been brainwashed. They do that or they're scared of the situation they're in. So they don't provide us with any kind of support. So it takes a long time to build up a rapport with a human trafficking victim. No type of legitimate employment to support the lifestyle they have, or they should be making a lot more money for to be living the way they actually are. Identification's probably been taken. And if they're young, they probably have some kind of fake ID or false ID, and some of it's not that good. Look at the tattoos, as I showed you earlier. Most pimps like to tattoo the girls in some ways. If there's organized gangs such as the North Preston's Finest or the Bogarts which is out of Montreal, they have specific tattoos that correspond to their gangs. And if you're involved in the vice business, you get to recognize those tattoos fairly quickly. And you got to listen to the language. They have a language all of their own, as most communities have a language. In the pimp world, we speak in short phrases and acronyms and things like that. They have their own language also. And from a vice perspective, if you don't speak their language, it's very difficult to penetrate their world because they don't trust you unless you speak their language. An example: here's some of the example of the language that's there. "Bottom bitch" is kind of an oxymoron. Bottom bitch is actually the most trusted girl in the stable. It is usually the girl that's been with the pimp the longest, probably may have mothered one or two of his children, the one he trusts the most, and will run the stable when he's not around. So it's kind of an oxymoron. But these are kind of the identification of some of the language that's there. A lot of rules in this world. And when you break a rule, bad things happen. Sometimes abuse, sometimes it's fine. If your quote is a thousand dollars a night and you break a few rules, you might have to go out and do a few more tricks to pick up another two or three hundred dollars, depending on what the rule conditions actually are. So all these, they're all there. When you first talk to the girls that are involved in this area, you'll say, "What are your rules?" And they'll say, "Well, we don't have no rules." But once you get going into a while, they all have the rules and they all have to memorize them because if they don't, bad things can happen to them. The good vice cops, when they see a new young girl on the street or on the walk or wherever she might be, they'll stop and say, "Listen, you probably don't want to talk to me now, but here's my name and my number. Put it in your phone. Someday you may want to call me. You may find yourself in a situation where you may want to call me." And you know what? Vice cops, when they've been in the business for a while, their phones never stop ringing. I was having lunch with a Peel Regional Police officer down in Fredericton, New Brunswick at a conference that we were at. His phone rang. It was a girl that he had talked to six months earlier in Peel who was now being pimped out in Niagara Falls who just got beat up fairly badly and said, "Can you come and get me?" So they call Niagara Regional, they go down, they get the girl, they put her in some kind of protective custody. So a lot of that goes on. The goals of the game from the pimping perspective is to be the best at the game that the pimp can be, to kind of receive that gratitude or that acknowledgement from other pimps that are out there, to make the most money, to drive the nicest cars, be recognized by other pimps. And of course, from beginning to end, these people are seen strictly as a commodity, not as a human being. And remember, I said the game is won between the ears, not between the legs. It is a mind game, not a sex game.

From a law enforcement perspective, partnerships with non-government organizations are absolutely essential. And they very much are. We're fairly good at identifying victims. We're sometimes good at rescuing victims and prosecutions if they come into the fold. Our problem is we don't have the skills or the abilities to look after victims for long-term care. And that's where the non-government organizations, the anti-trafficking groups, the faith-based groups, the LATS of London, the CAT TIPS of London, come in and can kind of look after the victims. It is from these people that I draw my inspiration. When I'm driving down to Toronto for the third time in a week to do a presentation and I'm saying, "Why am I doing this?" I think about the people that I met in this area here, and many of them are in this room here today. People that I highly, highly respect. A lot of these people, they're involved. They're looking after their fellow human beings, their brothers and sisters, because they're there because they want to be. So they're inspiration for me, and they should be inspiration for all that are in this room. And they do a yeoman's duty. And if we don't provide these people that are rescued from these human trafficking situations with some kind of an alternative, somebody, some place where they can stay where it's safe, some place where they can get something to eat, get their kids looked after perhaps, develop a new skill, they're going to get right back into the business again. So they have to be provided some type of alternative in order to get themselves out of the business. So NGOs are absolutely essential. I tell all law enforcement when I speak to them: if you don't know who it is in your community, find out. Because if you're going to get involved in the vice business, you got to know who the NGOs are because they will support you. And there's sometimes a very long road from identification of a victim to independence for a victim. Because their lives are controlled when they're being victimized. They're being controlled 24 hours a day. They're told when to sleep, when to eat, what to wear, how to wear it. And a lot of times when they come out of these type of situations, they just don't have the self-confidence to make those kind of decisions anymore. So they need somebody to help them out. And that's either law enforcement or these individuals here. So how do you identify a human trafficking victim? Caveat here: if there's any potential for danger, 9-1-1. If you're in London, London Police Service will come out and they'll look after that situation. We're not looking for vigilantes. We're not looking for people to get themselves in trouble. It's a very dangerous business, folks. If you get between a pimp and his money, they're not going to take to it very well. So it's important that you kind of keep that into place. The first thing you look at is: is the individual's freedom and mobility? Are they allowed to move about freely? Are they allowed to be mobile? Or is somebody controlling where they go, when they go, and how do they go there? Do they have their identification or has it been taken? Do they speak for themselves, or when you talk to them, somebody speaks on their behalf? Emergency rooms are a big indicator of this. They're brought into an emergency room and the person that is with them will speak on their behalf. So we did a module with the School of Medicine here in London a while back to try and put together some training opportunities for individuals that work in emergency rooms to separate the victim from the actual controller if they're there. Look at the living conditions. Quite often, especially international human trafficking victims, they live and work out of the same area. They really don't have an idea what their surroundings are because they're brought in, they're in an apartment, condo, basement, and that's where they work and they're pretty much there all the time. And look at the clothes. In my house, I mean my daughters moved out now, my wife, but they're clothes hounds. We had clothes in every nook and cranny in my house. But a lot of these young girls, all they have is their working clothes and maybe one set of change of clothes in a plastic bag. So it's there. They're all indicators. And look at the money. Are they living where they should be based on the work that they're actually doing? So you kind of put these things all together, you get there. Remember, they'll remember the control mechanism. And that's kind of what it's all about. You heard a lot about temporary residence permit, so I'm not going to bore you about it again. But the thing that I liked about the Canadian ones as opposed to called the TVS in the US is that in Canada, you don't have to identify or be involved in a prosecution. We heard some people say today that it's starting to creep into there. It shouldn't. There should be no obligation to testify in a case if you're a human trafficking victim. You should get a TRP and that's it. So that's the way the legislation is written and that's the way it should be applied. So the strategies that combat human trafficking: the biggest strategy that we can do is what we're doing here today. Awareness, cooperation, networking, proactive awareness equals action. The more people that know about human trafficking, the more people there to respond to those type of situations. As I said, I work a whole lot with the groups outside of the law enforcement area. And you know what? I find this to be the most rewarding part of my work. And that's probably why I'm still doing it. A lot of proactive disruptions. People don't realize that a lot of times the police will get the girls out of a dangerous situation, but they don't want to testify because they're scared or ashamed of the situation they're in. So no prosecution is ever done. There's a lot more disruptions than there ever is actually charges being laid in regards to human trafficking. This is kind of international reality. This is a Vietnamese village in Cambodia. RCMP officer, Calgary Police officer, and Toronto Police officer over there doing some training with the local police and they're kind of wandering around. So they came across this village here and they're taking pictures. And they kind of get in the background on the village. What happened was that when the US pulled out of Vietnam, anybody that was kind of loyal to the US, they kind of had to get out of Dodge. So they went to neighboring countries and they set up villages like this. If you're a female and you're unfortunate enough to be born in this village, your virginity is going to be sold when you reach puberty for $300. They have no other economic opportunities or very little economic opportunities. That brown stuff running around there is pretty much raw sewage. No central heat, no electricity. So they use what they can get in order to kind of make money. But you don't have to go around the world. This is Kashechewan, for short, James Bay, Northern Ontario. It's flooded a number of times a year. You can't drink the water. No economic opportunities on this land whatsoever. So all these young kids can think about is getting down to the Thunder Bays, the Sudburys, the North Bays of our world. And bad things quite often happen when that does take place. So we have problems internationally. We certainly have problems inside of this country. Affiliation with Crime Stoppers: a lot of people don't want to get involved with responding to human trafficking because they call the cops, we ask questions like, "What's your name? Where do you live? What's your date of birth?" So we put an affiliation with Crime Stoppers. Robin indicated about the Blue Blindfold campaign. It is absolutely essential that people can make these kind of phone calls anonymously. It hasn't taken off to the level that we had hoped, but it's coming and hopefully it'll get a little bit better. I talked about the safety aspect, folks. Don't get them. If there's any potential for danger, call 9-1-1. The service groups, the anti-trafficking groups, the NGOs, they're used to work in this type of industry. So they know what they can do, how they can do it, and how they should respond to victims. A couple short case studies will wind her up. This is the Imani Nak Pagani case. It's a Peel Regional case. It's a little older case, but it's a textbook human trafficking case from a pimping perspective. So I like to use it. Money recruited two girls. One was 14, one was 15 years of age. He had a number of girls in a stable. We'll talk about two. That ad there was one of the ads that was posted on Craigslist that was a 15 year old girl where you're seeing Imani written across the back of her neck. They were advertising on Craigslist. They were told they're going to have sex with about 10 men a day and they're supposed to average about a thousand dollars a day for her money. When pimps recruit girls, it's sometimes fairly elaborate and they get to know as much about the girls as they possibly can because the more they know about them, the better that they actually can control them. So when Eve, the first girl, was being recruited, they drove around her neighborhood. "This is where my mom lives. I hate my mom. This is where that's my dog in my mom's backyard. Love my dog more than anything else. My little brother walking to school. I love my little brother. My dad's over here." Those type of things. A while back, after she got involved in the business, they were in his condo, 50th floor, downtown Toronto. She decided that she had enough of this business. So she told him that. After he beat her up, he took her over to the balcony. She was a little wee bit of a thing. And hung her over the balcony by her ankles and said to her, "You're going to work or I'm going to drop you." She said she worked. So he brought her back in. Next time she refused to work, killed her dog. Loved her dog more than anything else in the world. Killed her dog. Next time she refused to work, threatened to kill her brother. So she says to him, Eve, she's a pretty sharp little young girl. She says to him, "How do I get out of the business?" He tells her, "Once you make me my thousand dollars a day, pay all your fines, and you make an extra hundred thousand dollars, you can buy your freedom." A 15-year-old Canadian girl had to buy her freedom in this country for a hundred thousand dollars. Which is high. Excess rates usually around 20, 25 grand. But he wanted a hundred thousand dollars. When she was rescued by Peel, she had made, I think, around forty-seven thousand of the hundred thousand. When the case went to court, she was a very articulate lady. She had kept track of a lot of the tricks that she had been doing. When she went to court, the judge presiding, the judge accepted that this one 15-year-old girl made her pimp in two years $350,000 to half a million dollars. Imagine how many men she had sex with to make a half a million dollars in two years time. When she was rescued by Peel, she told the rescue officer, his name was Jason Watson, "He just recruited a new girl. She's 14. She's working this motel. Get over there before she gets in as deep as I am." Jay went over there. He was the 12th guy to go through that door that day. The other 11 men had sex with that 14-year-old girl. She was 14. She looked like she was 10. She had the milky white skin of a young girl. She was so naive. She wore an adorable Explorer backpack. But she enjoyed what she was doing. They took her, put her in secure custody. She escaped the first opportunity that she possibly could and she got right back into the business again with another pimp. She loved Imani and she loved the attention she was getting from them and she loved the attention she was getting from all those men because it was something that was foreign in her life. They're brainwashed this way. And they're very, very good at what they're doing. But you think about these men. You say to them, "What were you thinking?" It's obvious this girl wasn't of age. And you kind of got to wonder what it's all about. And I was having a conversation with Christine a while back. It's all that demand side. As long as there's men willing to pay for sex from young girls, there's always going to be a product there. So we got to address that demand side too. And that demand side are middle income to high income men because they're the only people that can afford that kind of money. So you got to kind of address that. I'm getting off track here. But anyway, she got back in the business again. The good news is that I understand about 12 months ago, she contacted Peel. She had been in a real abusive relationship and got beat up. So they rescued her again and I guess she's kind of doing okay there now. So Money was charged with human trafficking, living off the avails of prostitution, and possession of a counterfeit mark. He had a counterfeit stamp for a passport that he didn't use to our knowledge. But he got three years in jail for the human trafficking. He abused these girls collectively longer than he actually got in jail. And he got another two years in jail for the other charges that were before the courts. There was such an outcry over this case that a private member's bill went in by Joy Smith. And anybody involved in the business knows Joy Smith. She's a wonderful, wonderful lady, good friend, and a real advocate for human trafficking victims. And now, as a result of Joy's private member's bill, anybody that is convicted of trafficking somebody under the age of 18, it's a minimum of five years in jail. And if certain conditions apply, like serious assault, serious sexual assault, kidnapping, or death, it's a minimum of six years in jail. So there's a minimum place in there now. And there's also potential for compensation for victims. Different world down in the US. I'm not saying that large sentences are a deterrent for crime, because our model is built on a rehabilitative model. But I know when people are in jail for long periods of time, they're not out molesting young children. And that's very important to me. Similar case down in the US: 20 years in jail if you traffic a young girl. In the US, 13 to 15 years of age, you're going to get around 15 years in jail. And there's no good time in the US. If you get federal time in the US, you do your 15 years. There's no good time. You do the whole time. Notorious pimp in Arizona: 139 years. It's a whole different world down there. Again, I'm not sure if it's a deterrent for crime. Apparently not, because they have much worse human trafficking than we have. But I know this individual is never going to molest another child again in his lifetime. Project Opapa. I want to give you a forced labor case. Project Opapa is kind of an interesting case. There was a joint investigation between a whole bunch of agencies that you can see there. And the interesting case about this is that all the human traffickers were refugee claimants. All the victims were refugee claimants. And the way it worked out is a number of Romani Gypsies from Hungary came to Canada a while back and they all settled down in the Hamilton area. And they all applied for refugee status when they got here. And they all got it because it was pretty much a given if you're a Roma from Hungary that you get refugee status. When they got into Hamilton, they got involved in some legitimate businesses, but they also got involved with pretty much every criminal enterprise that you could possibly imagine. So they're sitting around strategizing one day: "How do we make more money? We need some chitchat," which is Hungarian for slaves. So what do they do? They go back to their own village in Hungary. It's called Papa, Hungary. That's why we call it Opapa. And they went around looking for the people, the destitute, out of work. And they show them the kind of houses they lived in, the kind of cars that they drove. And they kind of sold them the dream again and said, "If you want to come to Canada, we'll help you out. You can come to Canada and you too can live like this." So there's 23 victims that were recruited over a period of time. There's a number of family members that were involved. 31 people eventually that were charged. So like I said, most of the victims came from there. So this is what they did. When they arrived at Toronto Pearson Airport, they'd drive at the airport and they would say, "I'm a Roma from Hungary," and they apply for refugee status. It was given. They got their refugee status. Then the human traffickers would come in, take these people, and bring them down to the Hamilton area. On the way down or sometimes when they get there, they go to Ontario Works, welfare. And they sell them: "Before you go in, when you go in there, make sure you tell them you got some kind of infirmity or ailment because if you do, you get more Ontario Works money." I didn't know that, but they did. Quite often they're also translating for these individuals. Ontario Works likes to put their money into a bank account. So then the human traffickers take them down to the local bank. Of course, the victims can't speak English, so the human traffickers translate on their behalf. And when they're setting up their bank account, of course now they know what the PIN number and everything is. When the victims get back to the lodging where they live, they take all their documentation. They take their bank cards away because they have their PIN number, everything. So now all the Ontario Works money that goes into the accounts are taken by the human traffickers. They're actually forced to work for free for the traffickers. They work at some of the legitimate enterprises that the traffickers had going on, and they're also farmed out into other labor areas. The human traffickers were taking all their money. Four or five people in that little room there. Four or five people actually lived in that little room right there. And they treated them horribly. In some cases, they'd have their evening meal and when they're done their meal, they would throw the food down to them in the basement like you would to a dog. And this is what these people got to eat. It was horrific what they went through. And this is not a third world country. This is in Hamilton, Ontario. So they like the working structure. All the money was taken. They were forced to participate in all types of criminal acts. One of the things that they were doing was going around to various communities, including London, and the London Police can verify this, and the red mailboxes where you put your envelopes in. They were taking these mailboxes and they were either taking the whole mailbox or taking them and shaking them upside down. And there was one of the victims was a real thin lady and she put her arm up and she pulled all these envelopes out. They'd pop all the envelopes out, open them, and any that had checks in it, especially from corporations like London Hydro or whatever it is, they would either clear these checks through the victims' checking accounts or bank accounts or through a clearinghouse in Toronto. And the last tally I heard, it was up to somewhere around eight million dollars that they had made. So they do whatever they possibly can to make money. I showed you the closet that people lived in. These new Canadians were living like this. This is one of the houses that they own. This wasn't the nicest houses. So they were doing very good in their industry. So you say, "Why don't they leave?" It is a textbook human trafficking case. No documentation, all been taken by the human traffickers. In Hungary, apparently you don't trust the police that much. So they had not much trust in the police. Huge language barrier. Hungarian is one of the hardest languages there is in the world to get a translator for. No money, it was all taken by the human traffickers. They don't know anybody. Huge threats against themselves and their families back in Hungary. And Lolly referenced the Opapa case this morning as a matter of fact. When we're going through the trials, some of the families had to be brought to Canada because of the threats that were against them back in Hungary. So they're very vulnerable. All the elements of control were there. When the people were being rescued, how the rescue started was one of the new people came in and he went to Ontario Works. And Ontario Works is one of the agencies that actually employ an interpreter. And he kind of said, "I'm being taken advantage of here." And Ontario Works actually contacted local police who contacted the RCMP. And we all worked collectively to go through it. So he was kind of rescued from the situation. And he told us where the rest of the victims were. We would go to some of the houses and we'd go down to the victims and say, "Okay, you're free. Please come on. We'll look after you." They were so scared they wouldn't come. We had to go back and get some of the people that were rescued to go down and convince these people to actually come with us because they were scared of the situation that they're in. Matter of fact, when we got them originally, they were placed in shelters in the Hamilton area. No sooner were they there than the human traffickers, very, very brash people they are, out going to these shelters trying to drag the victims back out again. They didn't want them testifying and they wanted them to go back to work to make money. So that's what it is. So they had to kind of be put in a witness protection program, semi-one. A lot of it was done by a group called Walk With Me, outside of the police envelope, was done by non-government organizations and faith-based groups. And Aggie from Walk With Me did a lot of it. So they were kind of placed all over. Chalet was a big part of that and still is. So a lot of that goes on. Very, very difficult. It's tough to kind of look after these people. As I said, some family members had to be brought over. I think most of the victims are going to be able to stay in Canada. There's one that may be deported back because unfortunately he had a criminal record before he came here. Our investigator kind of went out on a limb and wrote a letter of support for him, but I'm not sure where that's going to shake out. And Lolly might be able to tell you more about that. But in a way, we're supporting that he stay here. There's been all guilty pleas so far. The investigators that did this, and I wasn't one of them, but the investigators that did this did a yeoman's job. They did a super investigation. Of the 31 people, 21 have pled guilty so far. And the sentences have been up to nine years in jail. And once they get out of jail, they're actually being deported back to Hungary. So what can we do? Everybody I talk to, I say: if you use the services of sex trade workers, if you buy or sell pornographic material, if you go to the rub and tugs, you're probably supporting human trafficking in some way. If you buy, sell, barter, and counterfeit goods, much of it's made in third world countries and sweatshops, and apparently in sweatshops in Toronto according to Lolly, you're supporting human trafficking in some ways. From my perspective, and I'm sorry, I'm on my soapbox now, our society's moral compass is really, really screwed up. If you look at the availability of pornographic material on late night TV, on the computer, young kids can access that. So what are we doing to their minds? The open advertisement of sexual services. The London Free Press, every paper in the country, folks, they talk about human trafficking on the front pages. They're selling bodies in the back pages in the adult section. I personally got a problem with that. The NOW Magazine is in print or you can get it online. The NOW Magazine, you can get any type of deviant sexual act from any walk of life that you want. It's openly available in our libraries in Toronto and in the subway, in the transit system in Toronto. I personally have a problem with that. So our moral compass is really, really off pace. And the veil of ignorance. We are our brother's keeper and we have a responsibility to look after. But unless these type of things affect the person or the family personally, they quite often don't get involved. And we need more people to get involved. And the thing that takes me off more than anything else is the glorification of pimps. Pimps are bad people doing bad things to other people. And our society glorifies them. "Pimp My Ride," "Pimp Juice," "Pimp My House." Where are our heads? What's going on in this world? I just can't believe it. If you want to be a pimp, you've got nobody to teach you. Go on the internet, Google it. Pimpology 101. They'll tell you how to identify girls, they'll tell you how to recruit them, they'll tell you what to charge for them, tell you how to keep them in line. I don't think that's appropriate and that shouldn't be allowed, but it is. There's YouTube videos talking about how to be involved with pimping. Edmund Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men," I added, "and women, do nothing." And that's what it's all about, folks. We are our brother's keeper. And unless we do what we have to do, bad things happen out there. How much time do I have? One minute? I'm going to skip right to this last slide. Sex tourism. If you look in that slide, you look at behind the drinking glass, there's a young Asian girl. The older Asian lady is actually her pimp. The Western guy is actually there buying her services. The sad thing about this slide is that young girl has been victimized for so long, and I'm suggesting she's eight or ten years of age, that she's bonded with her pimp. She's embracing and holding her pimp's arm because she knows when the negotiation finishes, she's going to have to service that guy. And that's going on all the time. There's a number of Canadian men around the world in prison because of sex tourism. But there isn't nearly enough in prison because there's a lot more doing it. And if you know where to go on the internet, you can book your sex vacation before you actually leave home. That's how advanced it got. The internet has revolutionized everything in the world. It's even revolutionized the sex trade. Remember your victims: they come in all shapes and sizes, all walks of life. If you don't look beyond the obvious, you will never identify a human trafficking victim. And if collectively we do our work right, good things happen. This was a former victim that was rescued, and good things are now happening in his life. There's my contact information. If I can help anybody out at any time, I'd be happy to do that. Thank you very much, The Learning Network, for having me today.