Human-trafficking in Canada affects isolated and vulnerable, expert says

Benjamin Perrin, author of Invisible Chains: Canada’s Underground World of Human Trafficking, accuses Craigslist of aiding and abetting sex trafficking by allowing criminals to freely advertise the sale of exploited women and children for sex.
Photograph by: Handout, UBC

14/10/2010
By Carol Sanders

WINNIPEG — Poor co-ordination between law-enforcement jurisdictions is making Canada a haven for the human traffickers who prey on young, isolated and vulnerable women, a B.C.-based researcher says.

Benjamin Perrin, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia's faculty of law, has trawled the murky depths of sexual exploitation from Cambodia to Canada.

Perrin was in Winnipeg Wednesday to promote his book, Invisible Chains: Canada's Underground World of Human Trafficking. In it, he writes that the criminals who traffic in human flesh for the sex trade know that the best way of protecting themselves is to move a victim from her hometown, both to isolate her and capitalize on the lack of national co-ordination to address the problem.

He cites the case of Crystal and Sabrina, youths who were living at Little Sisters safe house in Winnipeg when two "South Asian" men befriended them in 2004. Sabrina and Crystal were groomed by the men, who took them out for dinner and to movies — then to a Saskatoon hotel room with a sex trafficker from Vancouver.

When staff at Little Sisters saw them driving away, they got the vehicle's licence plate number and called police, who said they could do nothing. When the girls called from Brandon, Man., to say they were OK and going to Saskatchewan, staff contacted the RCMP, who also said they could do nothing.

Saskatoon police eventually ended up bringing the girls in, along with their captors, on drug charges. The girls were held until their social worker arrived from Winnipeg. By then, the would-be recruiters and human traffickers had been released.

"There was a lot of finger-pointing after this case," Perrin said in an interview.

Child-welfare and police agencies weren't able to prevent or stop it.

"There's nothing to prevent this from happening again."

Perrin also used his Winnipeg stop to call on Manitoba to ban Craigslist from advertising erotic services.

"It's the medium of choice for organized crime to sell women in the sex trade," he said. "The Ontario government Tuesday heeded calls to make Craigslist shut down its online flesh market. We're asking the Attorney General of Manitoba to make the same demand."

Perrin said he's found too many heart-wrenching examples in Manitoba of young aboriginal people being used, abused and left for dead, while relatives, social workers and police struggle to stop it.

He cited the case of Fonessa Bruyere, who was found murdered on the outskirts of Winnipeg three years ago.

Perrin writes that Fonessa was first sexually exploited at age 11. She became addicted to crack and meth. At age 12, she was turned away from a residential youth shelter because all the beds were full. She ended up being sold for sex to support her addiction to the drugs that numb victims' physical and mental suffering, lower their inhibitions and impair judgment.

She was 17 when she was found dead.