GUELPH – Since October, 2017, when the last provincial government earmarked approximately $18.6 million over three years to combat human trafficking in Ontario, there has been a great wave of public awareness initiatives spotlighting the issue.
In the past 18 months I have read at least 12 newspaper articles aimed to draw attention to the very real problem of human sex trafficking in Guelph and rural Wellington County.
At Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis (GWWIC), a program has been created to meet the complex needs of women and girls escaping sex trafficking in Guelph and Wellington. OPP and Victim Services, Elora House and myriad community partners have joined the fight to combat human sex trafficking.
There have been several events aimed at educating our youth to the ways traffickers will try to hook them into the work, with a strong focus on preventing youth from being victimized by traffickers.
With all this light so brightly illuminating the problem, I would wager there is not one person left in the county who is not aware of human trafficking in our midst. We know that vulnerable people are lured into sex work by traffickers who profit highly from the trade. We know the ways and means traffickers enlist and entrap victims, by posing as their friends or partners and lavishing them with gifts, false love and promises.
We know Ontario is a major centre for human sex trafficking and that it accounts for two thirds of all sex trafficking in Canada. According to the Globe and Mail, in 2013 the RCMP reported one sex trafficked victim can make up to $336,000 a year for a trafficker and so we know that, above all, sex trafficking is extremely lucrative.
So, then, we rush to educate our youth, we rush to bring public awareness to the issue of modern day sex slavery and we rush to provide funding to help the victims caught up in the nets that ensnare them. As a community, we feel terrible for those exploited and we feel anger toward those who exploit, but we also neglect to shed light on the other big section of the business triad – the buyers of trafficked sex, the customers, punters and purchasers – whatever we choose to call them. People who have somehow made it okay to buy sex from traffickers of people.
If trafficking adults and minors for sex is such a huge industry here in Ontario, we need to think hard about who is driving this industry. Let’s think about TV and movies, music, pornography, the recent induction of words related to pimping in popular culture. Shows like Pimp My Ride, advertising methods like Virgin Airways’ “Pimp my Lounge,” award-winning tunes like It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp. We find ways to incorporate the language of sex trafficking, pimping, into our everyday conversations.
We continue to perpetuate the language of sex trafficking and allude to uncontrollable sexual drives and appetites of those who engage in the purchase of sex.
These buyers of trafficked sex, perhaps they have convinced themselves that they are just buying acts that their partners won’t consent to; perhaps they have deluded themselves into buying the myth that sexual assault does not apply to trafficked sex workers; that they are not harming anyone, that they are just conducting a business transaction, and above all, that the seller must enjoy it or they wouldn’t be selling.
According to PACT – Ottawa (Persons Against the Crime of Trafficking in Humans) these buyers of sex are also big consumers of pornography, over half of them are married or have partners, many of them have children of their own.
They are, most sadly, ordinary people, not monsters, not nefarious, cloaked criminals hiding in the shadows. Just ordinary people who have been convinced and cajoled by mainstream culture and ubiquitous complicit public attitude that purchasing sex through a trafficker is okay.
So, I wonder, if sex trafficking is such a booming business in rural and urban Ontario, and if the median age that vulnerable people are lured into sex trafficking is 12, how we can collectively and with intent, begin to change the attitudes we have created about buying sex?
After all, when a new product hits the open market and no one wants it, it simply drops off the shelf. We have entered a new age in human sex trafficking in Ontario.
Feb. 22 is Human Trafficking Awareness Day. However, being aware of a problem doesn’t rid us of the problem and we would be naive to think that it does.
Real change comes from within. Changing our attitudes about human sex trafficking is much of the battle won. Challenging ourselves about buying sex from traffickers, really thinking hard about trauma caused to victims, really thinking hard about how they are selling, why they may be selling, who is gaining from their selling. Buying sex from a trafficked person is a choice.
Let’s change our attitudes and choose differently. Let’s endeavour to do as much research as we can before we choose to purchase sex from someone, to ensure that they are not victims of human sex trafficking.
For assistance or information call Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis’ 24-hour crisis line at 519-836-5710 or 1-800-265-7233; GWWIC head office at 519-836-1110; or GWWIC Rural Women’s Support Program Mount Forest office at 519-323-3638.
Note: Sex work is legal in Canada and should not be confused with human sex trafficking. Trafficking occurs when someone uses force, fraud or coercion to cause a commercial sex act with an adult or causes a minor to commit a commercial sex act.
Submitted by Lydia Rogerson, Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis
