Most news reports of sexual exploitation in Canada involve women trafficked from other countries, but CBC reports more than 90 per cent of them are actually teens born in Canada.
Girls afraid to leave
The way it often works is that men lure young girls at school, at the mall or on social media. They flatter them, take them shopping, buy them expensive gifts and eventually make them dependent. They then apply varying degrees and kinds of pressure to get the girls to offer sex for money.
The girls rarely get to keep any of the money they earn nor do they get a say in what kind of sex acts they have to perform. They most often are afraid to leave the situation.
Big money is made
Police in Toronto told CBC they estimate a trafficked girl who works every day can bring her pimp up to $280,000 per year. Sometimes they have several girls.
Warning signs
Sometimes the girls live at home and their parents have no idea what is going on. Toronto Const. Joy Brown told CBC that parents should look for the following signs of trouble: “extended periods when whereabouts are unknown; sudden changes in routine; having more than one cellphone; receiving expensive gifts; extreme tiredness and unexplained absences from school.”
CBC’s Seema Marwaha has posted excerpts of interviews with some trafficking victims as well as a police expert and health practitioner.
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