Breaking down stereotypes of prostitution and human trafficking was a key theme of the Defend Dignity forum at Portage Alliance Church Sunday night.
For the more than 250 people who attended the forum, a human face was put on the faceless women and girls who find themselves lured into a dehumanizing world where they are sexually exploited for someone else’s profit.
Diane Redsky, project director for the National Task Force on Human Trafficking of Women and Girls in Canada, said the age at which girls are lured into prostitution is getting younger and younger.
“Three years ago, they were 13,” said Redsky, an advocate for Aboriginal, children’s and women’s issues for 20 years. “Now they’re 11.”
Later, during a panel discussion, Redsky gave the audience a sense of urgency in dealing with the issue of sexual exploitation, showing how it is a form of child abuse.
“She is not a juvenile prostitute or a teen hooker,” she said. “She is a victim of child abuse and that requires your immediate attention.”
Trisha Baptie, a former prostitute from Vancouver, added her own sense of urgency, saying that prostitution for adult women is also violence against them and that can’t be allowed to continue.
Redsky agrees, saying human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation is “forced prostitution. It's one of the most extreme forms of violence against women.”
Just as there are those who think prostitutes choose to walk the streets as a profession, there are those who think human trafficking involves crossing borders. Redsky informed the crowd that the majority of trafficking of people is of Canadian people, mostly vulnerable or at-risk women and children ― a disproportionate number of them Aboriginal ― within Canada's own borders. Trafficking does not involve travel, but control, she said. With human smuggling, a person pays someone to get them across an international border and then go their own way, but with human trafficking, “they are never free.”
Getting a person to give up their freedom and become a commodity in the human trafficking world is called “The Game”, according to Cindy Kovalak, a former Mountie who works as the North West Regional Human Trafficking Awareness co-ordinator.
The Game starts with luring an at-risk girl, possibly at a mall or through the Internet. Likely it will be someone from a foster home, or without adequate adult supervision, and almost certainly they will have experienced abuse at some point in their young lives. Then there will come a period of isolation, where they are cut off from any support system they had. And then they are controlled, either through threats, getting hooked on drugs, having petty crimes held against them or by their pimps, who will mark them with a tattoo, and claim to be their boyfriend, all the while sending them off to have sex with other men for money.
Kovalak called human trafficking the second largest enterprise in the world, but even more profitable than selling drugs. A kilo of cocaine can only be sold once, she pointed out, but “you can use that human being over and over and over again.”
More than 700,000 women are trafficked annually, said Kovalak.
Redsky added during her presentation that the average financial gain for a pimp is about $280,000 per year for each girl in his “stable”.
The audience was encouraged to write letters to their MPs and to make appointments with them to urge them to address the issues of prostitution and trafficking. They were also invited to participate in a group that is working to end prostitution in Manitoba, several of which were present at the forum. Mostly, they were encouraged to raise awareness of the issues with their children, their families and peers, to change talk of prostitution as a morality issue to a justice issue.
“Who will stand up for them if we do not? We cannot walk away,” said Defend Dignity executive director Glendyne Gerrard.
For the more than 250 people who attended the forum, a human face was put on the faceless women and girls who find themselves lured into a dehumanizing world where they are sexually exploited for someone else’s profit.
Diane Redsky, project director for the National Task Force on Human Trafficking of Women and Girls in Canada, said the age at which girls are lured into prostitution is getting younger and younger.
“Three years ago, they were 13,” said Redsky, an advocate for Aboriginal, children’s and women’s issues for 20 years. “Now they’re 11.”
Later, during a panel discussion, Redsky gave the audience a sense of urgency in dealing with the issue of sexual exploitation, showing how it is a form of child abuse.
“She is not a juvenile prostitute or a teen hooker,” she said. “She is a victim of child abuse and that requires your immediate attention.”
Trisha Baptie, a former prostitute from Vancouver, added her own sense of urgency, saying that prostitution for adult women is also violence against them and that can’t be allowed to continue.
Redsky agrees, saying human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation is “forced prostitution. It's one of the most extreme forms of violence against women.”
Just as there are those who think prostitutes choose to walk the streets as a profession, there are those who think human trafficking involves crossing borders. Redsky informed the crowd that the majority of trafficking of people is of Canadian people, mostly vulnerable or at-risk women and children ― a disproportionate number of them Aboriginal ― within Canada's own borders. Trafficking does not involve travel, but control, she said. With human smuggling, a person pays someone to get them across an international border and then go their own way, but with human trafficking, “they are never free.”
Getting a person to give up their freedom and become a commodity in the human trafficking world is called “The Game”, according to Cindy Kovalak, a former Mountie who works as the North West Regional Human Trafficking Awareness co-ordinator.
The Game starts with luring an at-risk girl, possibly at a mall or through the Internet. Likely it will be someone from a foster home, or without adequate adult supervision, and almost certainly they will have experienced abuse at some point in their young lives. Then there will come a period of isolation, where they are cut off from any support system they had. And then they are controlled, either through threats, getting hooked on drugs, having petty crimes held against them or by their pimps, who will mark them with a tattoo, and claim to be their boyfriend, all the while sending them off to have sex with other men for money.
Kovalak called human trafficking the second largest enterprise in the world, but even more profitable than selling drugs. A kilo of cocaine can only be sold once, she pointed out, but “you can use that human being over and over and over again.”
More than 700,000 women are trafficked annually, said Kovalak.
Redsky added during her presentation that the average financial gain for a pimp is about $280,000 per year for each girl in his “stable”.
The audience was encouraged to write letters to their MPs and to make appointments with them to urge them to address the issues of prostitution and trafficking. They were also invited to participate in a group that is working to end prostitution in Manitoba, several of which were present at the forum. Mostly, they were encouraged to raise awareness of the issues with their children, their families and peers, to change talk of prostitution as a morality issue to a justice issue.
“Who will stand up for them if we do not? We cannot walk away,” said Defend Dignity executive director Glendyne Gerrard.
