A female civic employee’s earnest comment made me realize how much work was still ahead of us. “It’s complicated, you see ... it’s kind of a grey area,” she said. “I mean, what if she’s 16, and she wants it?”
I literally felt sick.
I’d even heard it from law enforcement in cities where human trafficking re-education has yet to start. “That doesn’t happen here,” they say. “Why are you wasting our time on this?”
But it was a business leader responsible for one of Canada’s largest entertainment events who really motivated me to never give up on the fight against human trafficking and child sexual exploitation in Canada.
Point blank, he said to me, “This has been happening since time began. You don’t really think you’re going to change this, do you?”
Listening to Canadian sex-trafficking survivors conjures a very different point of view. A young woman revealed to me that she was seven years old when she was first trafficked. One survivor had snuck out of her bedroom window to go to a party when she was 13 years old, and through a series of related events, found herself chained to a bed in Vancouver the next day. Forced to have sex with man after man for a month, she was injected with heroin during this “breaking” process — a well-known tactic in the trafficking industry — introducing a chemical chain to control her until her physical chains could be removed.
Recent Epstein-saga events bear witness to truths we must protect: Childhood is sacred, sexually exploiting children is wrong and these abuses result in horribly damaged lives. Rehabilitation for victims and survivors is possible, but the physical and emotional scars last forever.
Before entering the music industry 25 years ago, I had embarked on a much different career path, enrolling in the nursing program at Calgary’s Mount Royal College, (now Mount Royal University). As I started working at the Alberta Children’s Hospital as a Registered Nurse, my music hobby turned into a major record deal in Nashville, but I never left behind my passion for helping those in need.
Years ago, I travelled to Cambodia, hosted by an organization fighting human trafficking and sexual exploitation, and we toured a district known for drawing sex tourists because of the access to extremely young children provided by traffickers.
It was there that a California-based businessman was financing the construction of a three-storey sex-destination hotel, meant to accommodate bus loads and plane loads of men from around the world coming to sexually exploit young children. There were many children playing in the street that day, but there was one little girl who stood out to me. An adult took her by the hand and away to a waiting cab. I was informed that, like many children in that community, she was being taken to work at a local brothel to be sold six to eight times a night. She was five years old.
Since then, I’ve had a feeling of urgency in the pit of my stomach: What will I tell my daughter I did about this? How will I teach my son how to respect and interact with women? What will I do about this atrocity?
When the American businessman saw us working against his efforts, he decided to cut his losses and move on, putting his unfinished brothel building on the market. Our group pooled our resources, purchased the building and turned it into a church/health clinic/school, with a renewed purpose to educate young Cambodians who would someday lead their nation to a brighter future. Today, trafficking activity in that community is virtually non-existent, and children run through the streets freely on their way to the new local playground.
Trafficking doesn’t just happen in far-flung corners of the world; it’s happening in our communities, and is now one of the fastest growing crimes in Canada.
Aboriginal People account for four per cent of Canada’s population, but account for more than 50 per cent of trafficking victims in Canada. The most common age at which girls are first trafficked in Canada is 13.
What were you doing when you were 13?
I wonder if men, while satisfying their sexual whims with an adult sex worker, ever first imagine her as a child who had her innocence ripped away and a horrific future forced upon her. While not always the case, statistics show this is exactly what has occurred the majority of the time.
While it is important not to conflate sex work with trafficking, studies have shown that they are connected, and that in areas where prostitution has been legalized, sex trafficking also increases. The country of Sweden has legislated all prostitution by nature as exploitative, and that “the purchase of sexual services provided by women and girls amounts to discriminating against them.”
Since founding the anti human trafficking movement #NotInMyCity, I admit I’ve had moments of doubt. I’m an entertainer, not a social worker, law-enforcement officer or government leader. Truthfully, the voices of critics and cynics have often been quite loud in my ears. But I often find their mindsets change when they hear yet another survivor’s account of horrific abuse.
Seeing rape cubicles in Cambodia; hearing the account of a seven-year-old Canadian, forced to sexually service man after man in a drug-numbed haze, toxins injected by her trafficker into her little arms in between sessions. I’m reminded that all it takes for trafficking to flourish is to ignore it and do nothing.
#NotInMyCity will continue to work tirelessly alongside a growing team of individuals, business leaders, law enforcement, social and government agencies. We will employ evidence-based, trauma-informed practices and a wraparound approach, keeping the health, safety and well-being of victims and survivors the centre of our focus.
Sexual exploitation and sex trafficking strips victims of human rights and, left unchecked, degrades the dignity of us all.
Will men and women alike be brave enough to call this what it is? The sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of children is evil, and there’s never an excuse for it.
Paul Brandt is a member of the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, and is the Founder of the anti- Human Trafficking movement #NotInMyCity www.notinmycity.ca
