Human trafficking a problem in Sudbury: police

Greater Sudbury Police are cracking down on human trafficking cases in which women are being brought from southern Ontario to work in the sex trade and officers are getting training to help.

Human trafficking might not be a term one would associate with a northern community, but Sudbury police say it is happening in the city. A newfour-week training session will enable officers to recognize the signs of the recruitment and transportation of exploited women or men within the borders of a country or province.

An RCMP report released in 2010 said, of the more than 200 cases verified across the country that year, 90 per cent ofhuman traffickingcases were domestic.

Its a statistic with which Sudbury police Const. Stephane Brouillette would agree.

As he scrolls through a popular local escort website on a Friday afternoon, already 10 women have posted their ads on the site, promising sex and more.

'More pressure'

Brouillette said some of these women have been forced by their pimps to migrate north from southern Ontario to evade police in those regions who are swiftly following the human trafficking trail.

"There's been a lot more pressure from the police departments conducting investigations in the southern parts of Ontario," Brouillette said.

"I would surmise that this has caused them to seek out other places where there's not so much attention from the law enforcement agencies."

That's why Brouillette is training his fellow officers to recognize and deal with potential human trafficking victims.

"A lot of the times well find ads where the girls are billing themselves as Jamaican, Dominican, or any other ethnic background," Brouillette said. "Obviously the diversity in Sudbury is not that great, and a lot of the times the girls coming from the south seem to use [their ethnicity] as a selling feature.

Age is another important factor in human trafficking, Brouillette said.

On backpage.com, posters are required to list their age, however police said this information can be misleading.

"We tend to believe that sometimes the ages are embellished," Brouillette said. "The girls themselves may be a little older, posting younger ages to make themselves more attractive ... in some cases theyre actually younger than 18."

Helping the victims

A spokesperson with a sex workers advocacy group in Sudbury said her group, Project PEACE, often helps victims of human trafficking after they've become untangled from their pimp and sex network.

Typically the team sees women who are already looking for an exit strategy, said Christine Schmidt, one of the co-founders of the group.

Women will often share snippets of stories with the team at Project PEACE, from physical abuse to experiences of being forced to go out on the street.

Once a woman approaches the group, it can take a number of actions, from contacting the police if theres an immediate safety concern, to connecting her with sexual assault counselling.

"We might also try and reduce any concerns over confidentiality and identification, because thats often an enormous concern when these women are first stepping forward," Schmidt said.

Going into schools

Brouillette said training for police will be ongoing for the next month. He added the public will also be included in an education campaign later this year, when a team of officers will go into Sudbury schools to talk about human trafficking, to try and protect them from being lured into a potential trafficking situation.

Though human trafficking is nothing new, Brouillette said the difference now is that people are finally starting to recognize it as an issue.

"There are a number of cases that have been in the media in Ottawa as well as southern Ontario," Brouillette said.

"I would like to believe that it's more of a heightened awareness towards what's going on in our actual communities."