Ahead of a Carleton University sociology event aiming to shed light on the distinction between sex work and human trafficking, experts and former sex workers talk about the bill that blurred the distinction in the first place.
Human trafficking, though often conflated with sex work, couldn’t be more different. When it comes to trafficking, the purpose is always for exploitation, said Pauline Gagne, chairperson of Persons Against the Crime of Trafficking (PACT).
“It’s a modern-day form of slavery. We think we’ve abolished slavery, but we haven’t really,” Gagne said.
“When someone is being trafficked for the purposes of forced sex work, there is no ‘sex work’ involved. It is sexual assault. It is rape. Someone is being forced to use their body to make money for others,” said Kerri Cull, a human trafficking detection specialist in an email.
Sex work, on the other hand, refers to individuals selling sex on their own accord, Cull said.
“There is no forcing. They are the ones making the money and keeping it. It involves no one else but the buyer, and it is consensual.”
One of the myths surrounding human trafficking is that the women are poor, “foreign, can’t speak the native language, are already at risk or drug-addicted,” said Cull.
“This can certainly be true, but it’s not always the case,” she said, adding trafficking can happen anywhere, not just in big cities.
“It happens nearly everywhere from the smallest town in Newfoundland to Vancouver and many places in between.” — Kerri Cull, human trafficking detection specialist
No one knows the distinction better than sex workers themselves, said former sex worker and current Carleton University student, Jan Duperron.
“Yes, people are trafficked, they are forcibly trafficked. Not far from my home a man was busted a couple of years ago,” Duperron said. “But [with trafficking], we’re talking about forcible confinement, we’re talking about kidnapping. We’re not talking about a sex worker consenting to take on work that was referred to them by somebody else.”
Duperron said since the Safe Streets and Communities Act, also known as bill C-10, passed in 2012, those involved in sex work found themselves being charged for human trafficking for doing things they had done for years with little warning.
“If you’re a roofer and I have my roof done, and I like the job, and I refer you to my roofer, I don’t get charged with human trafficking,” Duperron said of how easy it was for those telling sex workers about potential clients to be charged with human trafficking.
“It doesn’t take you forcibly, you know, selling a human being to be considered a trafficker,” she added. “I’ve known this guy since I was first in Vanier— there’s not a violent bone in his body. And now he’s up on three counts of trafficking because it was common for him to help you find work [through referral].”
“It takes literally one wrong move, and you’ve now become a human trafficker.” — Jan Duperron, Carleton student and former sex worker
IMPACT ON THE STREETS
After the Safe Streets and Communities Act of 2012 passed, Duperron said sex workers felt their profession became more dangerous than ever before.
“Here in Vanier, they had put together a unit made up of four officers, two sergeants and two female officers, and we called them the ‘working girl unit’ … because their jobs were to reach out to us,” Duperron said. “They were not to respond to any drugs, any drug dealing, whatever — they were there to talk to you.”
Duperron said people need to understand the police, other than the unit, were not sex workers’ friends.
“I have had my ribs broken. I have had to have a restraining order on a police officer. I have had an officer cuff me, cut my top off, take my drugs, break my wrists, and then let me go and not charge me.” — Jan Duperron, Carleton student and former sex worker
“Officer will bust me if I don’t buy him drugs or I can’t buy him drugs,” Duperron added. “And so, the police are not your friends.”
Duperron said police were not someone sex workers would ever turn to unless they experienced a violent rape, but even then, reporting instances was rare. The ‘working girl unit’ changed that. However, after the bill was passed, the unit closed.
“One of the officers was Mike Mandela, years later our girls played ringette together,” Duperron said. “We talked about how horrified he was when things changed.”
Duperron said outdoor sex workers were losing their sense of community due to the law.
Since the law made it easier for those referring clients to sex workers to be charged with human trafficking, Duperron said clients, called Johns, became more scarce and working girls were becoming more and more competitive.
“We were losing that connection with each other because our Johns were scarce,” Duperron said. “We would be fighting over customers because men had more to lose and they were isolating us.”
“Men who at one time you would feel safe with are now feeling they could get away with doing things to you because we’re now in isolated areas,” she said of the atmosphere after the bill. “We’re now very secret, very quiet.”
Duperron also said the bill affected sex workers’ relationships with one another because they had to compete for limited customers.
“We were in harm’s way more, and we were being assaulted and we were being mistreated more. And I think we [were] taking it out on each other.” — Jan Duperron, Carleton student and former sex worker
Despite the competition, Duperron added sex workers still stuck up for each other.
“You could hate a girl, but if you saw a man messing with her, you protected her.”
LACK OF RESOURCES
A lack of services coupled with stigmas around substance use often leaves sex workers with nowhere to turn, said Kristen Gilchrist-Salles, the co-facilitator of the Willow Women’s Centre, which provides harm-reduction services and support to women who perform street-level sex work in Ottawa.
“We’re in the middle of an opioid epidemic, so it’s not easy for folks to say straight out, ‘I’m injecting fentanyl,’ or ‘I’m smoking crack’ or ‘I’m trading sex for $40 or whatever,” she said.
“They need to have spaces where they can come and be open and honest and be accepted, and not judged, or not told they need to quit. You have to meet people where they’re at and then look at the circumstances of their lives,” Gilchrist-Salles added.
Support services shouldn’t be trying to encourage women to stop sex work or stop using drugs, Gilchrist-Salles said, but providing support regardless.
“We don’t have an expectation that you’re going to stop doing things, whether they’re risky, or illegal or whatever, you still deserve support.” — Kristen Gilchrist-Salles, Willow Women’s Centre co-facilitator
While organizations like the Willow Women’s Centre aim to provide those safe services for women, Gilchrist-Salles said without systematic change, there’s only so much they can do.
“We can give folks condoms, we can give them sterile supplies, but if they’re still experiencing poverty, if they’re still experiencing ongoing racism, if they’re still not housed, if there are still structural factors that are never addressed, then we can’t actually reduce the harm in the long term, right?”
Misconceptions around the realities of sex work also play a role in preventing women from accessing support services.
“The image that people have of trafficking is very cut-and-dry, like abduction or being taken against their will and that doesn’t resonate with a lot of the women that I see,” said Gilchrist-Salles, adding that women engaged in sex work are not being forced into trafficking situations.
“They 100 per cent understand gender-based violence, sexual assault, exploitation, being taken advantage of, things like that. That’s the language that they’ll use.” — Kristen Gilchrist-Salles, Willow Women’s Centre co-facilitator
Street-level sex workers don’t face the same challenges as indoor sex-workers, and usually have more precarious conditions, she added.
“If you’re working indoors, sometimes you can solicit ads — which is illegal, but most still do it — and you can say, this is what I offer, this is what my rate is,” she said.
Gilchrist-Salles said while working on the street, sex-workers typically make less money and are in more dangerous situations.
“It’s typically a much quicker interaction because you’re so visible, so the threat of surveillance or intervention is a lot more pronounced. Folks typically have less screening which can leave them in harm’s way,” she added.
When it comes to trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, people who were sexually abused as children are at a higher risk of being trafficked, said Cynthia Bland, CEO and executive director of Voicefound, an organization educating people to identify, prevent and respond to sex-trafficking and abuse.
“There are statistics that show that people who are trafficked, oftentimes I would say 90 per cent of the time, were first sexually abused as children,” said Bland. “It’s a vulnerability.”
“For a person to be trafficked for sexual exploitation, it runs across all social and economic boundaries.” — Cynthia Bland, Voicefound CEO
According to a research report released in 2014 by PACT-Ottawa, 90 per cent of trafficking victims identified were from the local Ottawa area and were between the ages of 12-25 years old.
MAKING SEX SAFER
A major part of the work PACT-Ottawa does involves education in schools and workshops to increase awareness of the signs of human trafficking.
“A lot of the survivors have told us that ‘had I known how the trafficker functions, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten caught,’” Gagne said.
Cull also stressed the importance of awareness and education of trafficking with regard to stigma.
“Awareness and education are key to lessening the debilitating effects of stigma. It’s also important for people to realize that it happens nearly everywhere and can happen to anyone. It’s not just at-risk youth or foreigners and so on who could become prey to perpetrators of violence.”
“Survivors of [human trafficking] are dealing with a host of experiences that have brought them to this place in their lives, experiences that they continually heal from,” Cull said.
“It’s not a straight line to healing with a fixed endpoint. It’s a bumpy, challenging road that can have setbacks and triggers. It’s a complicated, potentially life-long healing journey.” — Kerri Cull, human trafficking detection specialist
Although Dupperon has been out of sex work for years, her advocacy for sex workers’ rights has never stopped.
She has done guest lectures at Ottawa universities raising awareness of issues surrounding sex work, does outreach and provides supplies for women still pursuing sex work, and has facilitated conversations with her daughters and mother to help them understand the industry.
Other students at Carleton University are also hoping to raise awareness of the distinction between sex work and human trafficking taking place in Ottawa by holding a panel discussion titled “Trafficking? The realities of street-level sex work in Ottawa,” on March 11.
“We want to make sure — because it’s so prevalent in the media to conflate [sex work and trafficking] — that we’re telling students a counter-narrative to tell them that there is a difference,” said Yuri FitzPatrick, a fourth-year women and gender studies student who is one of the event’s organizers.
The panel discussion is in partnership with Willow Women’s Centre. The organization will be accepting donations at the event.
Featured graphic by Sara Mizannojehdehi.
