Project SECLUSION: Summary of Findings | Sex Trafficking Must End - Hope for the Sold

by Michelle Brock on April 3, 2011

Several months ago I received a report from the Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre known as Project SECLUSION. It is a national overview of trafficking operations in Canada and addresses organized crime involvement, transnational associations, source countries, and challenges faced by law enforcement. It is not intended to be a guide on how to investigate human trafficking but serves as a baseline tool in enforcement efforts. Here are some key findings:

• Human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation has been mostly associated with organized prostitution occurring discreetly behind fronts, like escort agencies and residential brothels. These are extremely difficult for law enforcement to detect without proactive investigations.

• Human trafficking suspects usually share similar ethnicity with their associates and have ethnic ties to source countries of their migrant workers.

• Many human trafficking suspects have been linked to other organized criminal activities, such as conspiracy to commit murder, credit card fraud, mortgage fraud, immigration fraud, and organized prostitution, in Canada or abroad.

• Organized crime networks with Eastern European links have been involved in the organized entry of women from former Soviet States into Canada for employment in escort services in the Greater Toronto Area and possibly in massage and escort services in the Montreal area. These groups have demonstrated transnational capabilities and significant associations with convicted human traffickers in the Czech Republic, Germany, Belarus, and Israel.

• Domestic human trafficking victims have mostly been recruited through the internet or by an acquaintance. The victims were groomed, manipulated, and coerced to enter the sex trade.

• Some victims of domestic trafficking have been underage girls exploited through prostitution in exotic dance clubs and/or escort services. Control tactics employed by traffickers to retain victims in exploitative situations include social isolation, forcible confinement, withholding identification documents, imposing strict rules, limitation of movement, as well as threats and violence.

• African nationals who were identified as victims of human trafficking were trafficked for sexual exploitation outside of and before arriving to Canada.

You can download the entire PDF report here: SECLUSION_Unclassified_EN Final version

I am also currently reading another article that specifically focuses on methodology of trafficking research and what approaches Canada must take when measuring this clandestine activity. This will be particulatly helpful for those of you getting into trafficking research. Summary of that coming soon!

Michelle Brock

Project SECLUSION: Summary of Findings | Sex Trafficking Must End - Hope for the Sold
Source: hopeforthesold.com/

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Quebec fails human trafficking victims | lavalnews.ca

POSTED Wed, 11/03/2010 - 17:05 | POSTED BY Matin C. Barry

“Modern-day slavery” concealing itself behind escort services and violent street gangs

The author of a new book that exposes the widespread extent of human trafficking in Canada for the first time takes aim at the government of Quebec for not cracking down on a branch of criminality he compares to “modern-day slavery” concealing itself behind escort services and violent street gangs.

No help here

“Unfortunately the Quebec government has not put a system in place to help trafficking victims,” Benjamin Perrin, author of Invisible Chains: Canada’s Underworld World of Human Trafficking, said in a phone interview with the Laval News. He said failure to have a plan in place, as is the case with the Quebec government, “is having a severe impact on human trafficking victims.”

When Perrin, an assistant professor with the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Law, initially started researching the issue of human trafficking in Cambodia a decade ago, he didn’t expect to see the same phenomenon not only manifesting itself, but becoming widespread in this country.

Now in Canada

Perrin’s documentation of what he says are cases of human trafficking in virtually all of Canada’s major cities — including Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax and smaller localities — leads to the conclusion that human trafficking is now established in this country. In most cases, he found, traffickers were exploiting Canada’s immigration and refugee programs.

In Quebec, according to Perrin, police have identified the involvement of street gangs trafficking young girls who are lured to the Greater Toronto Area, where their sexual services are made available through strip clubs or hotels and motels advertised through the Craigslist online website. Perrin is currently demanding that Craigslist shut down its erotic services in Canada, as it has already done in the U.S.

In second place

Not unlike slavery, which flourished throughout the western world less than two centuries ago, human trafficking is the illegal trade in persons, usually for the exploitation of prostitution, or for the purposes of obtaining human labor without paying the cost. While drug trafficking remains in first place as the fastest growing criminal activity in the world today, according to the U.S. government’s National Human Trafficking Resource Center, human trafficking is tied with the illegal arms trade as the second most widespread global crime.

The Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada estimates the gross revenue of a prostitute forced to work for a trafficker at $280,000 annually. With this kind of money available, the involvement of organized crime in human trafficking may not seem surprising. However, the potential extent of the problem becomes even more alarming when one realizes that legitimate businesses in this country may also be involved. Perrin claims that some escort agencies — many of which advertise in the back pages of alternative newspapers and even in mainstream publications — are serving as “fronts” for human trafficking operations.

‘It is huge money’

“Escort agencies have been used to sell victims of sex trafficking,” he said, while cautioning that not all agencies are involved. “We know that traffickers are involved in this business, and the reason that traffickers are involved is because of the money. It is huge money … Sex trafficking victims have also been sold in massage parlors, in strip clubs, on-line. Essentially at any outlet for the commercial sex trade in Canada that you could think of we have found victims of human trafficking.”

Even though prostitution is no doubt the most lucrative form of human trafficking, Perrin’s research found an equal number of cases involving forced labor in Canada. In early October, several members of a family in Hamilton, Ont. were arraigned on charges of fraud, theft and human trafficking after an alleged human trafficking victim complained to the RCMP that he was just one of a group of people being exploited. Sixteen people, all of whom were destitute in Hungary, were allegedly lured by the family from their country to Canada with promises of a better life.

Threats and intimidation

Once in Canada, the victims obtained social assistance. The accused are charged with appropriating it for themselves. The victims typically lived in their hosts’ basements, were fed poorly, and worked daily for long hours at construction sites without pay. Without money, according to the alleged scenario, they were unable to return to their home country, were kept under constant close watch and were subjected to threats and intimidation.

“From all my research, I have concluded that there are hundreds, possibly thousands of victims of human trafficking exploited in Canada every year,” said Perrin. “Most concerning to me is that our country has failed to address this hidden national tragedy. We do not have a national action plan, and only some provinces have put in systems to help victims.”

Quebec fails human trafficking victims | lavalnews.ca

Souce: Laval NewsRelated articles

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Human trafficking a domestic and international issue, RCMP report says

An RCMP report on human trafficking found that many of its victims came from within Canada. Photograph by: RCMP video, Handout

SOURCE: THE GAZETTE

By Janice Tibbetts, Postmedia News
September 13, 2010

OTTAWA — The RCMP, in its first expansive assessment of trafficking in humans, revealed Monday that there are currently 36 cases before the criminal courts in Canada and that most victims are Canadian citizens or permanent residents who are not necessarily recruited from overseas.

The report, which examined human trafficking in Canada from 2005 to 2009, concluded that many human trafficking suspects, who mainly recruit their victims for sexual exploitation, are also linked to major criminal networks involved in conspiracy to commit murder, credit card fraud, mortgage fraud and immigration fraud in Canada and abroad.

The three ethnic communities that are highlighted in the report are Eastern Europeans, Asians, and Africans and the methods of trafficking humans vary depending on their country of origin, says a summary of the report.

Victims include live-in foreign domestic workers who were smuggled into Canada by their employers, Eastern European women recruited by organized crime to work in escort services, African women who were trafficked for sexual exploitation outside of Canada, and workers in bawdy houses run by Asian prostitution rings.

"Control tactics employed by traffickers to retain victims in exploitative situations include social isolation, forcible confinement, withholding identification documents, imposing strict rules, limitation of movement, as well as threats and violence," said a summary of the report.

The RCMP describe the findings as a "preliminary baseline of human trafficking activities" that affects Canada both domestically and internationally.

Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings, mainly for sexual exploitation or forced labour and it is widely described as a form of modern-day slavery.

The report lists 17 key findings, which include

Recent convictions of human trafficking have mostly involved victims who are citizens and/or permanent residents of Canada trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

Human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation has been mostly associated with organized prostitution occurring discreetly behind fronts, like escort agencies and residential brothels.

Human trafficking suspects usually share similar ethnicity with their associates and have ethnic ties to source countries of their migrant workers.

Suspected transnational trafficking networks are believed to have operators based in source countries to facilitate the recruitment and transport segments of the trafficking process. Some organizers likely provide high quality false travel documents for migrants to travel deceptively to Canada.

Organized crime networks with Eastern European links have been involved in the organized entry of women from former Soviet States into Canada for employment in escort services in the Greater Toronto Area and possibly in massage and escort services in the Montreal area.

Human trafficking has been identified in bawdy houses operated by Asian prostitution rings. The establishments are discreet and staffed solely by Asian migrants or persons of Asian descent.

Asian sex workers have been observed to travel inter-provincially between Canadian cities and possibly to the U.S, to prostitute in bawdy houses.

Major Canadian cities with an established network of Asian organized crime are destinations for migrant sex workers from Asia. Organized crime groups operate multiple bawdy houses across a city and some are believed to associate with prostitution rings in other cities.

Investigations found that Asian sex workers are not necessarily recruited from overseas. Most foreign nationals that were found working in bawdy houses had entered Canada legally and looked for sex work after they arrived in Canada.

Some convicted offenders of domestic human trafficking were found to be affiliated with street gangs known to law enforcement for pimping.

Domestic human trafficking victims have mostly been recruited through the Internet or by an acquaintance. The victims were groomed, manipulated, and coerced to enter the sex trade.

African nationals who were identified as victims of human trafficking were trafficked for sexual exploitation outside of and before arriving in Canada.

Significant human trafficking indicators were identified in some cases involving foreign national domestic workers who were smuggled into Canada by their employers. These live-in domestic workers were controlled, threatened, underpaid, and forced to work by their employers.

The report comes a week after the federal government announced a national campaign to educate Canadians about the crime of human trafficking, in which victims are mainly forced into the sex trade. The advertising campaign is designed to alert Canadians on how to spot and recognize possible trafficking cases.

The government announced its anti-trafficking campaign as it struggles with how to handle migrants who land on Canadian shores seeking refugee status. A ship carrying almost 500 people from Sri Lanka arrived earlier this summer and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has suggested they could be part of a human smuggling operation.

Human smuggling can often turn into trafficking if passengers are unable to make the payments for the journey.

A RCMP news release said that more than 40 law enforcement organizations, as well as the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, contributed to the RCMP report.

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

Human trafficking a domestic and international issue, RCMP report says