Source: CBC:
Alia Parisien counts herself lucky that she found Honouring Gifts.
The program, at Ka Ni Kanichihk in Winnipeg, gives aboriginal women a second chance and teaches them jobs skills. Most of these women are overcoming challenges such as addictions, brushes with the law, and sexual exploitation.
“I was getting money as a kid, and it was so easy to get money from this guy just to do whatever he wanted to do to me,” said Parisien, now a 25-year-old mother.
Continue here:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/human-trafficking-why-aboriginal-women-are-targeted-1.2589265
Showing posts with label Winnipeg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Winnipeg. Show all posts
Monday, July 14, 2014
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Putting a face on human trafficking
Timea Nagy escaped her life as a human trafficking victim, but others are still trapped
Photo Credit: Global News, Winnipeg
The buying and selling of human beings is happening right here in Manitoba.
Every year, countless young women become victims of human trafficking. They're purchased off websites the same way you'd buy a bicycle off Craigslist.
"I was tricked, and held and raped," said Timea Nagy, a young woman who came to Canada from Hungary for a better life 12 years ago. Instead, she was forced into the sex trade, manipulated and controlled by the people that brought her here.
"They told us everyday how they were going to beat us up if we went to the police, because police can't help us," said Nagy.
She escaped, but many did not.
Today, the same thing is happening to hundreds, even thousands of young women.
The 32 billion dollar world wide industry is growing by two million young women and children each year.
They're not only being forced to work the streets, their services are being advertised in online classifieds, a buy and sell website called Craigslist.
"When I go on Craigslist, I want to cry," said Nagy, who says it's extremely difficult to find the girls and get them away from the trade.
"We have been going after it with a vengeance," said local MP Joy Smith about Craigslist.
After much pressure, the service was shut down in the U.S and Smith says next week it could be gone in Manitoba too. Justice Minister Andrew Swan has asked Craigslist to remove the service.
"Everybody buys things off of Craigslist, bicycles, whatever; unfortunately there's an exotic part of Craigslist and they sell boys and girls," said Smith.
Human Trafficking Legislation has been around since 2005 in Manitoba, and just last month, Winnipeg police laid its first human trafficking charge against a 38-year old woman.
Saturday, Smith awarded five Canadian citizens for dedicating their lives to fighting the crime in Canada.
"I didn't realize the same place you can buy a microwave oven you can buy a 14-year old girl, and younger than 14," said journalist Tamara Cherry, recognized for writing extensive articles on human trafficking.
Recently Timea Nagy's organization, Walk with Me, in Toronto has helped save dozens of those victims.
"Forty in six months, and you know what, it could have been at least a hundred, but we didn't have time to get to them."
Every year, countless young women become victims of human trafficking. They're purchased off websites the same way you'd buy a bicycle off Craigslist.
"I was tricked, and held and raped," said Timea Nagy, a young woman who came to Canada from Hungary for a better life 12 years ago. Instead, she was forced into the sex trade, manipulated and controlled by the people that brought her here.
"They told us everyday how they were going to beat us up if we went to the police, because police can't help us," said Nagy.
She escaped, but many did not.
Today, the same thing is happening to hundreds, even thousands of young women.
The 32 billion dollar world wide industry is growing by two million young women and children each year.
They're not only being forced to work the streets, their services are being advertised in online classifieds, a buy and sell website called Craigslist.
"When I go on Craigslist, I want to cry," said Nagy, who says it's extremely difficult to find the girls and get them away from the trade.
"We have been going after it with a vengeance," said local MP Joy Smith about Craigslist.
After much pressure, the service was shut down in the U.S and Smith says next week it could be gone in Manitoba too. Justice Minister Andrew Swan has asked Craigslist to remove the service.
"Everybody buys things off of Craigslist, bicycles, whatever; unfortunately there's an exotic part of Craigslist and they sell boys and girls," said Smith.
Human Trafficking Legislation has been around since 2005 in Manitoba, and just last month, Winnipeg police laid its first human trafficking charge against a 38-year old woman.
Saturday, Smith awarded five Canadian citizens for dedicating their lives to fighting the crime in Canada.
"I didn't realize the same place you can buy a microwave oven you can buy a 14-year old girl, and younger than 14," said journalist Tamara Cherry, recognized for writing extensive articles on human trafficking.
Recently Timea Nagy's organization, Walk with Me, in Toronto has helped save dozens of those victims.
"Forty in six months, and you know what, it could have been at least a hundred, but we didn't have time to get to them."
Putting a face on human trafficking
Source: globalwinnipeg.com
Friday, October 15, 2010
Benjamin Perrin says many of Manitoba's child sex trafficking victims are held in 
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Human-trafficking in Canada affects isolated and vulnerable, expert says
Benjamin Perrin, author of Invisible Chains: Canada’s Underground World of Human Trafficking, accuses Craigslist of aiding and abetting sex trafficking by allowing criminals to freely advertise the sale of exploited women and children for sex. Photograph by: Handout, UBC
WINNIPEG — Poor co-ordination between law-enforcement jurisdictions is making Canada a haven for the human traffickers who prey on young, isolated and vulnerable women, a B.C.-based researcher says.
Benjamin Perrin, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia's faculty of law, has trawled the murky depths of sexual exploitation from Cambodia to Canada.
Perrin was in Winnipeg Wednesday to promote his book, Invisible Chains: Canada's Underground World of Human Trafficking. In it, he writes that the criminals who traffic in human flesh for the sex trade know that the best way of protecting themselves is to move a victim from her hometown, both to isolate her and capitalize on the lack of national co-ordination to address the problem.
He cites the case of Crystal and Sabrina, youths who were living at Little Sisters safe house in Winnipeg when two "South Asian" men befriended them in 2004. Sabrina and Crystal were groomed by the men, who took them out for dinner and to movies — then to a Saskatoon hotel room with a sex trafficker from Vancouver.
When staff at Little Sisters saw them driving away, they got the vehicle's licence plate number and called police, who said they could do nothing. When the girls called from Brandon, Man., to say they were OK and going to Saskatchewan, staff contacted the RCMP, who also said they could do nothing.
Saskatoon police eventually ended up bringing the girls in, along with their captors, on drug charges. The girls were held until their social worker arrived from Winnipeg. By then, the would-be recruiters and human traffickers had been released.
"There was a lot of finger-pointing after this case," Perrin said in an interview.
Child-welfare and police agencies weren't able to prevent or stop it.
"There's nothing to prevent this from happening again."
Perrin also used his Winnipeg stop to call on Manitoba to ban Craigslist from advertising erotic services.
"It's the medium of choice for organized crime to sell women in the sex trade," he said. "The Ontario government Tuesday heeded calls to make Craigslist shut down its online flesh market. We're asking the Attorney General of Manitoba to make the same demand."
Perrin said he's found too many heart-wrenching examples in Manitoba of young aboriginal people being used, abused and left for dead, while relatives, social workers and police struggle to stop it.
He cited the case of Fonessa Bruyere, who was found murdered on the outskirts of Winnipeg three years ago.
Perrin writes that Fonessa was first sexually exploited at age 11. She became addicted to crack and meth. At age 12, she was turned away from a residential youth shelter because all the beds were full. She ended up being sold for sex to support her addiction to the drugs that numb victims' physical and mental suffering, lower their inhibitions and impair judgment.
She was 17 when she was found dead.
© Copyright (c) Winnipeg Free Press
Human-trafficking in Canada affects isolated and vulnerable, expert says
Source: Canada.com
Related articles
Saturday, October 9, 2010
B.C. prof shines light on modern-day slavery - Winnipeg Free Press
B.C. prof shines light on modern-day slavery
Invisible Chains: Canada's Underground World of Human Trafficking
By Benjamin Perrin
Penguin, 224 pages, $32
THE content of this compelling look at human trafficking in Canada is as brilliant as the timing of its publication.
Invisible Chains has come out less than three weeks after the release of Manitoba MP Joy Smith's proposal for a national plan to combat human trafficking, less than two weeks after Manitoba's first-ever human trafficking charge was laid and less than one week after an Ontario court ruling struck down key Ontario sex trade laws.
There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of human trafficking victims in Canada every year, for both sexual exploitation and forced labour. Due to the illicit nature of the activity, it's impossible to gather accurate statistics.
B.C. law professor Benjamin Perrin is a strong writer whose work is accessible despite its disturbing nature. He offers concrete strategies for ending human slavery in Canada. His goal is to see Canada become "an international leader in the abolition of human trafficking" and "to end modern-day slavery."
He applauds Manitoba-based activists such as Rosalind Prober of Beyond Borders and MP Smith. Smith championed a stiff Criminal Code amendment for child traffickers, and Perrin supports her desire to devise a co-ordinated federal effort to combat human trafficking.
He also compliments Ma Mawi Chi Itata Centre, which assists First Nations youth in Winnipeg. The same organization runs Spirit of Our Little Sisters safe house in Winnipeg for those trying to escape sexual exploitation. Perrin says the organization requires greater funding to expand its services.
He also supports Manitoba's StreetReach, where community outreach workers identify missing or runaway children and assist them.
Perrin's heartbreaking stories offer step-by-step accounts of how victims are created. They also demonstrate that human trafficking knows no socio-economic barriers.
For example, a 19-year-old woman in Vancouver from a middle-class family "fell in love with a man who turned out to be a human trafficker." Her parents thought she was working at a restaurant for three months before discovering she was "being prostituted on the high track in Vancouver."
Her trafficker controlled her by "threatening to tell her parents if she ever tried to stop or go to the police."
Perrin notes that trafficked persons are "victims of crime and should be treated with compassion, dignity and respect."
He details how Internet websites such as Craigslist have been used by human traffickers.
His book is easy to read because it's extremely well-written and well-organized.
Invisible Chains is such an excellent and important work that deserves to attract a wide readership.
Brenlee Carrington, a Winnipeg lawyer and mediator, is the Law Society of Manitoba's equity ombudswoman.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 9, 2010 A1
Source: Winnipeg Free Press
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Thursday, September 23, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Stop human trafficking on First Nations: Aboriginal leaders
FROM GLOBAL TORONTO
Stop human trafficking on First Nations: Aboriginal leaders
VIDEO
RELATED
- A Public Service Announcment created by the RCMP hopes to bring attention to the exploitation of men,...
PSAs by Crimestoppers and the RCMP will soon play out in
PSAs by Crimestoppers and the RCMP will soon play out in living rooms across Canada, hoping to bring more attention to the exploitation of men, women and children who are forced into the sex trade or forced labour.
"Today we know that human trafficking is one of the largest growing international crimes," said Vic Toews, the federal minister for public safety, during a news conference in Winnipeg Tuesday.
It comes three weeks after a migrant ship carrying Tamils arrived on the west coast, sparking concerns about human smuggling which can lead to human trafficking.
"As more people come forward, naturally you'll see more charges being laid and more cases before the courts and more convictions," said RCMP Deputy Commissioner Raf Souccar.
But aboriginal leaders in Manitoba say authorities also need to look closer to home in remote communities where native children may be most at risk.
"There's certainly trafficking happening in small communities like Thompson, Brandon and especially Winnipeg," said MKO Grand Chief David Harper.
"And it's our children that are coming in from remote communities that are most vulnerable to this kind of activity," said Harper.
He says human trafficking among native children will be one of the topics discussed between aboriginal leaders and the public safety minister at an upcoming justice conference in Winnipeg.
MP for Kildonan Joy Smith says she's been pushing Ottawa for years to address the issue and put a stop to the modern day slavery.
She says the campaign, which is expected to cost $120, 000, is a good first step.
"What the public doesn’t know is it happens right here in Canada, it could be the girl next door," said Smith
© Copyright (c) CW Media Inc.
Stop human trafficking on First Nations: Aboriginal leaders
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