Authors: Benjamin Perrin
For Canadians whose contact with the world of sex traffickers is restricted to television shows or movies, the means by which young girls and women can be manipulated and controlled by pimps and traffickers is confusing and generates a catalogue of myths. Dealing in myths rather than facts makes it impossible to fully comprehend the extent and seriousness of the situation and also how to address it effectively.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police has highlighted the following common myths about human trafficking as well as its harsh realities.
Myth: | Trafficking involves crossing an international border with the victim or assisting in the victim's being transported across a border. |
Reality: | Trafficking is about victim exploitation and need not involve a border crossing. |
Myth: | Canadian citizens cannot be trafficked. Reality: Victims include Canadians as well as foreign nationals. |
Myth: | Individuals know what they are getting into, so they cannot claim to have been trafficked. |
Reality: | Victims may have low self-esteem and be forced or deceived into compliance. Even when they have foreknowledge of the situation, they may lack the power or ability to leave and end their exploitation. |
Myth: | The individuals committed unlawful acts, so they are not trafficking victims. |
Reality: | Traffickers often force their victims to commit unlawful acts such as prostitution or immigration offences. Trafficked persons are victims of crime and should be treated with compassion, dignity, and respect. |
Myth: | The individual was paid for services. |
Reality: | Many trafficking victims never keep any of the money paid for their exploitation; traffickers may provide others with small amounts of money to keep them compliant but not allow them to leave. |
Myth: | The individual had freedom of movement and so is not a trafficking victim. |
Reality: | Some traffickers forcibly confine their victims; many more control them using threats, psychological coercion, and manipulation. In many cases, traffickers are also able to make credible threats against the family members of the victim. Physical violence used against victims can easily convince them that these threats are serious. |
Myth: | Individuals who did not seize opportunities to escape are not trafficking victims. |
Reality: | Victims are often under threats that make escape impossible or are under control similar to that experienced by victims of domestic abuse. |
Myth: | The trafficker's actions were culturally appropriate. Who are we to question such practices? |
Reality: | Individual liberty is a right inherent to all people; countries across the globe consider human trafficking to be a serious problem that cannot be excused or justified. |
Myth: | Traffickers and recruiters are always men. |
Reality: | Women also recruit victims, enforce discipline for traffickers, and in some instances are traffickers themselves. |
Myth: | It can't be trafficking if the trafficker and victim are related or married. |
Reality: | This is like the old fable that it is legally impossible for a husband to rape his wife. Being married or related does not give someone the right to victimize another. Some victims have agreed to marry their exploiters in the false hope of lessening or ending their abuse. |
Five steps used by traffickers to recruit and control victims
Many recruiters are younger male members of trafficking-involved street gangs, seeking out and delivering young women just as “headhunters” locate potential executives to fill job vacancies in corporations. They may be joined in the quest for new “talent” by young women who are criminal associates of the trafficker or are victims already under their control. The process used by these recruiters is tried-and-true.
Anick Gagnon of Projet intervention prostitution de Quebec has identified five steps in the life cycle of domestic sex trafficking. First, the recruiter looks for any vulnerability he or she can exploit and offers something to meet the needs or desires of the target. For example, a teenage girl hanging out at the mall alone may be offered a cigarette. If she accepts, the recruiter engages her in conversation, and if the conversation includes comments about a recent breakup with the potential victim's boyfriend or troubles at home, the recruiter senses an opening and quickly exploits it.
The second step involves moving toward an “engagement,” as recruiters sometimes refer to it. Following up on news of the potential victim's concerns and difficulties, the trafficker begins building an intimate relationship with the victim. After the trafficker has identified the most effective way to “groom” the victim, he uses coercion, manipulation, and, if necessary, direct physical force to compel the victim to be sold for sex for the first time.
Gagnon suggests that step two often includes an appeal for sympathy from the victim, who will respond to her “lover's” needs if he's succeeded in establishing a relationship. “âI owe five hundred dollars, I'll get my legs broken if it's not repaid,'” says Gagnon, citing a common lie. “This leads to âI need help. I don't know if you can help me, if you love me enough.'”
Step three is commonly referred to as the “honeymoon,” when the victim holds out hope that her nightmare will end but continues to be exploited. Inevitably this leads to step fourâa crisis. The victim is arrested; a social worker calls the victim's family; the victim contracts a serious STD; or she is brutally assaulted by a purchaser of sex acts.
Then comes the fifth and final step. The victim faces a dilemma: Either she must attempt escape and seek help with greater determination (and risk) than she might have demonstrated earlier, or she must resign herself to continued exploitation with no end in sight.
The trafficker's playbook and cultural glamorizing of pimps
Domestic sex traffickers across North America consult playbooks on how to control and manipulate victims. These published manuals are read and reread by aspiring traffickers. Some are even available for purchase on popular websites like
www.amazon.com
.
Below is an excerpt from a 1998 “instructional manual” describing proven tactics employed by traffickers to control their victims. The manual reads like a recipe for exploitation. Even the author of this perverse guidebook speaks of the girls and women as victims and refers to them as pieces of property:
You'll start to dress her, think for her, own her. If you and your victim are sexually active, slow it down. After sex, take her shopping for one item. Hair and/or nails is fine. She'll develop a feeling of accomplishment. The shopping after a month will be replaced with cash. The love making turns into raw sex. She'll start to crave the intimacy and be willing to get back into your good graces. After you have broken her spirit, she has no sense of self value. Now pimp, put a price tag on the item you have manufactured.
In addition to these reprehensible manuals, domestic sex traffickers in North America take full advantage of the glamorized portrayal of pimps in pop culture. Since 1974, the annual Players' Ball in Chicago has brought together self-proclaimed pimps to award the distinction of “Pimp of the Year.” The pimp costume has become a Halloween staple. Canadian high schools have held “Pimp and Ho” parties, where students dress in stereotypical costumes as Kramer famously did in an episode of
Seinfeld.
Television shows are called
Pimp My Ride
and other variations. There is even a Pimp Juice energy drink owned by hip-hop star Nelly, who released a song by the same title. More recently, in May 2010, the rapper Necro released a song called “Human Trafficking King” on his album
Die!
The lyrics are sadistic and cruel. Is it all just harmless fun?
As public awareness of human trafficking grows ever so slowly, so does understanding of the evolving methods used by traffickers who are operating just under the radar. It's unfortunateâbut hardly surprisingâthat these criminal elements are also taking full advantage of developments in technology to improve their efficiency. The criminals are outpacing the law enforcers, who are employing the same technology in their efforts to catch them.
6
THE NEW TECHNOLOGY OF TRAFFICKING
I
n late 2007, among
old sofa beds, unwanted pets, and obsolete computer equipment, a fourteen-year-old girl was advertised for sale on Craigslist, the popular internet bulletin board. Typically the rate was two hundred dollars for thirty minutes or three hundred dollars for a full hour. On slow days, the price would be lowered until a buyer was found. Men travelled across Ontario to motels in the Toronto suburbs of Brampton and Mississauga to hand over their cash and claim their “purchase.”
“You can buy a used lawnmower right beside a fourteen-year-old girl,” says one officer of the Peel Regional Police, Vice Unit, who investigated the situation. His partner adds, “I cannot believe these guys did not know how young she was.”
We'll call the girl Samantha. In October 2007, she was a ward of the Children's Aid Society who suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and had been in and out of group homes for most of her life. One day, Imani Nakpangi approached Samantha while she was out for a walk. He offered her a rideâand an opportunity to escape the group home.
When Samantha stepped into Nakpangi's car, she entered an even darker chapter of her life. Although twice her age, Nakpangi flattered Samantha, made her feel special, and soon persuaded her that he was her boyfriendâher knight in shining armour. He convinced her that if she earned enough money, they would move into a big house together. It would be her first real home.
Over the next two months, Nakpangi transported Samantha to various locations, selling her for sex through Craigslist and earning about sixty-five thousand dollars. His textbook recruiting tactics likely had succeeded beyond his wildest dreamsâSamantha remained convinced that Nakpangi was her lover.
The police might never have found Samantha if not for a phone call from an eighteen-year-old called Eve. Like many sophisticated traffickers, Nakpangi adapted his tactics to suit the vulnerabilities and resilience of each individual victim: violence if necessary, but not necessarily violence. Whereas he manipulated Samantha psychologically, he controlled Eve with physical violence and threats against her family.
Like Samantha, Eve was a young Canadian who'd been exploited since she was a vulnerable teenager. Just fourteen and homeless, Eve had been easy prey for a man who sold her for sex acts and forced her to earn money for him over a year. He then transferred her to Nakpangi, who gave Eve false identification claiming she was twenty years old.
For the next two and a half years, Nakpangi netted an estimated $360,000 by selling Eve for sex acts almost every day, frequently by advertising her on Craigslist. She, too, was often moved to avoid detection and sold out of various hotel/motel rooms in the Greater Toronto Area. Some traffickers follow the “ten-day rule,” moving the victim every ten days or so to prevent her from being identified by police, arousing the suspicions of community members, or developing friendships with people who could render assistance. Although isolated, she is always digitally present on websites like Craigslist, so that men can access her easily and anonymously. It's the perfect system for exploiters: victims are at once hidden and in plain sight.
Whenever Nakpangi suspected Eve was beginning to waver in her obedience to him, his threats were immediate, direct, and credible. “I'll fuck you up, and break your nose,” he'd tell her, and Eve didn't doubt his seriousness. On other occasions, he'd threatened to kidnap Eve's two-year-old brother if she ever “got out of line.” Once when Eve attempted to leave Nakpangi, he caught and severely assaulted her,
demanding she pay him a one-hundred-thousand-dollar “exit fee” to secure her freedom.
In November 2007, a man posing as a client robbed Eve at gunpoint of all the cash she'd earned that night. Such acts of violence are common in the criminal underworld, since robberies of illegal operations are rarely, if ever, reported to the police. When Nakpangi blamed Eve for the robbery and his threats escalated, she finally decided to call the police. She described her situation and revealed that Samantha was being sold in the same motel that day, leading to the eventual rescue of both victims and the pressing of criminal charges against Nakpangi.
The internet: The new recruiting ground for human traffickers
If Facebook were a country, its more than 350 million active users would constitute one of the largest populations in the world, behind only China and India. In Canada in 2010, more than three-quarters of teenagers had social networking profiles. It should come as no surprise, then, that sex traffickers have turned to social networking websites as ideal forums in which to prey on vulnerable youth and recruit them for sexual exploitation across this country, as Sarah found out.
In October 2008, Sarah made up her mind: She would run away from home to be with Tyrel, whom she had “met” online through their respective Facebook pages. Sarah, who was just fourteen, accepted Tyrel's invitation to make the trek from her family home in the interior of British Columbia to Victoria on Vancouver Island.
Whatever twenty-two-year-old Tyrel Henwood might have told Sarah during their online exchanges, he hadn't revealed that he was out on bail after having been charged with robbery and aggravated assault with a weapon. The charges alleged he'd beaten a prostituted woman with a field-hockey stick. Among the conditions of his bail, Henwood was to “keep the peace and be of good behaviour.” Instead, he lured Sarah to Victoria with the goal of forcing her to be sold for sex for his benefit.