The Ottawa Police Human Trafficking Unit contacted 11 sex trade workers and charged two 21-year-old males in connection with the human trafficking of a 17-year-old girl.
The arrests were made as part of Operation Northern Spotlight, a national initiative to combat commercial sexual exploitation that took place from Oct. 5-8, and involved more than 40 police services across Canada, according to an Ottawa Police news release issued on Oct. 22.
Police forces across Canada charged 47 people as a result from the program, and found that most victims were under the age of 19 and some were as young as 14.
“Human trafficking investigations are complex and labour-intensive, and we must continue to fight for the rights of those victims who are often from vulnerable sectors of our population in Ontario,” OPP deputy commissioner Scott Todd said in a statement.
The program has received criticism in the past from a collective of sex trade workers who say police used heavy-handed tactics, such as falsely posing as clients and aggressively questioning them, the Toronto Star reported earlier this year.
Sgt. Jeff Leblanc of the Ottawa Police Human Trafficking Unit says while he can’t speak to the investigative techniques used, it is not their mandate to intimidate anyone they hope to interview.
“The point of doing these operations is to have a face-to-face conversation with people that may be involved in the sex trade against their will, so the police will use the techniques necessary to kind of facilitate that,” he says.
Pauline Gagne, a spokesperson for Centretown-based anti-trafficking group PACT, says she is happy to see this initiative taking place and that she has heard no such complaints about the police in the national capital.
“They’re going in saying, ‘here is some contact information that can help you if ever you need help,’” she says. “They are bringing information to the people who are in the sex industry and saying if ever you need this the contact information is there, and there are people who can help if you want to get out.”
PACT-Ottawa estimated 140 women were being forced into prostitution in Ottawa at the time of a study conducted last year, with around half being minors.
Leblanc says there is an increasing downward spiral in the age of the traffickers and victims, and the two Ottawa men charged with exploiting the 17-year-old girl fall in the average age group for people in their position these days.
Gagne says the young age of these exploiters is often due to the fact that vulnerable girls mistake them for a prospective boyfriend.
“Because of all the grooming process that goes on, it takes at least three years before the girls realize that the trafficker or recruiter is not really their boyfriend and these men have a bunch of other people they’re saying the same thing to,” she says.
Leblanc says there are indicators to determine whether women are really being forced into prostitution, and that his unit strives to make that distinction clear.
“Sometimes there are indicators that they are participating against their will, and sometimes there are indicators that show the opposite,” he says. “They’ve been doing it for a while, it’s run as a safe operation, and there’s no reason for us to follow up. In those instances where we feel we’re not getting the full story, in the few minutes we have we know we might not get the full story and we always give the option of contacting us in the future.”