Special report: the local demand that drives human trafficking

When the movie The Sound of Freedom came out earlier this year, many people were shocked to learn that child trafficking is so rampant globally. As Vancouver’s Sister Nancy Brown wrote, “they wonder why human trafficking continues to increase in our modern society today.” 

One of the reasons human trafficking flourishes is because of an enduring myth, writes Peter Stockland, publisher of The Catholic Register, which produced the following stories about human trafficking. That enduring myth, he says, is “the belief that human trafficking is an evil predation crossing our borders from outside that involves kidnap plots and forcible confinement.”

In Canada, the most common form of human trafficking isn’t kidnapped children, but sexual exploitation. As the Vancouver stories reveal, the vast majority of sex-trafficked women and children in this country are Canadian-born teenage girls as young as 13. They are recruited in various ways, but primarily through social media, and most are victimized by people they know.

As Sister Brown says, it’s a local scourge that’s made possible because demand by predators is the driving force behind trafficking. 

As a member of the Archdiocese of Vancouver’s Anti Human Trafficking Committee, Sister Brown says the trafficking issue won’t be solved until those who buy and destroy lives are held accountable and punished for their actions. Reducing trafficking means doing more to bring predators to justice and saying no to the sale of bodies.

Unfortunately, she says, there is little discussion globally about ending that demand.

The Vancouver Anti Human Trafficking Committee wants to stir readers to action by drawing attention to the Canadian bishops’ For Freedom Christ Has Set Us Free, a 2021 pastoral letter on human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Canada. Drafted by the Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace, it shows how trafficking violates the social teachings of the Catholic Church, warns about the follies of decriminalizing or legalizing prostitution and sex work, and encourages Canadians to open their eyes to the plights of the trafficked. 

“It really is foundational and contains the basics that every Christian Catholic should be aware of,” says Sister Brown.

The Vancouver committee hopes Canadian Catholics will become more aware of the document, which is why it teamed up with the Dioceses of Victoria and Saskatoon to produce Working Towards Freedom, a four-section study guide based on the information and principles For Freedom Christ Has Set Us Free. The resource is designed for clergy, parish groups, and individuals who want to learn more about human trafficking.

Pope Francis has made the issue of human trafficking a priority of his papacy, and it’s been revealed he prayed for the success of The Sound of Freedom when it was just in concept stage. The following stories and pastoral resources offer a way for readers to unite their efforts to this pastoral priority.

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The hidden pandemic

Human trafficking is an unchecked evil lurking in the darkness all around us

BY QUINTON AMUNDSON 

The fastest-growing criminal enterprise in the world.

The second largest form of organized crime on Earth, behind the drug trade.

Forty to 50 million people around the planet are currently entrapped in human trafficking, or modern slavery.

According to the International Labour Organization, this “open wound on the body of contemporary society, a scourge upon the body of Christ” in Pope Francis’ words, generates $150 billion in profits every year.

Unambiguously, these facts and figures affirm this societal evil devastatingly pervades the world like a global pandemic.

Human trafficking operates largely unchecked in the darkness in part due to the many fallacies stubbornly embedded in the public psyche.

One such misconception is how it is often conflated with human kidnapping.

Before this year’s smash hit movie Sound of Freedom, the last anti-trafficking feature that hit the cultural zeitgeist was the original Taken movie, starring Liam Neeson, in 2008. This picture fed the false myth that victims get abducted into servitude and are always transported to another country where they experience their psychological and physical bondage.

Such misleading yet influential mass media thinking plants a common assumption that trafficking is an elsewhere concern, not a severe local issue.

“The way that it is depicted in these films can do more harm than good in the Canadian context,” said Julia Drydyk, the executive director for The Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking. “It is really framed as an issue of underground kidnapping, abducting people off the street and having outsiders come in and save victims. In Canada, the reality is very different. It looks far more like intimate partner violence. Most victims knew their trafficker before they were exploited.”

Statistics Canada’s Trafficking in Persons 2021 report, released in December 2022, backs Drydyk up. The report documents that 91 per cent of victims of police-reported human trafficking from 2011 to 2021 knew their accused trafficker, while the remaining nine per cent were abused by a stranger. A third stated they were oppressed by an intimate partner.

The popular kidnapped-across-the-border falsehood does not hold up against another statistic: 93 per cent of sex trafficking victims identified in Canada are citizens of this land.

Historically, sexual trafficking is the most prevalent form of modern-day slavery in Canada. A Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking 2019-2022 infographic indicates that 1,029 of the 1,500 incidences (68.6 per cent) of trafficking identified through its national Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline were sexual exploitation cases. Twenty-two per cent were unspecified (334) and six per cent were forced labour situations (88).

In truth, perpetrators of both sexual exploitation and labour trafficking are adept at playing the long game to lure or recruit their target. They can often masquerade as a potential romantic partner or a promising employer offering a dream job and life. In the case of the former, the predator can hide their true nature for months so they can manipulate their victim into believing they are in a trusting relationship.

“So often it does start with the boyfriend effect,” said Joy Smith, the former Conservative MP whose work in Parliament led to stronger laws against trafficking. She established the Winnipeg-based Joy Smith Foundation in 2011 to combat trafficking through education.

“They target somebody either online, at a mall or a sporting event,” said Smith. “They’ll get talking with a young person and tell them how beautiful they are. They will get interested in the child’s interests. They seem to be very friendly.

“Over time, the (eventual victim) becomes very attracted to this person,” said Smith. “When they become involved romantically, the trafficker does things to them that they haven’t had done to them before, they give them gifts they cannot afford and take them to places they haven’t been to before. Gradually, the victims get separated from their support systems such as their family, friends, school, and sports teams. This gives the trafficker the power and control. Once they have their (victim) to themselves, then they force them to service men (or women) with sex and receive money from that.”

It’s a lucrative business. Controlling and ultimately enslaving one person can fetch an offender an average bounty of $280,000, claims the Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada.

Traffickers prey on individuals from vulnerable population groups. Youth on welfare, people suffering from mental health or substance abuse disorders, the socially and economically disadvantaged, migrants and seasonal workers, members of the LGBT community, and Indigenous women and children, particularly in Canada, are some of the commonly subjugated individuals.

Drydyk said Canadians are “being trafficked in every large, medium and small community across the country.” However, her organization has found some key trends in recent years.

“Research that (The Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking) published in 2020 showed the existence and impact of human trafficking corridors in Canada,” said Drydyk. 

“These are the transportation routes that traffickers are using to connect their victims to various commercial sex markets, while also keeping them isolated from friends and family and any type of community support services. This reinforces their dependency on their trafficker. But these corridors connect to all major transportation routes across Canada.”

Canada’s busiest highway, the 401, which stretches across heavily populated southern Ontario, is a prime example.

“We know that the 401 in Ontario is used systematically because there are so many cities off the 401,” said Drydyk.

Another phenomenon the centre uncovered is young women from Quebec who solely speak French being recruited and then flown to Alberta to be sold into the sex industry. Drydyk said the trafficker makes more money by inserting “an exotic French woman into the commercial sex industry.”

Nova Scotia perpetually ranks as the Canadian province with the highest per capita rate of police-reported trafficking occurrences (5.3 incidents per 100,000 people in 2021). The coastal location makes it prime terrain to recruit people to be trafficked to the various metropolitan commercial sex industry markets in Toronto, Montreal, and Moncton.

Statistics Canada indicates that 42 per cent of trafficking incidents in the Atlantic province are Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) offences. IRPA violations in Nova Scotia often take the form of immigrants being coerced into being trafficked interprovincially through fraud, threats, or outright coercion.

Smith, when asked to discuss the trafficking hotspots, simply responded, “my friend, all of Canada is a hot spot.”

There is a line on The Joy Smith Foundation website that reads, “less than a kilometre from where you live today, someone is being trafficked.”

“We have pulled kids out of rural areas where you’d think there would be no trafficking,” said Smith. “Traffickers use the small hotels that are off the grid. Wherever there is a highway or an airport, the metropolitan cities across the country. You name it. Western Canada, Eastern Canada, Central Canada is just a hot spot of human trafficking. It is the second most lucrative crime.”

Official numbers won’t tell the whole story. Indeed, Statistics Canada data shows there were 552 instances of human trafficking reported to law enforcement in 2021, a decline of one from the 553 tabulated in 2020. If a person views these figures but chooses not to read the whole report, they could easily arrive at the assumption that trafficking is not a Canadian problem. Fewer than 600 cases in a country with 40 million people? A total of 3,578 incidents since 2011? Those figures do not seem so bad.

Statistics Canada always includes a disclaimer in its annual reports that there are severe challenges in measuring human trafficking. The 2020 report, coauthored by Shana Conroy and Danielle Sutton of the Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics, features an entire subsection detailing the limitations and roadblocks inherent in this work.

“Human trafficking victims are often isolated and hidden from the public,” wrote Conroy and Sutton. “Some healthcare workers report a lack of training in identifying and assisting individuals in potential trafficking situations and victims may be unwilling or unable to report for various reasons. They may, for example, have a general distrust of authorities, be fearful or ashamed, lack knowledge of their rights in Canada, experience language barriers or have a desire to protect their trafficker.”

Drydyk corroborates that organizations desiring to help survivors must be armed with more resources and training to undo the damage of traffickers so these women or men can experience new, fulfilling chapters of life.

“There is a lot of training support and capacity building that needs to be done to give these organizations the tools to effectively serve victims of human trafficking,” said Drydyk. “Folks who have experienced trafficking often have very complex needs. They often present very high levels of trauma and require many kinds of programs and services.”

A rehabilitated, deprogrammed mental outlook can provide the survivor with the courage needed to step forward to chronicle their story

Skepticism toward receiving justice from authorities is another reason for underreporting requiring the most nuanced explanation, considering “less than 10 per cent of people who call the national hotline feel comfortable approaching the police,” said Drydyk.

Sofia Friesen, the Canadian programs manager for the Ally Global Foundation anti-trafficking charity based in Vancouver, said one of the substantial reasons why trafficking victims do not share their stories with law enforcement is they sometimes have been forced into committing crimes.

“They have potentially engaged in illegal activity under the control and manipulation of their trafficker,” said Friesen. “There is a fear that charges will be pressed against them as well, whether that is related to the distribution of drugs or actually recruiting others into trafficking.”

Friesen added that while “there are some amazing people working in this space on the law enforcement side,” she thinks “overall there has not been enough done to educate all law enforcement officers across Canada.” It is little known, in her estimation, just how “harmful a process it can be to disclose a story like that and to not have it received in the most trauma-informed way.”

Potential retaliation from a trafficker upon his or her release from imprisonment is another fear that holds a survivor back from seeking justice.

Unfortunately, even the prospect of securing a jail sentence against a human trafficker in the first place is very difficult based on precedent since 2011. Trafficking in Persons, 2021 states, “one in eight completed human trafficking cases result(ed) in a guilty decision for a human trafficking charge” in an adult criminal court from 201011 to 202021. In 81 per cent of completed proceedings, “the most serious decision rendered for a human trafficking charge was a stay, a withdrawal, a dismissal or a discharge.”

Conversely, a guilty verdict was attained 31 per cent and 47 per cent of the time for sex trade and violent offence charges, respectively.

Completing a human trafficking court case is also a longer slog, taking about 382 days, while sex trade and violent offence cases each take between 150 to 180 days. The reason is that criminal court cases with a human trafficking charge had an average of 17 charges included in the indictment. Comparably, sex trade cases averaged five charges and violent offences, four.

Smith considers education as “one of the best weapons” to disrupt trafficking.

“Communities, churches, schools all must work together to learn about trafficking and give the education to the young people in front of them, so they won’t be trafficked by anybody.” It is out there, but your average Canadian just does not know it.

“It is so prevalent,” said Smith. “But the fact of the matter is people do not believe it happens in their own district. They do not realize how easy it is for a child to be exploited over the Internet.”

American entrepreneur and speaker Jim Rohn said once upon a time that “ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is poverty. Ignorance is devastation. Ignorance is tragedy. Ignorance is illness. It all stems from ignorance.”

Perhaps “knowledge is power” is the better proverb to adopt.

Canadian Catholic News 

 

Trafficking’s forgotten victims

Children top of mind, but adults are also trapped in exploitation

BY QUINTON AMUNDSON

“God’s children are not for sale.”

This emotionally potent declaration has emerged as the viral and arguably most transcendent moment of the surprise summer blockbuster sensation Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel, which chronicles the fight against human trafficking.

The line is gracing merchandise, headlining think pieces about combatting human trafficking and is even bursting through algorithms to become a worldwide trending hashtag on ‘X,’ formerly known as Twitter.

It’s obvious why the piece of dialogue is emerging as a formidable anti-trafficking war cry. Despite the perplexing, polarized state of our world, ending the victimization of young boys and girls is one of the rare issues where near-universal consensus can be formed.

But what about the adult victims?

Trisha Baptie, the executive director and community engagement coordinator of Exploited Voices now Educating (EVE), is among the chorus of voices who would like child victimization to end, but also would like to see greater public empathy for adults entrapped in exploitation.

Baptie, a 50-year-old based in Vancouver, knows of what she speaks. She was forced into prostitution at age 13 and worked in the sex industry, both indoor and outdoor, for over 15 years in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, known for its high level of drug abuse, homelessness, crime, mental illness, and sexual exploitation.

During an interview with The Catholic Register, it was apparent Baptie is perceptive as to how much easier it is to rally compassion for trafficked children than adults.

“It’s very easy to say that human trafficking on children is wrong,” she said. “It’s horrific. No child should go through that. It happened to me, and I can tell you that it really sucks.

“What we are not talking about is adults, because people are scared to talk about adults. They don’t want to offend people. Maybe she does choose (sex work). My answer to that is that I got involved when I was 13. I didn’t choose it suddenly on my 18th birthday. We need to look at a woman’s history, the totality of her life and how she got there.”

Before her coerced recruitment into sex trafficking, Baptie’s family broke down, and she ended up in government care. She decided the living situation she was placed in would not be good for her and chose to take her chances living on the street. To her, “it seemed safer than staying inside that house” because one boy in her coed group home was inappropriately touching her.

“I told my social worker,” said Baptie. “She laughed and said, ‘boys will be boys — just stay out of his way.’ I learned really early on that my body did not have anything to do with me. It wasn’t mine. It was something for men.”

Living on the streets led Baptie to experience the fate of many marginalized girls: being ensnared by a predatory man. This stranger offered Baptie basic shelter and food. The minor was expected to reimburse these “kindnesses” by offering sex to him and his friends.

“It is not like you consciously make this decision,” said Baptie. “I didn’t even call it prostitution until I was in my 20s. I didn’t even realize that was what I was doing. And so, in the ‘90s I found myself on the Downtown Eastside. When I was down there, crack hadn’t hit, meth hadn’t hit, and a lot of the gangs hadn’t hit. It was very different than it is today. There was still a lot of money down there.”

Emotion fills Baptie’s voice as she recalls her devastation over the disappearance of her friend, Brenda Wolfe.

“We would go to police, and we would say, ‘you’ve got to go find Brenda – Brenda’s missing. She’s not around. She’s not calling her kids,’” said Baptie. “And the police would say to us, ‘She’s a hooker. We’re not putting time and resources into it. She doesn’t want to be found. She’s fine.’ But it kept happening.”

In February 2002, Baptie saw the headlines that Robert Pickton had been charged with 26 murders in connection with women who disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The serial killer, now 73, is serving a life sentence. During his incarceration, he has confessed to 49 killings.

“As soon as I saw Robert Pickton’s pig farm, I knew that is where my friends were.”

One of the defining and empowering experiences of Baptie’s life was covering Pickton’s trial as a citizen journalist for Orato, an online publication that showcases first-person accounts of events.

Baptie, who is a lapsed Catholic but a practising Christian, said, “if it wasn’t for Jesus, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.” She believes God allowed her to encounter people who helped change her life’s direction. The first was a young outreach worker who was also a student at Trinity Western University.

Baptie admitted that she actively avoided social workers because she had children from different men whom she had placed in secreted locations outside of Vancouver to keep them safe from apprehension. But a trusting friendship was eventually formed with this young worker. A U.S. citizen, she headed home to California over the summer. She made a proposition to Baptie before she went home,

“She asked me, ‘If I paid your bills, would you leave prostitution?’” recalled Baptie. “I actually told her to eff off and hung up the phone. What I heard was, ‘What you are doing is not right,’ but what she was saying was, ‘I love you too much to leave you there.’

“I looked at all my kids. I know that we live in the ‘hood. I know that we are poor. I know they all have different dads. I know they are all different ethnicities. Maybe this is not about me. Maybe this is my chance to make their lives different.”

Baptie also had her resolve to leave sex work strengthened through a nondenominational prayer group that held its meetings at her house. What were originally intended as Bible study sessions quickly turned into a Trisha Baptie intervention and support team each Tuesday night.

“I had no idea how to live, right? I think people believe you just give up prostitution and you get on with life. That is not how it works. I had no skills on how to deal with real life. When prostitution is your life, and selling your body is how you interact with people, that really stunts your interaction with society. I had to learn how to live all over again. This group of women were amazingly selfless.”

She said God also put people in her life following the Pickton trial who wanted her to speak before government committees, and to work with her in combatting trafficking. She helped found EVE in 2008.

This organization comprises former sex workers who are determined to end the demand for paid sexual access to women's and girls’ bodies.

A major critique Baptie levels against films like Sound of Freedom, or the Taken franchise starring Liam Neeson, is that neither addresses a true solution to reducing trafficking, which is “challenging the idea of men (or women) being able to purchase sex.”

Baptie said, “These movies are sensationalized” and depict a type of trafficking that plays into the common stereotype that human trafficking is a victim being abducted by a stranger and taken to a different country when the reality is that most victims know their trafficker very well. They don’t need to be kidnapped. The victim is coerced psychologically and physically to normalize their abusive circumstances.

“It is not an ‘over there’ issue, it is an in-your-neighbourhood issue,” said Baptie. “The conversation about trafficking because of the movie is good, but it creates situations where I must now spend half-an hour countering everything they saw in the movie with the reality of the situation. It just makes more work.”

Jessa Dellow Crisp, 35, is a Canadian-born human trafficking survivor who saw Sound of Freedom. The PhD student and mental health professional now residing in Colorado recognizes that “on one hand, it is sensationalized,” but on the other, “its depiction is quite accurate with overseas and international trafficking.”

Crisp would like to see moviegoers try to learn about such criminal enterprise as it exists closer to home.

“There has been a huge value in people learning about trafficking for the first time,” she said. “My question is what is going to be that next step? People are recognizing that this is not just happening in Colombia or Honduras, but also Canada and the United States. How are we going to train, educate and empower people who are now interested to learn more?”

One solution, she said, is listening to the stories of survivors, though Crisp said she is in a stage of her life where she no longer wishes to retell her story. It is chronicled, however, in the video I Survived Being Sold Into Child Porn & Sex Slavery: Jessa’s Story on YouTube. Here, Crisp talks about being molested by family members and being sold into child pornography and then sexual servitude at studios, motels, and brothels near Toronto.

Like Baptie, an encounter with people of faith proved to be a pivotal, uplifting part of Crisp’s healing journey. She said her time at the Covenant House Vancouver Catholic safe house “changed my life.”

“They saw me as a person,” said Crisp. “They saw my hurt and pain, but also the beauty of my survival and the beauty of me sitting there. They did not see me as a street child with no home, but someone with value.”

During Crisp’s stay at Covenant House, she spent time with an elderly Catholic couple who showed her the type of pure love never offered by her family.

“Giving true love, the love of Jesus, is one of the best things you can do to help (a trafficking survivor). I have experienced that. I would go to the senior’s centre with the elderly couple and have pudding and Jell-O. It wasn’t needing to go off and do big things. It wasn’t needing to give me money. It was about needing to give me that love.”

Following on the example of that one couple, Crisp said, “it would be very powerful if churches can offer safe, nonjudgmental spaces for healing, love, rest and belonging. That can truly transform a person’s life.”

Baptie concurred it would be powerful if people could learn to “look past the window dressing” and attempt to model “Jesus’ selfless love.”

“I am rough around the edges,” said Baptie. “People look at all my tattoos, my piercings. I still drop the f-bomb every once in a while. You can choose to look at my outside or talk to me for five minutes and realize I don’t do a lot without praying about it and without consulting wisdom from other people.”

Even though the opportunities Baptie and Crisp have had to dialogue with governmental groups about trafficking are viewed by both as valuable, they both get especially emotional when talking about the fellow survivors they have accompanied.

“Just yesterday I got a message from a survivor that I helped,” said Crisp. “She told me, ‘Jess, I have just graduated from my program, and I just wanted to tell you I am doing very well. I just wanted to say thank you for being present and for walking with me through my journey.’ To me, that was so powerful.”

For Baptie, “when I receive a call at 4 a.m. with a hysterical woman at the other end of the line, and I know exactly what to do for her — that is where I thrive. It is always living in the reminder of why I am doing what I am doing. I think it could be easy to get lost in all the work I do in Parliament and with MPs. The grounding work of loving and knowing the woman is what I like the most.”

 Canadian Catholic News

  

Bishops’ trafficking pastoral letter gets action

‘It really is foundational and contains the basics every Christian Catholic should be aware of’ human trafficking 

BY QUINTON AMUNDSON

Nearly every time the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) weighs in about current societal issues via a pastoral letter, it is an admitted struggle to inspire lay churchgoers to even peruse the publication.

The next step is even more daunting: stirring readers into taking meaningful action. “For Freedom Christ Has Set Us Free,” released in November 2021, has apparently hit both seemingly tricky targets.

This pastoral letter about human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Canada was drafted by the Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace. Some of its intents include enlightening readers about how trafficking violates the social teachings of the Catholic Church, warning about the follies of decriminalizing or legalizing prostitution and sex work and harkening Canadians to open their eyes to the plights of the trafficked.

 Sister Nancy Brown, a longtime anti-trafficking advocate based in Vancouver, was enthused by the content of this document and quickly resolved to help it achieve consciousness among Canadian Catholics.

“When that bishop’s statement came out we were very excited and very happy,” said Sister Brown, a member of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. “But then we said, ‘you know what, it’s probably just going to sit on the website. What can we do to get the Catholic community even aware of the letter?’ It really is foundational and contains the basics that every Christian Catholic should be aware of.”

Sister Brown joined forces with Evelyn Vollett and Barbra Renaud of the Vancouver archdiocese, Annette Turgeon of Victoria, and Myron Rogal of Saskatoon to produce Working Towards Freedom, a four-section study guide based on the information and principles presented in “For Freedom Christ Has Set Us Free.”

Working Towards Freedom was conceptualized foremost for parish or other community groups, although these modules can also be tackled individually. The guide aspires to help participants become more aware of the atrocities that could be happening in their vicinity and how Catholics are called to fight for the dignity of each child of God.

Each segment was formulated with a learning model of See, Learn, Pray, Act.

In the section, “What is Human Trafficking and the Social Teachings of The Catholic Church,” the “see (read)” assigns participants to review a file called Pastoral Orientations on Human Trafficking. The “learn” component asks Catholics to watch videos about Catholic social teaching from Fr. Fred Kramer, SJ, and American Bishop Robert Barron, and then ponder how these precepts are inherent within The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA). The “pray” is Bible passages chronicling Jesus Christ teaching the beatitudes to His disciples. The “act” is a call to share the teachings of this unit with family and friends and inform children about the dangers of online trafficking and pornography.

Rogal, the coordinator of the Diocese of Saskatoon’s Office of Justice and Peace, said the Catholic social teaching dimension of the guide stands out as his favourite.

“It is such a great springboard for the many in our Church who have not heard of or have limited knowledge about Catholic social teaching,” said Rogal. “It is so important because it gives us that lens to see, specifically here, the challenges of human trafficking and sex trafficking. But it also hopefully enables people to start looking at the other contemporary social challenges in their families or communities and contemplate how Catholic social teaching can be an instrument to face many of those modern challenges.”

Each part appeals to different readers, said Rogal. Section 2 – “Who are buyers? Who are the prostituted persons?” – has garnered positive feedback because of an exercise that asks partakers to list the power imbalances between the buyers of sexual services and the individuals who are purchased. Age, level of education, economic stability, gender, and educational opportunities are some of the demarcation lines between buyer and prostituted person that are scrutinized. Meanwhile, those with legal knowledge will likely gravitate to section four of the guide, called “The Equality Law,” which highlights written and multimedia resources conveying why decriminalization and legalization of sex work must be opposed.

The life story of St. Josephine Bakhita, who endured trafficking for 12 years, preambles the four sections and an illustration of her graces the cover of Working Towards Freedom. A prayer of intercession to Bakhita, the patron saint of trafficking survivors, is included on this page on behalf of all who are trapped in trafficking and slavery.

“ We have heard that people really want to connect with St. Bakhita’s story and want to recognize her on her feast day (of Feb. 8),” said Rogal. “Without St. Josephine Bakhita and her intercession – she has helped us out a lot along the way and has been an inspiration for this work as much as the bishop’s letter – I don’t think this project would have happened.”

Each bishopric that authored the guide has largely employed distinct, localized approaches in getting the resource noticed. However, a couple of crossover initiatives occurred in autumn 2022. Sister Brown travelled to Saskatoon to be the keynote speaker at Saskatoon’s diocesan fall congress last October. She introduced the guide at the summit, which was dubbed “a day of prayer, dialogue, study and action to end human trafficking.”

Just over a month later, on Nov. 26, Vancouver, Victoria, and Saskatoon joined forces for an online launch of Working Towards Freedom.

Canadian Catholic News

Building trust helps victims regain their humanity

BY QUINTON AMUNDSON

“Listening, listening, listening. Listening until it hurts — and then you even listen more.”

Sister Nancy Brown, a member of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, heard Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny utter this quote in a speech a few months ago about how to create a synodal Church. 

Reflecting upon these words, the 2012 Order of British Columbia recipient thought this nugget of wisdom captured the approach she took at Covenant House Vancouver to accompany young human trafficking survivors in their journey of healing for over 14 years, from 1998 to 2012. The former pastoral counsellor and ombudsperson at the haven for vulnerable youth and young adults observed that compassionately and patiently allowing a victim of trafficking or prostitution to share their stories in their own time and manner is a step to help them reclaim some lost personal agency.

“The trick of working with trafficked young girls is to give back to them their sense of self and power to choose,” said Sister Brown. “It is not going to be good for any of us to tell them what to do because the trafficker has been telling them what to do and taking power away from them. We want to empower them and support them. I don’t mean just let them do anything. You dialogue with them. You listen to them. You offer suggestions, but you don’t judge.”

Adopting this approach, which anti-trafficking experts almost universally affirm offers the best prognosis in helping a survivor attain hope and restoration, requires counsellors to resist any impulse to lecture or moralize.

While Christians are indeed called to evangelize the lifesaving Gospel of Jesus Christ, Sister Brown said that asking trafficking survivors to discover or deepen their faith in God “is not my starting point,” and she is aware “some may feel scandalized perhaps” by this admission. Step one is developing a trusting relationship.

Preaching the doctrine of being born again through a relationship with Jesus may seem to an outside observer like a beautiful, innocent message for a woman or man seeking to rebuild his or her life after enduring unimaginable evil. However, many trafficking victims have been subject to cunning psychological manipulation tactics for years. Traffickers know how to weaponize love, affection, and positive encouragement to get victims to dehumanize and debase themselves. Efforts to convince a survivor to embrace a viewpoint can trigger painful memories of the treatment they experienced at the hands of their trafficker. Eventually, in some cases, Sister Brown has been given the gift of sharing her faith with some of the young people she supported.

“I had one youth that would come in and preach to me Scripture passages. One day she came in and quoted the Beatitudes. She told me, ‘I’m going to have a higher place in heaven than you are because it says blessed are the poor for they shall get their inheritance.’ So yes, there were times when I could talk faith and Christianity with young people, but I would not bring that up until there was that strong, trusting relationship. Otherwise, I would have lost them,” she said. For Sister Brown, it all comes back to the mission “to love and not to judge.”

“It is about solidarity. I hope that when I left Covenant House, all the youth there knew that I loved them. Isn’t that what Jesus did? He went to the poorest of the poor and simply loved them. He didn’t try to fix, although He did heal. But He wasn’t about fixing. I think a lot of our Christian people want to fix. They want to walk the streets of the downtown and try to save our young people. I never had that attitude. I wanted to care for them and journey with them. I wanted them to be comfortable with me so that they can share their life.”

Sister Brown remains a steadfast advocate against exploitation 11 years since her departure from Covenant House Vancouver. She works with fellow activists on various anti-trafficking committees, including the Vancouver Collective Against Sexual Exploitation, the Canadian Council of Churches Sexual Exploitation in Canada Working Group and a new ally committee for Canadians concerned about the future of the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act.

In a 2018 guest column for The B.C. Catholic, Sister Brown endorsed the Exploited Persons Act as it stands because it has enabled Canada to take “a very positive, progressive step forward for demand reduction, gender equality and the elimination of violence against women.” 

It was – and is – dismaying for her to see proposals made at Liberal Party conventions for the decriminalization of consensual sex work and the purchase of sex workers over the age of majority. 

On behalf of her committees, Sister Brown attempts to work with governments at different levels. “It is not easy work,” she said with a chuckle. “It is hard because you feel like governments and corporations are a big block out there, and it is hard to make any inroads.” Despite the adversities and frustration, Sister Brown remains resolute because she is energized to serve with collaborators eager to combat this societal scourge.

A driving force for Sister Brown to this day is the powerful memories of the young people she and her fellow workers at Covenant House helped. She fondly recalls two young girls who were trafficked to work at a mall in Vancouver. Her organization managed to reunite them with their family in Mexico.

There was another young woman who was pimped and trafficked for a year and a half before she came to Covenant House in a very confused and used state. She experienced horrors like a pimp throwing her friend down the stairs and her dog being held in brutal captivity. During her fifth visit to Covenant House, she resolved to leave this lifestyle.

“She stayed a good year with us, and we managed to get her into housing and back to school,” said Sister Brown. “I did hear from her after that, and she was doing very well. She said Covenant House was her escape ticket. She said there were staff members who told her that she was worth more than that. 

“That is what we did, and they continue to do, at Covenant House.

We try to give people their sense of self back.”

Canadian Catholic News

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