Thank you for having me here today.

We know it is imperative to hear directly from survivors and those involved in the commercial sex industry. I want to highlight that hearing from people who are, were or ended up as unwilling bodies in the industry is far more difficult, not because there are fewer of us, but because we are less likely to have freedom to speak out, for reasons ranging from shame to fear to death.

As I am able to share today, I don't want to just tell you my story; I want you to walk through it with me.

I was 20 years old when I first engaged in commercial sex, and I would have been considered a consenting adult, but I did not just appear on this earth at 20, so it's critical to take a moment to understand who that 20-year-old was.

I was a precocious child advocate. At age 11, I started the first Oakville chapter of what was then a small organization called Free the Children, later to be known as the WE Charity. I was considered bright, gifted and full of potential.

Then, at 13, I was sexually assaulted, which continued for the next five years. My life went from collecting signatures for a petition destined for the federal government to ambivalence and drug use. Despite that shift, my grades never slipped and I remained engaged in other after-school activities. I buried my trauma and, even once a police investigation was sparked, the detective on the case referred to me as “put together” and “the strong one who held the others up”.

The first time I used my body to make money, it was a desperate attempt to regain ownership of my sexuality. I vehemently pushed back when anyone questioned my choices. “My body, my choice” is what I told them. I maintained my managerial job throughout the day, smiling at customers and running two locations of a business. At night I partied, occasionally engaging in commercial sex for fun and extra cash for my boyfriend and me.

I believed my boyfriend and me to be partners, but this illusion was shattered the first time I refused to perform a particular act—or attempted to refuse. In the blink of an eye, I went from being an empowered woman to a victim. With that shift, you might think that I was immediately resistant to the work or even reached out for help. I didn't. My boyfriend was violent, and my fear of him stole my voice.

Due to my inability to exit the world in which I existed, I suffered from cognitive dissonance. To relieve this discomfort, I doubled down on proclaiming loudly how much I enjoyed my lifestyle. This time, however, I was not only convincing others; I was also convincing myself. It wasn't until I nearly lost my life at the hands of my boyfriend that I fled.

Over the next 10 years, I earned several degrees in the helping and criminal justice field. I worked in shelters with males in conflict with the law and with the victim witness assistance program. Regardless of this gained knowledge and experience, I never believed my experience to be anything other than domestic violence and poor choices on my part.

It wasn't until a new friend, hearing my story for the first time, suggested to me that I was exploited that I looked at my involvement in a new light. I may have walked into the commercial sex industry as a consenting adult, but by the time I ran out it was as a victim of trafficking, condemned to a lifetime of complex post-traumatic stress. I am begging you to please end the narrative that these two are not connected.

It is impossible to ascertain that only willing bodies are working in the commercial sex industry. Some people are unable to identify their experience as exploitation. Some people are terrified of being deported or of repercussions from their boyfriends, bosses or pimps. Some workers may have chosen their work, but they chose it because they were desperate or in survival mode, and a choice made in desperation is no choice at all.

As ideological as it might be to draw a line around consensual sex workers and suggest that PCEPA must be repealed to keep them safe, it is unrealistic. The decriminalization of sex work will result in collateral damage that looks like an entire population for whom a lifetime of complex trauma will be the cost of living in Canada. I must ask who it is that you deem worthy to fulfill this population, because let me remind you: It can be anyone.

If folks truly want safety, harm reduction and the prevention of the exploitation of unwilling bodies, then the next step is not decriminalization. It is working together to pour resources into mental health issues, trauma prevention education, financial disparities, the severely inflated cost of post-secondary education, reconciliation and healing with indigenous communities and, of course, gender equality.

Until these foundational chasms are considered repaired, we simply cannot open the doors to an industry that preys on and exploits these and other vulnerabilities. If a world exists in which the sex industry can prevail without extreme levels of inequality, exploitation and predation, we must first work together to create it.

Thank you.

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