I want to thank the standing committee members for the opportunity to speak today about Bill S-224, an act to amend the Criminal Code, trafficking in persons, to remove the unfair burden placed on exploited individuals who must prove there was an element of fear in their abuse to obtain a conviction in court.

My name is Wendy Gee, and I am a mother of a daughter who was sex-trafficked as a teenager here in Ottawa. In my professional life, I'm the executive director of a charitable organization that provides long-term restorative housing and programming for young women who have been sex-trafficked throughout Canada. I also chair the Ottawa Coalition to End Human Trafficking, a steering committee of 40-plus frontline human trafficking organizations in Ottawa and the region.

When young people come to A New Day, they want to move forward and start their recovery. Many have spent months, if not years, living with sexual violence and physical abuse. The result is horrific trauma, PTSD, and addiction challenges. They have missed most of their formative adolescent lives, which should consist of attending school, making friends and learning life skills that prepare them for adulthood. Instead, they're forced into a life of sexual violence, 10 or more dates per day with strangers who have purchased them for their sexual fetishes, and physical violence, beatings and torture if they do not perform and make money for their traffickers.

Amid this deranged lifestyle is a person, a trafficker, who controls every movement of that victim. This victim becomes dependent on their trafficker for everything from tampons and toothpaste to food and clothing. They develop a trauma bond, where the victim now believes that the trafficker is their protector. They may fall in love with them and feel that the trafficker holds their best interests at heart, including keeping them safe.

The victim is indoctrinated to believe in an “us against them” mentality, meaning the trafficker and the victim are together against the rest of the world, which wants to pull them apart. Is this logical reasoning? Of course not, but a trafficker knows his business, which is manipulation and coercion.

A trafficker will use any tactics to keep making money from their victim, even if that means keeping their victim in love with them. You can understand how challenging it is for a victim to come forward and provide a statement to the police. Even though their situation was horrific, the victims still had their basic needs met, and they found it challenging to believe they were being exploited.

My daughter told me that she loved her abuser, that she only did what she did to help him because he had an addiction. She thought she was complicit, and consented. Now she knows this is not true. She still has days when she struggles with what happened, and very rarely will she discuss it. Honestly, I can't blame her.

The young people I work with say the same thing. They want to move on. They don't want to discuss it anymore because it hurts. They feel shame. They feel stupid. And they believe they consented to the situation.

Throughout my tenure as the executive director of A New Day, only two young women came forward and provided a statement to law enforcement about their trafficking situation. It takes incredible strength to do so. They have to relive their sexual abuse, addiction and violence, and the shame of a horrific lifestyle they were forced to endure. They know that if they provide a statement, they will face their abuser in court and all those repressed feelings will overwhelm them. They also know that they will have to explain why they participated in a lifestyle that put them at risk and why they simply didn't leave. Why should a victim have to explain why someone abused them?

The burden of someone's violent, coercive behaviour and control should not be placed on the victim who has suffered. I see first-hand what a trafficker's violent behaviour leaves behind: broken noses and bones that were not medically set back in place, fertility issues because of botched abortions, multiple miscarriages, chronic STIs, not to mention the violence of repeated and daily...let's call them “rapes”, because that's what they are. There are also nightmares, trust issues, low self-esteem and self-worth, depression and anxiety, and self-harm in the form of cutting, where wrists, arms, inner thighs, vaginas and necks have been repeatedly slashed to release the mental pain they're enduring, or they can't do it anymore and they return to the life because they feel that's where they belong—overdosing on drugs, and death.

Eliminating the burden of proving they were fearful while they were exploited tells a victim that we believe them, that what they have endured was not a measure of their worth or value, was not indicative of the type of treatment they deserved and was not the result of poor decision-making, and that their victimization will not be continued by our justice system.

Thank you.

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