GOOD LAW CAN SAVE THE LIVES OF YOUNGSTERS
Earlier bill rescued children in prostitution; new task force tackles human trafficking
“She’s just 13. A child. A prostitute. And, at first, anyway, it appears as though she is going to disappear into the proverbial crack of bureaucratic bungling. We’ll call her Karen.”
That’s how I started a column that ran June 21, 2006.
Her mom, whom I called Yvonne, and who phoned me in a panic two days before that article appeared, thought I could help.
Fortunately, I could. I had written about a law dreamed up by Heather Forsyth, Alberta’s then Children’s Services minister. It was called P-CHIP — Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution act.
The law — which is still in force in Alberta — allows authorities to take a child who is working as a prostitute or involved with street drugs and hold them for two 21-day periods with only a court order.
Several years after I wrote that column, I learned that Forsyth’s law drastically changed that girl’s life for the better.
On Tuesday, the Alberta government announced the creation of the Human Trafficking Task Force chaired by country music star and humanitarian Paul Brandt, who has worked to combat human trafficking through an organization he created, called Not In My City.
Not only will this task force — which is made up of six other experts in this field, including Forsyth — tackle sexual slavery, but labour trafficking, and organ and tissue trafficking as well.
Reached Wednesday during a break from the task force’s first meeting, Forsyth was excited.
“I can see now why Paul Brandt is an internationally successful singer and songwriter,” said Forsyth. “He is so passionate and brings an incredible amount of knowledge and understanding about the complexities surrounding human trafficking,” she added. “He’s so intent and focused on getting this fixed, I just know this will make a difference.”
During Tuesday’s news conference, Brandt — wearing his signature black cowboy hat — said the launch of the task force “acknowledges and elevates the true value of the life of every human trafficking victim.”
Then he told an anecdote that is truly sickening. Through #Notinmycity, and his international travel with many different aid organizations, Brandt said, “I’ve learned their names and listened to their stories.
“The youngest victim I met here in Alberta was seven years old when first trafficked. She is Canadian, as are 93 per cent of trafficking victims in Canada. She was trafficked by her own father, forced into a life of abuse and drugs, causing severe physical and emotional damage.”
But Brandt also spoke of hope. “I’ve spoken with former trafficking victims who now are assisting others to exit and escape, and watched as their confidence, dignity and sense of self-worth has been restored.”
Forsyth said her most memorable story of how lives can be saved through smart legislation is of a girl who was apprehended “numerous, numerous times” and put into the safe house for sexually trafficked girls, where every bed has a teddy bear and there are fresh new pyjamas, clothes, nutritious food and medical care.
“I thought, we’re going to lose her,” said Forsyth, but the last time she was picked up and taken to the safe house, “something clicked in her.
“We still keep in touch 20 years later. She’s now a lawyer,” Forsyth said with audible joy.
She has many similar uplifting stories of how her law gave these girls a chance. I personally know two myself, including the one of Karen.
When the mom, Yvonne, called me in tears, I recall rushing home, getting a phone with call display, and heading over to the small southwest Calgary apartment hoping Karen would call.
“When we’re not crying or working the phone, we’re praying,” said Yvonne, who was then 39 and was being supported by her sister, Shelly.
Shelly said Karen told her that her tongue had turned white and admitted she had been performing oral sex on adult men without a condom.
“She probably has a venereal disease in her mouth,” said Shelly, weeping.
The point of the column was how, despite the P-CHIP law, police repeatedly told Yvonne they couldn’t arrest Karen unless she was practically caught in the act.
Clearly, back then, all police had not been brought up to speed on the law.
Which is why it was good to hear Premier Jason Kenney discuss the goals of the task force, that includes a commitment “to increasing efforts to educate the public, particularly vulnerable groups, about the reality of human trafficking and report tips to the new national human trafficking hotline, and then to ensure appropriate training for judges, prosecutors and first responders, including police officers and nurses and doctors.”
I was able to put Yvonne in touch with someone at P-CHIP. Then, just as it seemed Karen was going to fall through the gap of understanding between the intent of the law as dictated by this province’s legislators and how it was being practised by police and the courts, Karen walked through her mom’s apartment door.
Yvonne was, not surprisingly, “working the phone” and was speaking to someone from P-CHIP when Karen came home for a shower.
“They talked to (Karen) on the phone and she admitted to them that she was prostituting herself.”
A few hours later, two members of the Calgary Police Service’s Children at Risk Team (CART) took Karen into care.
Within months, Yvonne packed up and moved with Karen closer to family in Kelowna. We eventually lost touch. Then, when Karen was graduating from high school, Yvonne called to boast about her daughter and to thank me.
Karen was a solid student, had good friends and planned to study social work at university. What a turnaround.
Naturally, I was delighted at the news. “Don’t thank me,” I told Yvonne, “thank Heather Forsyth and that law.”
Here’s hoping we get more of the same from this task force.