Overcoming trauma
Sexual assault centre helps survivors combat dark pasts
Sexual assault centre helps victims of human trafficking
WATERLOO REGION — She met him on a online dating site and he seemed like a nice guy.
They began talking on PlentyOfFish and soon after she was in a web of “psychological abuse and coercion,” said Nicky Carswell, a support worker for human trafficking survivors at the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region.
The woman, who is not being named, is a survivor of sexual assault and a victim of human trafficking.
She was trafficked for a month, living in fear and enduring threats and physical violence. Her pimp drove her to another province to be trafficked. He was arrested by police in another province. She recently testified in court against him and Carswell went with her.
“Before I got introduced into this program, I was an absolute mess,” said the woman, who lives in the region.
“I don’t where I’d be if it weren’t for Nicky,” she said. “I was at the bottom of the barrel.”
She overdosed on prescribed pills and was taken by ambulance to hospital after a 911 call. That’s where Carswell met her.
Since then, the woman has received help finding a home, getting a family doctor, regulating her medication and, most important, feeling secure and safe.
“It’s a pretty lonely feeling when you go through something like this,” she said.
Human trafficking targets young girls who are coerced into sexual services. The men who manipulate them are “Romeo” pimps who pose as boyfriends to gain their trust and love.
The majority of human trafficking occurs in Ontario with most of it taking place in hotels and motels along the Highway 401 corridor.
Traffickers prey on young girls using social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, and offer them gifts of clothing, cellphones and makeup.
Survivor Timea Nagy said up to 200 girls are trafficked in the region on any given day, some from here, others travelling through the area.
Nagy, who now runs her own business speaking to groups and consulting for others, including the police, said human trafficking is everywhere.
If there is demand, a location and young girls, there is human trafficking, she said.
“Anywhere you go if you have those three plus the internet, you have human trafficking,” she said.
Nagy said young girls, between
the ages of 16 to 20, are trafficked in apartment buildings in downtown Kitchener, condos in Waterloo and even in St. Jacobs. Trafficking also occurs in Airbnb rentals, she said.
“If you have men buying sex, you most likely have human trafficking. The pimps need to cater to the demand.”
Nagy added that gangs in Waterloo Region traffic girls.
Nagy said it’s critical to make it inconvenient for men buying sex. That happened when Backpages.com, a site where johns searched for sex, was shut down. But other similar sites popped up.
“You make this inconvenient and you will put a dent in it,” she said. “As long as it takes less than three minutes to buy a girl, we are going to have a problem.”
Last month, Waterloo Regional Police and other police services across the province charged 15 people with 45 sex-traffickingrelated offences.
They helped seven victims, two of whom were under 18. One woman was brought to the region and forced to work here, said police.
Det. Const. Matthew Demarte, who works in the human trafficking unit for local police, said police have been involved in about 85 investigations, leading to 25 arrests, since January 2017.
The Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region received funding and hired a support worker in January to assist victims.
Since then, Carswell has been referred to 45 young women, mostly 16-year-old girls.
Most are living in the region and were recruited into sex trafficking. One client is male and two are transgender.
Sara Casselman, the centre’s executive director, said provincial funding over three years will allow her to hire at least one more support worker next April.
“She is really hands-on in the community,” Casselman said, referring to the many practical tasks Carswell helps the women with.
Support also includes counselling and helping them deal with flashbacks, and accompanying survivors to court appearances.
“There is high level of need,” Casselman said.
The support program is unique because it is flexible to help the young women with whatever they need.
“We walk with them on their journey,” Casselman said.
She said human trafficking victims are traumatized and find it hard to trust others.
“The level of fear and lack of safety they live with is out of this world,” she said.
Recently, when Carswell went to meet a victim, the young teen arrived but was afraid and didn’t talk to her. In another case, Carswell met with a survivor eight times before she felt comfortable enough to accept help.
Carswell said the women feel a great deal of shame for their attachment to their pimps and blame themselves for not leaving sooner.
“They are sold a dream and told they will live a fairy tale life. But it didn’t happen,” she said.
The women see the large amounts of money pimps are making but never get to keep any of it, Carswell said.
Sex trafficking and the trauma associated with being forced and manipulated into offering sexual services against their will is complex. Casselman said it’s difficult to understand “someone’s attachment to someone else who has done great harm.”
Nagy thought she was coming to Canada from Hungary to work as a nanny in 1998. Instead, two men were at the airport waiting for her. She was taken to a motel and strip club to work as a sex trafficker and escaped three months later.
“No girl wakes up at 15 and says ‘I want to be a prostitute one day.’ Nobody,” said Nagy, 41.
“Somewhere along the line, someone groomed them, broke them in, sexually assaulted them, raped them and then someone else came along and manipulated them into doing this because that’s all they are good for and they believe it,” she said.