The scourge of human trafficking
For every charge laid, there are nine other cases, Edmonton police say
For every human-trafficking charge laid in Edmonton, there are about nine other suspected cases, says the officer in charge of investigating what he describes as an “insidious” crime.
Edmonton Police Service human trafficking and exploitation unit Staff Sgt. Dale Johnson said although local investigators are breaking cases — five people were charged with human trafficking and related offences in the first quarter of 2017 — those instances represent only a fraction of what’s happening.
“We’re not fully aware of how deep the problem goes,” Johnson said during a recent interview at police headquarters.
As a crime, human trafficking is often misunderstood, Johnson said. It’s common for people to conflate it with human smuggling or prostitution.
Johnson said the easiest way to define the crime is a human being selling another human being, most often for sexual purposes or labour exploitation.
“If you imagine a person with full knowledge and awareness, just purposefully victimizing another person in that way, over and over and over, over a prolonged period of time, that’s pretty close to evil,” Johnson said.
Human trafficking wasn’t a Criminal Code offence in Canada until 2005. Following the law’s enactment, the RCMP’s Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre began tracking cases, and had identified 401 cases of human trafficking by January 2017, although the Mounties note the crime remains “under-reported.”
Since 2009-2010, law enforcement in Alberta has commenced 55 charges for trafficking in persons under 18, compared with nine cases using the general “human trafficking” charge, according to Alberta Justice.
Johnson said one of the reasons statistics on human trafficking don’t give a complete picture is because in order for police to lay charges, they need the co-operation of victims who perhaps don’t trust investigators, or don’t view themselves as victims of trafficking.
“There’s a lot of things that hold a person in that environment or situation. It doesn’t mean they’re chained to a radiator, it means they just don’t see any other choice, they don’t have any other options,” he said.
In cases of sexual exploitation, traffickers often use psychological or emotional controls on victims.
“They perceive the person to be their boyfriend, they perceive the person to love them, they perceive the person to be helping them. All those are sort of psychological controls,” Johnson said.
Although most of the cases that Johnson’s unit works involve sexual exploitation, labour trafficking is also occurring in Alberta. In instances of either sexual and labour exploitation, victims may be unaware of their rights, are unsure how to get help and fear for the safety of themselves and their family, according to Andrea Burkhart, executive director of ACT Alberta, a coalition that co-ordinate efforts to identify human trafficking and support victims across the province.
“There are a lot of barriers, and some real-founded fears that people have in coming forward,” Burkhart said.
ACT Alberta gets referrals to help in cases of both labour and sexual exploitation trafficking, and Burkhart said in some cases people are being exploited in both ways at once.
Still, Burkhart said progress is being made in the way human trafficking is being handled by authorities. She applauds Edmonton police’s recent decision to change the name of the “vice” unit to “human trafficking and exploitation.”