Annex B: From Survivors
Survivors were asked by the interviewer whether there was any further information that they would like to share. The following are their answers:
- “Not enough outreach in strip clubs, in fact there’s no outreach being done. People may take support if they knew it was there.” - Participant #1
- “Punishment of all traffickers should be more severe and longer sentences.” - Participant #6
- “I never felt worthy of anything. It feels like the government is just waiting for people to die so that you can pay them less. You shouldn’t have conditions to be able to get assistance.” - Participant #7
- “I want to see lived experience experts more often.” - Participant #12
- “Human trafficking needs to be taught more because a lot of the times the game is glorified and people need to know what it’s really like.” - Participant #13
- “I would like to see more from our federal government. They announced that there would be a lived experience round table and we have yet to see that be rolled out.” - Participant #21
Survivors were also provided the opportunity to tell politicians/bureaucrats about their experience and these are the answers they provided:
- “We need to prevent human trafficking by educating kids and youth, especially at-risk children and youth. Sex workers/trafficking victims and survivors have a lot to give back, we are more than what happened to us. I was a junkie and on the streets and look at me now. I felt ignored and forgotten and less than. I got sober and got the help and support I needed and have so much to offer society.
Police and medical professionals need more sensitivity training and education on human trafficking. Police saw me a lot with bruises after being beaten up and no one helped me. Police could’ve helped me. At -risk kids and teenagers need support right away to prevent this. Young girls also need positive male role models. Kids are falling through the crack, there shouldn’t be any cracks. Underage girls are stripping, but no one is interfering, no one is helping. We need more resources and less waiting time for treatments, more resources for heavy substance users. Stop cutting services. We help in other countries, but what about the people here? No one here should be hungry or on the streets.” - Participant #1 - “What the laws are now are good. I want people to be able to do sex work if they want to. I never want it to be legal to traffick people. I just want victims and survivors to be safe and supported. I feel like not a lot of people know how extreme human trafficking is and how discreet it is. It’s happening right in front of you. Trafficked people need faster supports, especially financially. Ontario Works (OW) and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) is not a living wage. Supports are great, but there needs to be more funding. Where is all the money you hear about in the news? I’m thankful for what I have, but it’s not easy, especially after seeing all the money from the game. Being trafficked really causes so much trauma and it’s a long road to recovery. There’s too many barriers to receive support like OW and ODSP and other financial supports. There’s also a stigma when you’re on OW/ODSP. We’re just trying to get by. If we don’t have proper supports financially, that can lead to us being re-exploited to make our ends meet.” - Participant #2
- “Overall, anything regarding sexual violence survivors and victims safety, well-being, and survival is not nearly looked at enough in terms of government funding. I remember reading one article when the Prime Minister cut federal funds for trafficking support and feeling nauseous. For such a matter which needs more attention and more help for it to be receiving less was disheartening. Basic necessities and such for simple survival, I feel as though these things should be federally funded to not take away from other expenses that come up for social workers helping their clients. Doug Ford took away victim compensation. Had I been able to receive that after being left with nothing, I would have been able to get a head start on finding my own housing, schooling, and being off of the financial support of ODSP a lot sooner.
- I believe that there needs to be more education on trafficking for authority. Judges, crowns, lawyers, police, parole boards, anyone who has any say in these matters should be properly educated, preferable by survivors themselves. I’ve seen with my own experience and also others, how our traffickers serve little to no time. Whatever the reason may be for early releases for them, the effect it has on their victims is unimaginable. To know that whoever made the decision that they deserved to be released early did not value the survivor’s safety or wellbeing, nor the general public’s. People that have the capacity to traffic another person are not rehabilitated after a year or so. They will get out, reoffend, and go back in a vicious cycle because they aren’t experiencing consequences to their actions, nor are they the type of people that are rehabilitable. If you can traffic a person, you have absolutely no regard for human life nor safety, and, statistically, will reoffend. I want to believe that has something to do with lack of education in those that are making these decisions, rather than lack of care for the general public and their victims.
While I do know that as of last year there were changes made in Ontario to support survivors, I still don’t feel as though it’s enough. Maybe I never will believe it’s enough, but with Ontario being one of the main hubs for human trafficking in Canada, I believe that there could be so much more done. Our social workers need support in supporting victims and survivors. Survivors need to know that they aren’t just another court case to win and that their lives matter more than winning a case matters. None of the statistics you can find on trafficking are accurate, for every survivor there’s three victims that will never come forward or will never be heard from again. - There needs to be more awareness of the access to help for victims. While I was extremely lucky to have been able to access them, I never even knew that there was help out there that wasn’t police. Had I only called the police, ultimately that could have put my life in more danger, and that’s the reality for victims. Hotels, bars, banks, group homes, anywhere where a trafficker and a victim may be, they need to have proper training in how to identify a potential trafficking situation. Things like providing basic necessities for victims exiting should be government funded, be it clothes, food, furniture, safe housing, anything to help a victim not only be safe but feel safe. The more secure someone exiting trafficking feels the less likely they are to end up back in the hands of a pimp to put clothes on their back and food in their stomachs. There’s not enough discourse on how survivors choose to survive either, be it falling into or back into addiction, the extreme mental health issues, eating disorders, committing crimes in order to survive (ie. theft). Survivors feel the need to regain control in non progressive ways and either end up not being able to get that help due to lack of funds to do so or having to get basic care from a mental health institution, where they are put on a months long waitlist and then their help is not trauma-informed. Privatized care with trauma informed specialists should be funded. I’ve personally witnessed a friend overdose within the past year. We were actually rescued on the same day in different cities. She had tried to receive help for mental health that led to addiction and was put on a waitlist and died waiting. She was absolutely not the only survivor to die in the process of trying to figure out how to live after being trafficked because she couldn’t afford to go to a privatized health care facility and all attempts to get ODSP funded care failed. There needs to be better access to these things for survivors, how is it that someone can survive a horrid trauma just for the aftermath of survival to kill them because they can’t access help.” - Participant #3
- “This world is scary. There’s so much stigma and you’re supposed to be normal, but there’s actually no normal. Regardless of race, religion, culture, status, trafficking is all over the place. It’s not just poverty. Status doesn’t matter regardless of if you’re a victim or a perpetrator. The buyers of sex are also all different types of people. If we had resources it would be easier to start our own business. I would be better off. I would’ve been able to use my transferable skills from my trauma to make money for myself legally. It took me to hit rock bottom to appreciate life. You could always be something worse. I’m not afraid to struggle, I know there’s always a way out now. Some people don’t have support and some people do. All types of people are trafficked, the money is very addictive.” - Participant #4
- “Selling sex should be legal. It should be illegal to traffic people. There needs to be protection for sex workers in the sex trade. That protection should not be from a pimp. The government should not be pimping sex workers either. There needs to be more funding for victims of human trafficking. We made a lot of money and then it was taken. It’s like we worked for nothing. Even my Canada Emergency Response Benefit was taken from me. We should be able to prove this in court and get our money back.” - Participant #5
- “Human trafficking needs to be looked at in a more human way, not just from behind a desk. You need to keep sex workers safe. Outlying doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.” - Participant #6
- “I would like them to know that they should try living on welfare for a bit. They’re essentially leaving us to die. They’re trying to make us comply to get a small cheque that’s not even liveable. They constantly make you have to do things to get the support. It’s impossible. Politicians haven’t lost everything like we have. They are actually closer to us than they think.” - Participant #7
- “What I went through doesn’t define me and I will see you on the podium soon.” - Participant #8
- “We need to help the rough around the edges types more often, not just the cookie cutter youth. We need to look at what’s being forced on youth and look at the person as a whole. When it comes to sexual trauma, when you exit, things aren’t just peachy. All of it is just a mess.” - Participant #9
- “People shouldn’t be put through this. They get manipulated and don’t even know it’s happening.” - Participant #10
- “It could be your child. People don’t speak about it enough. Women are scared. It could be your auntie or somebody as young as 12. We need more resources to help these girls.” - Participant #11
- “You need to focus less on the money and more on the girls and what they are going through. The government shouldn’t be making money off sex work. You need to put more safety and security and hotels should do background checks for safety. You need to have supports for all over the world.” - Participant #13
- “I wish they knew how it actually is in person. It’s not like in the movies when someone is trafficked. There needs to be more understanding about the long-term trauma that happens because of this.” - Participant #14
- “I wish they knew that we needed the appropriate help to heal completely. Helping people is great, but we also need prevention in society as well. We need to help people become members of society. People that end up here usually have some kind of history and we need to address the root causes.” - Participant #15
- “It’s everywhere. There’s a lot of people to save. There should be permanent funding for anti-human trafficking organizations to be able to help all the others. If I could, I would do the work myself.” - Participant #16
- “I wish they understood it’s not always our fault. The situation is forced onto us. A lot of the time this happens when there’s nowhere to go and no housing for us.” - Participant #17
- “16 to 25 year olds need more support. It should almost be automatic versus them having to seek it out. A lot of the time it’s really hard to reach out for help, so it would be good if it’s automatic.” - Participant #18
- “I believe that we need to have more support in schools for youth. It’s important for youth to have awareness and education around human trafficking and mental health. It’s also good to be able to have individual support and not always group support in schools.” - Participant #19
- “People need to be more sensitive and not speak so harshly. You don’t know what anyone’s gone through, you need to be kinder. There needs to be a stop to victim shaming. We need more support for survivors. It’s so traumatizing and there’s a lot of victims.” - Participant #20
- “There needs to be better access to emergency and transitional housing.” - Participant #21
- “You never really understand the full depth of human trafficking unless you’ve gone through it. It’s happening everywhere around you. We walk around with so much shame and guilt and a lot of the time society adds to that shame. It’s great that you’re starting to recognize the impact of human trafficking, but you need to continue to support victims and as well, support the young people that are becoming traffickers.” - Participant #22
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