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Waterloo Region Record

WATERLOO REGION — The Gucci handbag often gives her away.

Along with the expensive lingerie, the sex toys, the designer watch and the multiple iPhones.

But the dead giveaway is the tattoo, often of the pimp’s street name, marked on the back of her neck or the inside of her wrist.

Sometimes, there is another woman in the hotel room known as the “bottom b—-” who is in charge of keeping order: tracking the johns, collecting nearly $1,000 a day and ensuring the working girl hustles seven days a week and has sex with up to 15 men a day.

The older girl takes on the role of recruiter. She’s the trusted one out of the “stable” of girls and oversees the operation when her boss, the pimp, isn’t around, said Const. Jason Morton of the Kitchener detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

This is the seedy underworld of human trafficking where girls as young as 16 are coerced into what police are calling modern-day sex slavery.

Their bodies, in provocative poses, are posted on a classified website. This site sells boats, furniture, pets, as well as sex.

Customers scroll the listings, pick their favourite and text or call the phone number to book an appointment.

The oldest ‘profession’ that will likely always exist, you say.

For some, prostitution may be a choice, but for most, particularly here in the region, selling your body for sex is often a means of survival.

Locally, social agencies, sex work advocates and police say there is a varied spectrum when it comes to prostitution in Waterloo Region.

On one end, are the extreme cases of young girls who are being trafficked by pimps, held up in hotel rooms for days not even knowing what city they’re in, having sex with countless men and never seeing a dollar of their earnings. Everyone agrees they are victims.

The young women are often seduced, some with big-ticket items such as Michael Kors watches, while others who are vulnerable and have little are content with a free meal from McDonald’s.

Pimps act as boyfriends and soon the men have full control over the young women, taking them to hotels across the province to have sex with men and pocketing thousands of dollars a day. The girls are often beaten to keep them in line and some are fed drugs to get them addicted.

Then there are the street-level prostitutes working the “stroll” of the east end of King Street in Kitchener who offer sex in cars and area motel rooms. Their challenges are numerous: from mental health issues, drug and alcohol addictions to a lack of adequate housing.

There are also women who work from their homes for themselves. It’s their job.

This week in Ottawa, hearings were held on the federal government’s new prostitution bill which creates new offences for clients and pimps, but does not criminalize sex workers.

The bill still makes everyone guilty if they communicate to purchase sex in a public place, or in a place where people under 18 are present.

But under the new law, prostitutes could rent apartments, screen clients, hire a receptionist or security guard and advertise what they are offering.

The government is also pledging $20 million to help women, who they see as victims, to leave the business.

Kitchener-Waterloo MP Peter Braid, a Conservative, said the federal government is taking the approach that women involved in prostitution are vulnerable and exploited.

“The goal of the legislation is to reduce the demand for sexual services and therefore reduce prostitution itself,” he said. “It’s perhaps naïve and unrealistic that it can be entirely eliminated but it can be reduced.”

“A vile aspect of prostitution is human trafficking,” Braid said. “All of society needs to be concerned about this.”

. . .

Angie Murie, co-chair of the local Sex Workers Action Network and executive director of Planned Parenthood of Waterloo Region, said when it comes to sex workers, she works on a harm-reduction model.

That means she wants to reduce the violence many of the women encounter with johns. She is concerned with their well-being and safety, not questioning the women on why they do what they do.

“Some are victims of crime, yes they are. Are they victims of prostitution, no,” Murie said. “These women don’t need saving. They need a job, a place to stay and trauma counselling.”

She’s worried about politicians taking a moral high ground to protect a “victim” who doesn’t want protection.

“Do you think paying for sex is evil? I would say no. What is evil is men beating and raping women,” said Murie.

Planned Parenthood is conducting face-to-face interviews with sex workers, and in three weeks has interviewed 35 workers, five of them men. The most staggering result has been the level of violence most of the street-level women are facing at the hands of their customers, she said.

“We are not about the issue of prostitution. We don’t debate,” Murie said. “It’s about the people doing it. If they need help, we should be there.”

For police trying to manoeuvre through this murky territory, they stick to what they see as an obvious crime — human trafficking of young girls.

“Our role is to identify vulnerable victims. We are not here to pass judgment,” said Const. Graham Hawkins of Waterloo Regional Police Service.

Police have met with local hotel managers and in the fall hope to meet with high school guidance counsellors so that they, too, can recognize the signs of girls in forced prostitution.

Hawkins, who works in intelligence, was assigned full time to human trafficking about 18 months ago.

Hawkins, who poses as a john but identifies himself as a police officer when he shows up at hotel rooms, said he has asked young girls where they are and most of them have no idea what city they are in.

In one case, Morton recalls arriving at a hotel room and the young woman said, “This isn’t what you think it is. I’m being forced to do this.”

She had told two johns that day the same story but they didn’t believe her. They had sex with her and left.

Other times, young women are hostile and refuse help, often suffering from Stockholm syndrome, a phenomenon in which hostages express empathy for their captors, Hawkins said.

A sure sign of a woman being trafficked is the tattoos on her neck, arms or fingers by her pimp. Police also look for bruising, scars and cigarette burns.

In another case, police found a girl who had the word “respect” tattooed on one cheek and “loyalty” tattooed on the other side of her face.

A committed investigator, Hawkins has helped young women escape from the violent confines of their pimps. He’s formed friendships with them and checks on the young women regularly to make sure they have the supports they need.

One such woman who was being held in hotel rooms in Toronto, Burlington and Waterloo Region is Tamara. The 26-year-old woman now lives in an apartment in Hamilton.

She grew up in Nova Scotia where she was in various foster homes and then bounced between Ontario and Nova Scotia with abusive boyfriends.

She met a man online who paid for her flight to Toronto. He promised her a penthouse apartment but checked her into a hotel where she would have sex with men.

She secretly kept tip money to buy food because her pimp wanted her skinny and didn’t allow her to eat. His name was tattooed on the back of her neck.

Tamara recalls when Hawkins showed up at her door while she was at a Cambridge hotel. She was scared and didn’t want his help. She had been beaten and nearly choked to death by her pimp.

Police helped her cover up her tattoo and she was introduced to the Hamilton-based agency that helps trafficked victims known as Walk with Me.

Locally, a group of agencies came together to form the Waterloo Region Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition 18 months ago.

By fall, the group hopes to launch an online guide of supports in the community to assist victims, says co-chair Sara Casselman, who is operations manager at the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region.

“Human trafficking has only been on the radar for the past few years,” she said. “If you don’t talk about it, you don’t realize it’s a problem.”

. . .

Simone Bell grew up in Ottawa Valley’s suburbia.

Her dad was an engineer, her mom a nurse and she was oldest child with three little brothers. She was an athlete in high school and planned to go to college.

She had a boyfriend and admits she was attracted to the “bad boys.”

Bell recalls a phone call from a friend of her boyfriend who said he was in jail for possession of a firearm.

She went to meet the friend. Once there, the man turned violent, punching and kicking her and suggesting the loss of the guns was now her debt.

The man threatened her, suggesting he knew her parents by name and where they worked. He also knew the names of her brothers and their friends.

“That was the biggest invisible gun held to my head,” said Bell, who recently spoke in Kitchener to social workers, teachers and sex worker advocates.

The man dropped her off at her home and said he would be back to pick her up.

“I followed what he said. I was petrified for my family,” she said.

Within hours, he had her passport, health card and bank card. Her Facebook and Gmail accounts were under the pimp’s control.

She was taken to a rundown apartment above a laundry mat and there she was gang-raped in what survivors now call “the breaking process.” She was 21.

“After the breaking process, you die. You go somewhere else,” she said.

Her four-year nightmare began. Her day started at 7 a.m. with a steady stream of men coming to her hotel room until about 4 a.m. daily.

“You become a sexualized person who hustles for money. A sexual object is who you are,” she said.

She was fed oxycodone on a schedule and heroin needles were shoved in her arm.

“Thank God I had those drugs. They numbed me,” she said.

To further humiliate Bell, her trafficker sent messages on her Facebook and Gmail account to her family and friends suggesting she could offer “special services” to anyone looking for sex.

“People assumed I was a drug addict and a prostitute,” she said. “That’s how the control through shame starts. Your real self is gone.”

The pimp contacted her parents and said he was trying to help her turn her life around and get her to stop selling her body for her drug habit.

“It took me further away from my family,” she said.

Bell experienced seizures from being kicked in the head and spent time in the psychiatric ward. After each hospital visit, he was waiting to pick her up.

She was trafficked between Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto.

“I didn’t know what day of the week it was,” she said. “I had no idea this was happening to other people. You fear everybody.”

She was repeatedly beaten, thrown down the stairs and one time had her head held under water in the bathtub. Her pimp smoked crack and when high kicked her for his own pleasure.

Bell tried to run away many times. But finally one day she was successful. Her pimp accused her of stealing from his mother and she knew a vicious beating might kill her.

There were workers at the pimp’s house, landscaping the yard and fixing the backyard pool. Because of that distraction, she was able to run from the house and call her father who took her to the hospital.

Bell, now 28 and an outreach worker in Ottawa, said she speaks often to social workers, medical professionals, police and parents so that people start to recognize the signs of girls who are trafficked.

“No one asked the right probing questions. I suffered in silence and let everyone think I was prostitute,” she said.

lmonteiro@therecord.com ; Twitter: @MonteiroRecord