Cracking down on sex trafficking

By Steve Weatherbe

WHEN VANCOUVERITE Donald Bakker pleaded guilty to 10 counts of sexual assault -- seven of them under Canada's hitherto untested sex tourism law -- much of the credit was due to an heroic group of Christian undercover investigators, who secretly tracked down his underaged victims and videotaped the Cambodian brothels where Bakker committed his assaults.

But British Columbian men don't have to fly to Indochina for sex. A huge criminal enterprise has enveloped the globe, designed to deliver women and children to the customer's door. Most are illegal immigrants duped with the promise of jobs as restaurant workers, janitors or maids. The RCMP estimates 600 women and children are brought into Canada yearly, mostly to slake the sexual appetites of Canadian men, while 1,500 more are brought through Canada to the United States.

As recently as 2004, these victims of what is known as human trafficking were treated by B.C. law enforcers as criminals and deported, in violation of an international treaty. But now the RCMP's border integrity unit is close to establishing a victim protection program which will not only allow the women to stay, but will provide opportunities to train, to work and to immigrate.

"If we send them back, we are sending them to be re-trafficked," says RCMP spokesman Corporal Normand Massie. "But if we want them to stay in Canada, we've got to rehabilitate them."

To keep seven women involved in still-unresolved prosecutions in the country, the RCMP had to secure agreements from a host of federal, provincial and non-governmental agencies, providing everything from health care, visas, training and housing. Two of the women are witnesses against Wai Chi Ng, who is the first man charged with human trafficking under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act; Ng is currently in trial in B.C.

Now in the works and nearly ready, Massie announced March 2, is a set of agreements which will apply to all victims of human trafficking. Massie described it as part of a comprehensive approach of "prevention, protection and prosecution." It boils down to this: to make charges stick against the traffickers, and deter future offenses, the police need the women's testimony. Deportation won't get it.

The RCMP is looking for help from doctors, nurses, and staff at non-profit agencies, many of them faith-based, which provide front-line care -- and are therefore in a position to identify victims of human trafficking. They can help, says Massie, in cases involving "a woman who can't speak English who's been assaulted, or a man who brings a woman in with other health problems and does all the talking for her."

Church-based organizations have already offered housing to the RCMP, including the Salvation Army, which is part of an international consortium campaigning against human trafficking. Vancouver spokesman Kevin Lowe confirmed that the Salvation Army is a natural ally in the police program, because its social arm is the province's biggest provider of women's shelters.

But the organization which probably had the most to do with the RCMP announcement -- or at least with its timing -- is the Future Group. The organization is a non-religious group devoted to fighting against human trafficking, founded by Calgary-based Christian law student Ben Perrin. On the very day the RCMP issued its premature press release about its nearly-ready program, the Future Group released its 'Falling Short of the Mark' report condemning the Canadian government for its failure to protect the victims of human trafficking, and immigration officials for deporting them.

"The situation in Canada is so bad," said the report, "with respect to a failure to provide basic support to trafficking victims, that individual law officers are attempting to approach local hospitals and NGOs to cobble together funding to provide the most basic medical assistance."

In British Columbia, the RCMP announcement knocked the Future Group's report right out of the headlines; it was mentioned in one RCMP story -- in paragraph 11. Elsewhere, Canadians read that Canada was rated last among developed countries the Future Group surveyed for its treatment of victims. As well, said the report, cabinet ministers in the Liberal government had avoided all questions from the Future Group since late 2004 about its compliance with an international treaty it signed to protect victims.

However, Perrin told CC.com he was "very encouraged" with the new Conservative government's reaction to the report.

Perrin, a member of Calgary's Bethany Chapel, said the Future Group originated around a post-graduation campfire in Ontario a few years ago -- where he expressed the desire to make a difference in the world, and others challenged him to do something.

Operating on a shoestring budget of $50,000 per year, raised from church bake sales and similar fundraisers, the Future Group has sent unpaid research and education teams to Thailand and Cameroon to help local communities protect their members from traffickers promising legitimate jobs in the developed world or elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Asked about the fate of women lured into the international sex trade, Perrin said: "They are thrown out like garbage when they are too old or sick." In Cambodia alone, he added, there are tens of thousands -- and only 100 recovery beds.

Perrin said Christians and Christian organizations should get involved, "because it is our duty to alleviate suffering, and to fight evil."

Even more directly involved than the Future Group is the International Justice Mission -- which sends undercover investigators, mostly retired police, into brothels around the world. "They videotape the madams and pimps, they show the police taking bribes," said Jamie McIntosh, executive director of IJM's Canadian branch. "It's very dangerous work."

After police arrested Vancouver hotel worker Donald Bakker in 2004, emerging from a Vancouver park with a prostitute in tow, they found in his home pictures of him having sex with minors in a Southeast Asian locale. Without more evidence, however, the police were unable to charge Bakker under new provisions against traveling abroad for sex with minors.

They liaised with IJM operatives in Cambodia -- who, within weeks, had identified the brothels and located several of the girls involved. IJM had, it turned out, rescued them among 37 minors set free in a massive 2003 operation which brought convictions against 13 pimps, madams and police on the take -- one of the group's big successes.

With the ironclad evidence from IJM, Vancouver police were able to persuade Bakker to plead guilty.

The two cases, Ng and Bakker, stand in stark contrast to the record of the American government, which the Future Group rated highly. Since 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush announced March 16, his country has charged 100 traffickers. He estimated that at least 14,500 victims of trafficking cross U.S. borders annually. "This trade in human beings brings suffering to the innocent and shame to our country, and we will lead the fight against it," he said.

Bush also announced $25 million in new funding to fight human trafficking worldwide, and reminded his audience of the $295 million already spent since he took office.

McIntosh identified several ways Christians could support IJM, apart from funding. "We covet your prayers," he said. As well, Christians can lobby governments to pass tougher laws and, even more importantly, to provide the resources and the willpower to enforce them.

Christians, McIntosh stressed, "led the fight against slavery in the past -- and should do so again."