Thank you for the opportunity to be here and to speak with you today.
My name is Melendy Muise, and I'm the support specialist for CASEY, the Coalition Against the Sexual Exploitation of Youth. I'm also a survivor of sex trafficking as a young teenager.
We currently have human trafficking awareness campaigns happening across the country, with posters and other media reflecting women and children in cages, women tied to beds, or images of cargo containers filled with women and children. Unfortunately, these images do not represent the reality of people being trafficked. Most trafficked people would assume they just don't qualify as victims because they have not been kidnapped or sent to a foreign country in a shipping container. The large majority of human trafficking, as we know, is domestic. People always ask me what human trafficking looks like here in Canada, and get confused when I tell them it looks nothing like what they've been told by any of this messaging. Our messaging to young people and the public in general must be clear and reflect the reality of human trafficking in Canada so people can be better aware of how to identify and possibly protect themselves or others from trafficking.
We cannot have full awareness of this issue without looking at demand. We need to look at the profiles of the men who purchase sex. In 2014, there was a prostitution offender program in Edmonton. This program and others like it were found to be successful at curbing sexual exploitation. It ran four to seven times per year, with each group lasting eight hours. The participants could have their charges withdrawn. They must have had no prior history of violence. They were provided information on laws, STIs, and healthy relationships. They heard the stories of three survivors and people living in the communities where the exploitation happens.
Here are the results of one class of a group of 20: a 3% less re-arrest rate; 18 out of 20 men never purchased again; 70% of the men identified that they had behaviours that concerned them; 29% knew they were breaking the law but did it anyway; 12% admitted to buying sex before. The outcomes tell us that these men may have just participated to avoid having charges related to the sex trade on their record. They also tell us that once they knew the reality of what this looked like for people with lived experience and what behaviours they themselves had that contributed to the need to buy sex, they did not find the need to buy again.
How do we prevent trafficking? To do that, we need to talk about what makes a person more at risk: things like child sexual abuse, homelessness, being a runaway, substance abuse, and poverty. The interesting thing about these factors is that they also contribute to a person being more likely to purchase sex or become a trafficker themselves. If we become better at addressing the vulnerabilities and the root causes of all three parties involved, we will start to see a decline in exploitation and trafficking.
Several reports I've read say that survivors of trafficking have proven to have much higher rates of PTSD than military vets. This should put things into perspective. The pro-sex work movement's not acknowledging the harm being done is negligent and has had some serious implications for victims and the survivor community. Often the pro-sex movement will deny that survivors' experiences are real, or that they are isolated to just a few of us. On the other hand, the survivor community does not deny there are people who identify as being in sex work as a choice. We fully understand the reasons and realities behind that notion of choice. We only have to look at this through a trauma-informed lens to see how little of a choice it actually is.
The idea being put forth, that police are not safe and people are not reporting out of fear of arrest, is not reflective of what I see happening. Instead of moving forward to foster better relationships with the police, courts, and others, the pro-sex movement continues to reinforce the same ideas that our traffickers did: that police are not to be trusted and that we ourselves will be thrown in jail if we go to them, and that if we go to the police because we are worried about someone else's safety or to make a report about being beaten or raped by a purchaser or trafficker, we will not receive help. If as much energy and resources were used in providing trauma-informed practice to all law enforcement, judges, lawyers, and so on, we could see a real shift in how victims reach out for help.
Education is the key. If we have a bad interaction within the system that is meant to help us, we can choose to deal with that in a constructive manner. We simply do not feed people's fears to push forward our own agendas. I have had both negative and positive experiences with law enforcement and the justice system. I use both now to help educate on how we could better help victims of human trafficking. Unless we work on mending these broken relationships, no change in law or policy will be helpful to either side.
The tactics of the pro-sex movement have been to keep these issues very blurred. All too often we will hear them speak very clearly and concisely, tying everything together so well that it would be hard to imagine that their messaging is harmful. Then we hear from a survivor, and their story is painful to listen to. They talk about things that make us want to leave the room or make us very uncomfortable in our seats. We start to tune out their pain because it might just be too much. They may even trigger something out of your own experience. It inherently will make people feel better about the pain and suffering from survivors if they believe we are in the minority and the majority are making a choice. As a survivor, I feel they are gaining headway because of this. That is something that's within our control to stop.
Stop for a moment and try not to make everyone and ourselves feel good about the abuse and trauma of women and children in the sex trade. The stigma of people in the sex trade, lack of proper health care, poverty, and homelessness are not easy things to endure, but these do not murder, beat, or rape people in the sex trade. Men who purchase them do. There is no screening tool to weed these people out. There is no level of safety to achieve that would prevent this from happening. If there were, why would we not have already applied that process to every other aspect of life that a women has to endure to prevent herself from being murdered or raped?
When you think about survivors being involved at every level, you need to know that there can be absolutely nothing about us without us. There is an idea out there that people will re-exploit or harm us if they ask us to speak about our experiences. There is a difference between tokenism of people with lived experience and consulting us on the work that is being done. There are things about working with this population that you will never learn in school or in any on-the-job training. I have been told many times that the rooms are not safe for people with lived experience, that somehow we cannot act professionally when sitting at the table, that speaking of our experiences will be something that we or even the audience cannot handle.
I have dealt with some of the lowest forms of life while being trafficked, often several times a night. I have kept myself alive and intact. If you tell me that I cannot handle difficult conversations or the other people at the table, you are diminishing my abilities and denying me the opportunity to learn. I have been doing this work for over 10 years. Not once has a presentation, a conversation, or a training I have delivered been near as traumatic as being trafficked. Were there times when I found it difficult or wanted to give up? Sure. However, as survivors, we have some pretty amazing skills, and when mentored and guided, we can be an invaluable asset to any organization doing this work. If you can help us come together, build on each other's strengths, and overcome our struggles, you will be amazed at what you might learn from us.
A couple of months ago, I was asked by CBC to participate in a series that it was doing about sexual exploitation. CBC wanted me to tell some of my story and talk about the work that I am currently doing. When I sat down with the reporter, she started to talk about an interview that was done 25 years ago with a young girl who had been exploited and whose pimp had been arrested and convicted. The more she spoke about the interview, I knew she was talking about me.
On the last day that I had testified in court against my pimp in the early 1990s, a reporter had interviewed me. The current reporter offered to let me view the old interview in hopes to use some of it for her current piece. Twenty-five years later, I sat watching myself at 18 speak about what had happened to me. One of the questions the original interviewer asked was, “Why did you stay with him for so long?” The answer I gave was unexpected to the now 42-year-old woman I am today. “I just wanted him to love me,” was my response.
Today I know and speak about the level of violence there was, the manipulation, the control, how he filled all my needs, how he walked into a bar and told me I had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen and I thought instantly that he loved me. When you ask why people do not just leave, why we go back multiple times when you feel you have rescued and saved us, or how someone could even make us do the things we do, I want you to remember those words. It's not about choice. It's actually about having no choice, being desperate to belong, and someone taking advantage of those vulnerabilities and profiting from them. That is human trafficking.
Thanks.