Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the invite. I really appreciate it.
It's not easy for me to be here today. It's humiliating, but it's important because I was there and I know how these predators think.
The only reason I'm alive today and able to tell my story is that one day I went into a chapel where I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ, and I had people around me who helped me understand the gravity of my lifestyle. They taught me how to make things right so I was able to go back across the country to every place I had trafficked, face the victims, face every criminal act I had committed, and make amends. With all this, I was able to clean up my life and go to the roots of my problem. It is very important for people to change, whether they're a victim or a trafficker. We need to address the root. Once I eradicated this root, my life changed and I became a pastor.
Today, I hear a lot of testimony from victims, how they were lured into this trade, how they were abused, and how they kept it secret. One of the biggest things traffickers use is they take away your self-esteem, your dignity, and they try very hard to make you drug dependent.
I talk to victims, and I was interviewing one yesterday morning. She was in a teen challenge program that I put her in about a year ago, and now she's coming out with flying colours. She was telling me that when she was out there, one of the guys that she was with, the gang leader, was looking outside his window by a schoolyard. He asked if she saw those girls. He said they were walking ATMs. They want to lure girls from 9 to 14 because that's the demand nowadays.
Once they fall victim to this abuse, a lot of these girls lose their self-esteem and dignity, and they suffer from Stockholm syndrome. They develop empathy for the abuser. It's a high crime in our country and it needs to be punished to the extreme.
Had I been punished in the days years ago when I was in this trade, it would have discouraged me, but the law wasn't there to punish me and it was overlooked. I'm so glad today there are people fighting against it like Joy Smith. I joined her effort to change these laws.
The more a trafficker is discouraged, the more we're going to cut down on this situation. Today I do a jail ministry. I do a lot of street ministry. I've trained about 50 people to work the streets with me, trying to reach as many people as we can. Of course, the girls aren't on the streets as they used to be, but it gives us a lot of contacts.
Not that long ago as I was ministering in a prison, one of the girls was introduced to me and said she used to do what I did. Her mother trained her how to traffic. This modern-day slavery is a big problem. The girls are now being recruited because it's easier for a girl to recruit another girl, so it's extended; it's just beyond human measure. She was trafficking, I think, five or six girls and she was only 17 years old.
I think traffickers need to be punished to the maximum. Traffickers are heartless, they're ruthless, and all they want to do is abuse the person until there's nothing left. I remember when I went back on the streets two years after my conversion to make restitution, and some of these girls that I had been with were walking skeletons, completely destroyed. When you tell them there's a better life out there, they just don't know where to turn.
I'm so happy when I see facilities like Joy Smith's, places that are made available like you have over there. A lot of these girls don't know where to go. I find a lot of resources are there for police officers to pursue drug dealers. They'll spend months tracking drug dealers, but those resources I don't think are available to track down predators like human traffickers. I think if that was to happen, we'd see a big difference; this enterprise would collapse within a short period of time. These traffickers are cowards, they're ruthless, and they don't care for human life.
I was with a partner back then who trained me. He even kidnapped girls, travelled with them, and forced them into the trade. They had no choice. The more you make them dependent...sometimes these girls have tracks all the way up their arms. All they want now is their next fix, just to kill the pain. That's how these predators take advantage of them until finally they just die of an overdose or a disease.
And then it's on to the next one. They don't care if they die. As you were saying, they're reusable. As soon as they're finished, there's nothing left for them. They're just left there on a scrap heap.
A lot of these people who buy sex have extreme fantasies about beating up the girls and abusing them sexually. These traffickers who promise protection are never there. While the girls are getting beaten up, these guys are in the bars and they're in these hotel rooms smoking crack. I find that with crystal meth, it's gotten worse now because it's affordable, so for a lot of the young girls who can't afford crack or heroin, it's much easier for them to get a $5 or $10 hit of crystal meth.
As one of the victims was telling me this week, once you're on crystal meth, it doesn't matter anymore what happens to your body, because that's all you want, and you lose your senses. This girl was living in abandoned buildings in Winnipeg, a beautiful girl. Her parents came to me and asked if I could help their daughter. Her senses were gone. I didn't think there was hope, but I'm so thankful that Teen Challenge took her and they gave her a life.
The support is so important for these girls, to get them back to thinking properly and to understanding that they don't have to identify themselves with the trauma they went through for the rest of their lives. They need support and they need care. I think we need more facilities. A lot of people I train on the streets, when they find a girl, ask where they can send her from there. There are a lot of drug addiction programs but very few for the girls who have been abused and trafficked.
I think if human trafficking or prostitution were legalized, that would give traffickers a green card and it would completely spiral out of control. I know that if I were to go back onto the streets today, which is inconceivable, that I could make $5,000 a day from human trafficking and I would face very little resistance.
I really feel that it's very important for this issue to be addressed. A lot of these girls are controlled at gunpoint. I remember one of the girls who worked for me was in the hallway at the hotel and she told my partner, “I want to quit. I can't do this anymore. Every time I turn a trick I want to vomit.” And he pulled a gun and he put it to her head. He said, “There's no quitting in here.” Luckily someone opened their hotel room and she ran in there and rescued herself. It's just the way it is. From there on, she feared for her life because she was at risk of being caught for ratting him out.
It's very important for these girls to find a place of refuge as well, when they come out of human trafficking.
Everybody is someone's child. This is my motto, so when I go out on the street, my job is to really retrieve these children who have been lured into this. I can spot them from a mile away. To me bringing back a child to his parents is vital. There's nothing that can compare to that.
When I was a human trafficker, I remember a 14-year-old girl came to me. She had been promised such glamour and she wanted me to put her on the streets. I made sure she wouldn't go out there and got her back to her father. But today it's not like that. The younger they get them.... nine to 14 years old is what they want, that's the demand, because now it's gotten to be a lot sicker than it was back then. They really prey on the most vulnerable people, and that's why it's very vital for me to put my neck out. Today I'm the father of three children, and to me children are very valuable. Even now that I'm older and I'm a businessman, I'm putting my neck out because I want to save these children and these young girls from this tragedy.
Thank you very much.