Aaniin. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to be here, to be the voice for indigenous survivors of human trafficking across Canada. I'd like to acknowledge that I'm standing here on the traditional territories of the Algonquin Anishinabe nation.
My name is Wasa quay. My English name is Bridget Perrier. I was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario, where I was given up for adoption and adopted by a non-native family.
Nothing in our Ojibwa language describes the act of selling sex, and if it's not in our dialect, it's not for our women and girls. My focus for the next four minutes will be on sex trafficking as an indigenous survivor and from a front-line perspective.
At 12 years of age, I was lured and debased into prostitution from a child welfare-run group home. I was sold to men who felt privileged to buy sex from a child. Most times they would never ask about the bruises and welts that my traffickers inflicted on my body. I can remember one time servicing a sex buyer who complained to my trafficker that I was slow and disobedient. This was because of my injuries, which prevented me from having sex the way the sex buyer wanted. I was black and blue with a dislocated shoulder after a beating by my pimp, who still forced me to service men when I was tired, hungry, strung out, and very vulnerable.
Whether it was outdoors or in an escort service, especially when I was with an agency, the threat of violence was constant, from the person arranging the sale to the driver who brought me to the call and then to the sex buyer who felt that he owned me for the hour that I was there.
I spent 12 years in the sex trade, between the ages of 12 and 24. Upon exiting, it took me about four years to even speak about it and eight years of intense therapy to begin to heal. Still to this day I suffer the effects physically. I have trauma womb and reproductive issues, and nerve pain from the physical abuse and torture. Emotionally, I still suffer and sleep with the lights on, and I can't be startled or surprised. I'm still afraid of the basement, which is where the laundry machines are. I don't go in the basement unless I have my dog with me. I'm full of anxiety when certain types of men are around. I lost my innocence and my teen years due to men needing sexual access to my body.
Please, do not offend us as survivors today by referring to sexual exploitation as sex work. We were prostituted and exploited. What we endured was neither sex nor work.
In Canada, trafficking disproportionately impacts indigenous women and girls. Several studies have shown that, of women and girls who have been sex trafficked or sexually exploited in prostitution, 52% were indigenous. The average age of entry is 12 to 15 years, and in some cases, as young as nine.
Girls from northern communities are at risk, and control by the trafficker can take on many forms. He poses as a boyfriend, a drug dealer, an older man supplying them with drugs and a place to stay. He poses as an uncle, a father figure, maybe their daddy. They are coerced to perform sex acts, as many as six to 10 times a day, seven days a week, and hand over money or bring back the equivalent in drugs.
Survivors have described their experience as multiple incidents of paid rape. Who is the demand? It is many men, not just a few. Traffickers are also diverse. While some gangs are involved, it's still small networks of men. Unlike a drug, which you can sell only once and it's gone, traffickers sell women and girls over and over again. Missing and murdered indigenous women and girls are linked to human trafficking. We must look at who's doing the killing. It is the buyers and sellers. There are no screening tools that can screen for violence and murder.
The most harmful impacts are on indigenous women and girls. We need the laws to benefit us, not perpetuate racism and create further harm. We have to make the laws work for indigenous women and girls rather than making it easier for perpetrators to victimize.
A Canadian government led by a self-identified feminist and women's equality rights Prime Minister needs to start listening to survivors and all Canadians and not just those with the most money and loudest voices.
I speak for the 400 girls who I've helped exit prostitution. Some of the girls that I work with are the same age as my daughters. We're watching them get pulverized in the sex industry. With this, I'd like to pass on to my partner, Natasha Falle.