Human trafficking in the elderly demographic is actually on the rise, because anywhere a trafficker can make money, they're not going to leave money on the table. We're seeing more and more affecting young women, older women, women with a disability and also migrant women and girls. We're seeing things like forced begging or where they're intersecting labour trafficking with other things. For example, the women are expected to also comply in sex trafficking or CSAM, even camera work with children or to offer their children up for camera work.
It's harder for them to find placements in shelters if they have children. It's harder if they have a support pet. They're forced to leave a support dog that's registered, all to try to go into a shelter and deal with their issues.
When women are older, there's a lot of bias, questions like “Why are you here? Don't you have family?” I've heard shelter workers openly ask those questions. Then we intersect this with another type of gender-based violence: elder abuse. That might be the reason they're not living with family or other members of their community. That is the myth, and we just dispelled it. One of the hardest survivors to place anywhere—in a program, in care, in a shelter or in any level of housing—is a senior woman.