Montreal, October 13, 2010 – Teenage girls and young women from Quebec are falling prey to violent sex traffickers, but a prevention education program is warning vulnerable youth that they could become victims.
Cinderella’s Silence: A Story of Gang Prostitution, is a prevention education program first launched in 2002. Targeted at youth ages 12-18, the education program teaches them about tactics used by street gangs to recruit young girls into prostitution and the warning signs that someone may be exploited.
“Educating at-risk youth about the tactics of sex traffickers is key to protecting them,” said Benjamin Perrin, author of Invisible Chains: Canada’s Underground World of Human Trafficking. “The Cinderella’s Silence program in Quebec is an example of how Quebec children are being protected and I hope other provinces adopt it.”
Perrin made these comments at a Montreal book launch today. He explained that while this project is promising, Quebec is still failing to protect victims of human trafficking.
“A lack of any provincial system to coordinate services resulted in an 11-year-old child being locked in the Montreal Immigration Holding Centre for a month,” explained Perrin. “This child had been recruited to Quebec for the purposes of sexual exploitation. It is appalling to see a young child victim of human trafficking detained in segregation.”
Prosecutors in Quebec have also demonstrated a reluctance to lay human trafficking charges under the Criminal Code in a number of cases, and have a poor record of allowing for weak sentences to be recommended at trial, according to statistics compiled for Invisible Chains.
Human trafficking involves the sexual exploitation and forced labour of a diverse array of victims: Canadian citizens and newcomers, adults and children, women and men.
Invisible Chains is the first book ever published to expose the issue of human trafficking in Canada. The book is based on a three-year investigation and documents cases reported by police, provincial officials, immigration, and non-governmental organizations as well as accounts from victims and their families. It also evaluates Canada’s response and makes specific recommendations. More information about the book and human trafficking in Canada is available at www.endmoderndayslavery.ca.
Benjamin Perrin is an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, Faculty of Law, a faculty fellow at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, and a leading expert on human trafficking. As a senior policy adviser and a witness before several Parliamentary committees, he has advised the federal government on this issue. He has also worked overseas with victims and assisted in the prosecution of child sex offenders as executive director of The Future Group, a non-governmental organization that he founded in 2000 to combat human trafficking. In 2009, Perrin was honoured by Hillary Clinton and the U.S. State Department as a “hero acting to end modern-day slavery” – the first Canadian to be recognized by this award.
For Perrin’s picture and cover of book, visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/invisiblechains.
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Media Inquiries:
Barbara Bower, Senior Publicist, Penguin Group (Canada)
416-928-2405, Barbara.Bower@ca.penguingroup.com
Rita Schaffer, 514-937-1039, ritapublicity@videotron.ca
