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.
Perrin’s work on human trafficking started in 2000 as a conversation with friends at a lake in the Ontario about problems around the world. Instead of just talking about the problem, he decided to do something about it. Within a year, he was leading a group of Canadians on a mission to Cambodia to work with local organizations to improve the response to the problem. Working directly with survivors as young as nine years old and regularly seeing so-called “child sex tourists” from developing countries there to abuse these children, Perrin’s motivation to act only grew.
In 2003, while Perrin was still active in supporting efforts to combat the problem of sex trafficking in Cambodia, he was shocked to learn of a case of human trafficking in his hometown of Calgary, Alberta. The case, dubbed “Operation Relaxation” by police, exposed the problem of human trafficking in an ordinary neighbourhood and spurred Perrin to investigate the issue and encourage greater action to prosecute traffickers, protect victims and prevent the problem from expanding. Since then, he has been at the forefront of the issue in Canada to reform laws and improve policies related to the issue as well as supporting local responses.
Invisible Chains is the culmination of a decade of work by Perrin in raising the voice of victims of modern-day slavery and is a call to action for Canadians.
