She’d been coerced into prostitution, seized from one procurer by another, stupefied with drugs, beaten, isolated. Flesh branded with the nickname of her pimp to declare his ownership. Because control is hand and glove with exploitation.

The young woman, a university student in Toronto, was advertised on numerous sex websites and sent on call-outs.

Dazed and benumbed by what had happened to her over a matter of months.

Memory and cognition blurred by the noxious substances administered.

These are police allegations, not yet tested in court.

The first pimp — and there may have been love there, misplaced, twisted — was angry that she’d dared to complain about her mistreatment, the physical abuse and drugging. He relinquished her to a fellow traveller. “I’m the guy who’s going to save you from this guy. You’re going to be working for me now.”

But she fell into the same trap because there was no salvation, just another tormentor and he was worse, hauling her to a tattoo parlour while she was barely sentient for the pricking of her skin.

Both men had attended the same school and were involved in the local rap video scene. But running an illicit sex ring was apparently easier than trafficking in drugs and weapons. “There’s a lack of respect for women in general in that world,” said Det. Const. Corrado Rabbito, of the Toronto Police human trafficking unit. “It’s the norm. Trafficking — and it’s not just men doing it — is like having a commodity that will make you rich. Drugs and guns, you have to keep getting more to sell, but a human being can keep on giving.”

Read more:

Toronto police arrest two men in separate human trafficking cases

How a Canadian law meant to protect sex workers is making it harder for them to stay safe

Two GTA men arrested in human-trafficking case allegedly drugged woman, tattooed pimp’s name on her body

In a moment of clarity, a flush of self-preservation, the 22-year-old told her parents and they told police. But weeks passed, trust gently nurtured, before the woman agreed to be interviewed by Rabbito.

“She was so much under his control,” said Rabbito, who never applied pressure that could have spooked the fragile student. “She’d been forced to use extreme amounts of drugs. She disclosed to us the horrors she’d been through” — at times, rendered unconscious by the drugs and alcohol. “It took courage to get away from him, to come forward.”

It was then, in late January, that investigators identified a suspect, their search for the alleged pimp — the woman’s second “owner” — extending from Ontario to British Columbia. In February, Simon Ho-On, 23, was arrested and charged with nine sex-trafficking crimes in relation to the student.

A news release about Ho-On’s arrest brought other complainants out of the shadows. There are now three alleged victims and several more witnesses who police say were able to corroborate the alleged incidents. They’ve spoken to investigators as well.

On May 29, Ho-On was hit with 17 more human trafficking-related charges. Ho-On, with a cluster of small tattoos on his own face — his street name, Sosa, was inked onto the skin of the university student, Rabbito said, like a trademark — was denied bail at his first court appearance and had no lawyer at his second. The charges include assault, sexual assault, voyeurism, procuring, exercising control, trafficking in persons by recruits, threatening death and threatening bodily harm. He remains in custody.

None of the women can be identified. Police continue looking for more alleged victims.

The student, who police say was at times rendered unconscious by the drugs and alcohol, may not be typical of an alleged victim of sex trafficking, yet the grooming is of a piece. It’s difficult to understand the early stages of a bright young woman lured into a perilous predicament. “Some do it out of love, some do it out of a need for acceptance,” said Rabbito, who’s been with the human trafficking unit for three and a half years. “Then the love turns into control, coercion and manipulation.”

Encouraging women to break free of hell requires patience and compassion. “We don’t put pressure on them to get out of the game, because what you’re doing is rebuilding a person’s mind and soul. It’s baby steps.”

The unit has averaged 59 cases annually between 2014 and 2018, from a high of 77 in 2016 to a low of 46 in 2018, with 284 occurrences investigated over that span. The recent drop-off does not, however, mean that human trafficking is on the decline. The number of suspected victims has actually increased, from 33 in 2014 to 60 last year. More than a dozen individuals have been arrested on human trafficking-related charges by Toronto police so far this year.

It is a widely under-reported crime, due to fear of the victims that they will be prosecuted and punished for their activities, the vulnerability of their situation, a distrust of authorities and intimidation by their exploiters.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“Victims are coming forward,” said Rabbito. “They want help from police and we try to give them the resources they need.”

Nationally, the RCMP’s human trafficking coordination centre reports that charges were laid in 531 cases between 2005 and 2018. Of those, 143 resulted in convictions with, as of the end of May, 314 still before the courts.

Human trafficking is identified as the recruitment, transportation, harbouring and/or exercising of control, direction or influence over the movements of a person in order to exploit that person.

Just last week, a multilingual 24-hour national hotline — more than 200 languages spoken, including Indigenous tongues — was launched as an initiative of the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, funded by the federal government to the tune of $14.5 million for the next five years.

A Statistics Canada study in 2018, based on police-reported incidents through to 2016, found that 95 per cent of human trafficking victims were women, 72 per cent were under the age of 25 and 26 per cent were younger than 18. Two-thirds of the reported incidents occurred in Ontario.

Human trafficking is a scourge that would surely sensibly engage not just law enforcement but those who advocate on behalf of sex-trade workers. Yet several agencies and activists from within that community are troubled by the hotline, specifically, warning that it promotes stereotypes about sex workers and migrants as trafficking victims, endangering their human and labour rights.

“We are concerned that the hotline and the work of the centre will increase the stigma and surveillance facing sex workers and migrants who will be forced underground and away from services,” said a news release, one of whose signatories is Jenny Duffy, vice-chair of the board of directors at Maggie’s: The Toronto Sex Workers Action Project.

“We’re focused on building real relationships with those work in erotic labour, encouraging them to talk to us about their experience, rather than forcing them to come forward as victims,” the statement continued. “A big issue with the hotline is that it doesn’t distinguish between sex work and human trafficking.”

Duffy and others are worried the hotline will prompt third-party complaints from members of the public who might think there’s something going on at a particular location, such as a massage parlour. That, in turn, would draw investigative attention by law enforcement against vulnerable subgroups — trans, youth, migrants — with the latter at risk of extraneous charges and deportation.

“These are people who already feel the need to isolate themselves, which puts up barriers to accessing public services and health care,” said Duffy. “They’ll be even more exposed to unwarranted searches. They see police not as protectors but rather as aggressors.”

Yet Rabbito, who has sat on discussion panels with many of these same sex-trade advocates, argues that the human trafficking unit is not concerned with individuals who are willing participants in the industry.

“Independent sex trade workers have a choice,” he said. “They’re not the people we deal with, ever. We will not process charges against anyone doing it by their own volition.”

Rabbito points out that prostitution in Canada is essentially legal, with some restrictions on solicitation. That’s a far cry from human trafficking and exploitation by violent pimps who force their vassals into slave-sex work. Those women want to escape.

“It’s them rescuing themselves. All we are is a conduit to help them do that.”