Most stories about human trafficking that make it into the headlines in Canada involve women from other countries being brought here and forced into sex work, but those who work with trafficking victims in this country say the majority are, in fact, Canadian-born teenage girls.

Vanessa, 18, is one of them. She was a typical high school student in Mississauga, a city just west of Toronto, until two years ago, when she fell in with a new boy who enrolled at her school.

"Right from the beginning, he knew ... I was the one that was, I guess, vulnerable," said Vanessa, who is using a pseudonym to protect her identity.

"I'm very kind of submissive to people. He always kinda told me what to do, and I would do it."

One day, a car showed up with two men in it whom she didn't know. Her friend asked her to get in, and she did.

"I was still in my school uniform," she said.

As they drove to a motel on a strip of Dundas Street East in Mississauga, one of the men told her she could make a lot of money doing sex work. Vanessa said she was unsure and scared but felt pressured to go along with it because the two men were friends of the boy she knew.

"At that time, I didn't try to understand what was going on," she said. "My friend promised me all these things that I felt that I needed — a stable place, money in my hands. It was kind of part of me wanting to do it and see if I could get something better, and then a bigger part was that I was already there and I can't really say no anymore."

Most trafficking victims are Canadian

Peel Regional Police say 60 per cent of all reported human trafficking cases in Canada occur in the densely populated Greater Toronto Area.

Girls are recruited in various ways — at school, on Instagram, at the mall. Most continue to live at home while carrying out sex work at local motels or condominiums.

According to police, human trafficking doesn't have to involve the crossing of a border. Any forced recruitment, confinement or transportation of a person for the purposes of exploitation falls under the Criminal Code definition of trafficking. Trafficking for sexual exploitation is just one form of the crime. Others include forced labour and domestic servitude.

More than 90 per cent of the victims of sex trafficking within Canada come from Canada, according to government statistics,

Vanessa's story is typical, says Jennifer Keeler, a nurse practitioner at Chantel's Place, a sexual assault support centre in Mississauga.

"Human trafficking targets young adolescents trying to fit in," Keeler says. "They are vulnerable to someone giving them attention."

Traffickers know exactly what to say to manipulate girls, says Katarina MacLeod, a former prostitute and trafficking victim from the same area as Vanessa.

They're even targeting girls not usually considered high risk.

"You have these guys making regular girls feel special, buying them things and taking them shopping," MacLeod said. "And the girls fall for it hook, line and sinker … [The men] know exactly how to build dependence."

MacLeod said traffickers are targeting young and younger girls these days.

"Girls as young as 13 are getting recruited in," she said.

'He didn't smell nice'

The men who took Vanessa to the motel first took photos of her to use in ads for her services. They gave her a cellphone and told her to use it to negotiate with her first client as they watched. She settled on $40 for five minutes of unspecified sexual activity.

"He was older, probably in his late 40s … He wasn't dressed well. He didn't smell nice or anything," she said.

"I just kinda dealt with him because I thought five minutes wasn't anything. But now, I realized how stupid that was."

One of the men ordered Vanessa to turn over the money she made.

"He was like, 'I paid for the room so you have to give me everything,' so I just gave him all I made," she said.

Unlike sex workers who have chosen the trade, trafficking victims rarely get to keep the money they bring in. And they have little say over what sex acts they perform.

Peel Regional Police estimate a trafficked girl working daily can bring in up to $280,000 per year. For pimps who have multiple girls, the earnings are often divided among a team of traffickers, minus expenses for motels and the ads they take out to market the girls.

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