Richard Lautens/Toronto Star via Getty Images Doug Downey is sworn in as Ontario Attorney General in Toronto on June 20, 2019.

TORONTO — When the man who had forced Charlotte* to stay in the sex trade was arrested in 2015, she had no assets to her name. He had been taking all her paycheques and her payments from the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP).

“He just completely tarnished everything I worked for and everything that I had,” Charlotte, whose real name cannot be used due to a tribunal-ordered publication ban, told HuffPost Canada.

“It was very, very traumatizing. It scars you.”

Charlotte’s lawyer, David Shellnutt, applied for funding through Ontario’s Criminal Injuries Compensation Board (CICB) in 2018. The GTA mother-of-two got $30,000 later that year.

“It helped me a lot,” Charlotte said. “It was good to know that, obviously what happened to me was horrible, and the government was willing to at least give me a new starting point.”

She was able to pay off the debt from loans and phone bills that accumulated while she was being trafficked and bought a car, so that she can take her two young kids to school and to the park.

PCs cap funding for pain and suffering

When Shellnutt told Charlotte that Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government was getting rid of the CICB and capping pain and suffering payments at $5,000 in the meantime, she said her heart sank for future applicants.

“I feel like $5,000 is just gonna be like a slap in the face,” she said.

“It’s for their benefit,” Charlotte said of the Ontario government that will save money from the decision. “It’s not for us. It’s like basically shutting us up and saying, ‘We don’t give a crap about you.’”