Police from 26 different forces spent months investigating human trafficking culminating in the rescue of 18 women and the arrest of nine people suspected of forcing them into the sex trade.
The nine face 33 charges including forcible confinement, assault, human trafficking, uttering threats, making and distributing child pornography and others.
One police sergeant said vulnerable people such as those newly arrived in Canada are often the targets of exploitation. Police in several cities interviewed hundreds of women. Some of them were as young as 15.
Men had threatened man of them with violence, extortion and drug dependency to coerce them to sell sex. Part or all of the money they made was kept by their pimps, said a police news release. It added,” Although the Criminal Code section refers to this activity as Human Trafficking, the public may better understand this issue as sex slavery.”
The women were given information to help them find support agencies that would help them.
The public broadcaster,CBC interviewed a woman who described how she was lured into prostitution in Toronto by a member of a gang from the eastern province of Nova Scotia.
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