Ordinary Canadians may be horrified to hear reports that adolescent girls who are placed in group homes may be targeted by street gangs and lured into prostitution. Teenagers may be placed in government-funded care if they cannot live at home for any of a number of reasons. Sometimes they don’t get along with their parents or they have become unruly.
While they are supposed to be safe in group homes, that is sometimes precisely where people go to recruit them. The public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada reports that recruiters may wait outside group homes and talk to teens as they emerge. Sometimes they arrange for a teenager to be placed in the group home so that she or he can recruit from the inside.
Love and friendship used to manipulate teens
Love and friendship are the tools used to bring victims on side. Teens are carefully groomed, and then perhaps told there are debts or life-threatening situations in order to convince them into sex trafficking or prostitution.
“We know for sure that there is a problem in youth centres,” said Sandrine Ricci, a coordinator with network that promotes feminist research in Quebec universities told CBC.
With files from CBC.
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