Canada's 2010 Stolen Land Olympics' News

Human trafficking exposed at forum Olympics create demand for prostitution

Trisha Baptie “worked” on the streets and off the streets. She prostituted to feed a drug addiction, and to feed a Gucci addiction.

Now she is working to stop demand and normalization of human trafficking and demand for prostitution.

“It was never the law that raped and beat me,” she told a crowd, while holding back tears, but staying strong. “As a society, do we think men should be able to pay to sexually access women’s bodies?”

In the only speaking engagement outside of Vancouver, Michelle Miller - Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity (REED), Trisha Baptie - Experiential Voices Educating (EVE), Cherry Smiley - Aboriginal Women’s’ Action Network (AWAN) along with Kate Quinn, Executive Director of the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton (PAAFE), spoke last Wednesday at the Sherwood Park Alliance Church about putting a stop to human trafficking and prostitution.

A panel of experts spoke to Sherwood Park residents about stopping human trafficking and abolishing prostitution. Human trafficking is happening in the community, and the upcoming Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver exacerbate the problem, the panel found.

The women advocated the Swedish or Nordic model, which clearly identifies prostitution as violence against women, decriminalizes “selling”, and criminalizes the buying of sex, including a public education campaign and increased exit strategies for women.

The average age women are recruited into becoming prostitutes is 14; of those in prostitution, 92 per cent in five surveyed countries, including Canada, said they wanted out of the business.

Miller said prostitution is paid rape, not a transaction, and that it disproportionately affects women of colour, especially Aboriginal women in Canada. She said women who have already suffered sexual assault are more likely to become prostitutes.