Teen girls at the centre of alleged prostitution ring likely themselves victims: prof

As Ottawa police search for a third teenage girl believed to have pimped out peers as young as 13, observers say there is a high likelihood the girls accused of running a local prostitution ring have been victimized themselves.

The “shocking” case, as police have called it, turns the conventional idea of prostitution and human trafficking on its head, but those who study sexual exploitation and work with the exploited were not at all surprised when they heard that two 15-year-old Ottawa girls were charged with human trafficking and a slew of other related charges over the weekend.

“Certainly it raises the suspicion that the young women involved have themselves been prostituted in the past and are now getting out of the situation they find themselves in by saying ‘We’re going to be the ones making the money out of this,’” said Janine Benedet, a University of British Columbia law professor who researches sexual violence against women.

Police have said there is no evidence the girls were acting on behalf of an adult when they lured three other girls, ages 13 to 17, to a home in Ottawa’s east end via social media and then drove them to another place for the purpose of prostitution on three occasions. But Ms. Benedet said she “reserves a healthy degree of skepticism as to whether there are not in fact adults behind this.”

“But the real question is why are we not arresting the men who are buying?” she said. “In terms of the perpetrators, I’d like to see some accountability of the men who know. If we’re talking about a 13-year-old girl here, there is no mistaking that this is someone who is very, very young.”

Cases of girls acting as pimps or at very least lures in larger human trafficking networks are unusual but not unheard of, experts say. In fact, they have been on the rise in recent years, said Norma Ramos of the Coalition against Trafficking in Women.

In 2010, a 14-year-old Chilliwack, B.C., girl was charged with procuring a minor into prostitution after she was found to be posing as an 18-year-old, selling sexual services on Craigslist and recruiting other minors to join her.

Glendyne Gerrard, director of anti-prostitution organization Defend Dignity, said she knows a girl who came from an abusive background, had worked on the streets and was in survival mode when she decided to become a pimp. “Gangs were involved, but she did indeed pimp out the girls,” Ms. Gerrard said in an email. “Nothing she is proud of today.”

Ms. Ramos said she sees “the hand of an adult” somewhere in the Ottawa case.

“Children are not going to do this on their own, particularly in this organized fashion,” she said. Young people nowadays can be used by traffickers to lure other young people into sex work, she said. A common ruse is to get an attractive teenage male to woo a vulnerable teenage girl into a courtship and then ask her to “do one little thing” for him.

“It’s usually a function of a very calculated move on the part of the traffickers,” she said. “It would be very critical not to underestimate the level of calculation and pre-planning that’s being employed here.”

Details beyond the charges are scarce as Ottawa police remain tight-lipped. Ottawa Police Staff Sergeant John McGetrick said the victims and accused were “vaguely” known to each other online and that all criminal activity took place in Ottawa.

One of the 15-year-old accused appeared in court Tuesday and the other is due in court Wednesday. The 17-year-old suspect is still at large.

Ottawa Police rarely deal with human trafficking cases — Staff Sgt. McGetrick said he’s only aware of one or two ongoing cases —and the young age of those involved in this one makes it all the more unheard of.

“I liased with the RCMP who are kind of the leaders on this and they certainly weren’t aware of anything [similar across the country] in a cursory check of their data,” he said. “Like I said, it’s shocking.”