Hamilton police helped her escape human trafficking. Now she’s rebuilding her life

She remembers hearing shouts of get down, get down" before her captors started running.

She wondered if they were being robbed. Then she realized it was Hamilton police. She was being rescued.

At first, I had no idea what was happening, then I kind of felt relief," the woman remembers from that day a little over two years ago.

A police officer asked her and her friend if they wanted to come with them. Completely exhausted, she agreed. I just wanted to get out," she said.

A lot has happened in the two years since that day inside a Hamilton Airbnb rental near Ferguson Avenue North and Simcoe Street East. The man who trafficked her in the sex trade on and off for nearly two years was sentenced to four and half years in prison after pleading guilty in October 2020 to human trafficking offences. And her life has completely changed." She has an apartment, a job and is planning to go back to school to study business management.

The 22-year-old cannot be identified because of a publication ban. The Spectator has agreed not to name her trafficker because she fears for her safety if he knew she was speaking out. She wants to share her story both as a warning about how vulnerable young women are to being trafficked, but also to show victims hope. She is a survivor.

On the two-year anniversary of her rescue, the young woman sent a message to the Hamilton police human trafficking unit detective who investigated her case. Two years ago you helped me, she wrote.

It took me aback," said Det. Const. Mike MacSween. Just hearing that, it still gives me chills."

Human trafficking detectives help rescue victims, connect them with community agencies and hope things go well. But they usually don't know what happens after that.

Human trafficking is a unique crime for police. It's a police officer's job to investigate crimes and make arrests - but because human trafficking it is victim-centred, the victim gets to decide if they want to pursue charges or are not capable of going through a court process.

They are also often incredibly complex investigations. MacSween says they are like a spiderweb." Investigations can take you down many paths and involve many other types of crimes ranging from fraud, to sexual assault, to domestic violence. Court is arduous and convictions difficult.

But this case is one where everything went right.

The woman is from Quebec and met her trafficker on social media when she was 18. She was young and vulnerable: I didn't have a lot of friends ... I was frustrated with my parents."

He was full of promises: fancy cars and beautiful places. Things moved fast. She met up with him in person and they partied. Soon after he asked her to run away with him to Vancouver.

I thought about a glamorous, beautiful life," she said.

One morning she went to high school, that afternoon she was on a plane. He took her straight from the airport to a hotel and began booking clients.

She knew he and friends were in the business" and saw them with a lot of cash. It all happened so quickly she didn't really think about what was going on. She thought she would only work in the sex trade for a bit, save some money and go back to school.

But the truth was, she was trapped. She didn't know anyone. She didn't have money.

They went to Victoria, moving around a lot in short-term rentals, places that took cash. Sometimes there would be other traffickers and girls in the same place. She spoke with other women, but only about superficial things like makeup tips.

They went back and forth between Quebec and B.C.

She was completely dependent on her trafficker. He told her he loved her, but was keeping all the money.

At one point he spoke about having someone guard her while he was away. That's when she decided to flee the first time.

In Quebec she met another guy and the cycle repeated, only this guy was more violent. So she went back to her first trafficker. He promised things would be different. They were not.

Eventually they ended up in Hamilton. By this time, another woman, who she describes as her best friend, was also being trafficked. The two women were trapped in the Airbnb. She felt she was being more carefully watched. Her trafficker wanted to go back to Quebec and she was worried about being separated from her friend.

So she came up with a plan. She had seen an article about the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline. The only time they were left alone was when they were with clients, so while she was with a client she directed her friend to call.

But the traffickers came back early and she hung up. Worried the women were in immediate danger, the hotline called police dispatch, leading police to descend on the residence. When they arrived the traffickers ran, but police chased them and they were captured.

Initially both men were charged, but only the victim's main trafficker was convicted.

The victim remembers going back to the police station to give a statement. She normally didn't feel comfortable talking with police.

But I just kind of felt safe in the moment ... I was being listened to and understood," she said.

From there she was placed in a hotel, but old triggers surfaced. She moved back to B.C. and started working in the sex trade for a few weeks, this time keeping the money herself. But she knew something needed to change. She started talking to her dad again and asked for help.

She ended up spending several months in a rehabilitation program for drug addiction in Quebec. At first she felt like a ghost" and didn't talk to anyone, but slowly she started trusting people and building back her life.

Hamilton police helped her in other ways too. MacSween connected her with an organization called Project Recover that helps human trafficking survivors fix their finances; her trafficker had racked up debt under her account.

He also connected her with a Hamilton tattoo artist who, for free, covers up human trafficking tattoos. It's common for traffickers to brand their victims; in this case she had his initials surrounded by a heart.

In the last several years there has been growing awareness about the insidiousness of human trafficking and there has been significant investment in resources to help survivors. This is both encouraging and means police and other agencies have more and more cases, MacSween said.

The victim says she wants others to have hope that they too can escape, that there are people and organizations that can help.

It was, at the beginning hard, now I have a different perspective in life," she said. It feels great knowing that (I'm working) for me and not for anyone, just for me."

Nicole O'Reilly is a crime and justice reporter at The Spectator. noreilly@thespec.com