Human-trafficking trial underway in Cayuga
She thought she was taking her first steps toward a modelling career. Instead, the victim of an alleged human-trafficking scheme says she was forced into the sex trade.
The victim, a 20-year-old Brantford woman who cannot be named due to a publication ban, has been testifying for more than a week at the trial of four of her alleged traffickers in Cayuga superior court.
Three men and one woman, all of Caledonia, are accused of profiting off the victim's sex work in late 2019.
They all pleaded not guilty before Justice Robert J. Nightingale.
A 27-year-old Caledonia woman also charged with human trafficking will be tried separately.
The accused were arrested in January 2020 after a Haldimand OPP investigation led officers to a home in Caledonia. Officers seized drugs and drug paraphernalia, replica guns and ammunition.
Crown lawyer Susan Orlando from Ontario's Human Trafficking Prosecution Team said in her opening statement last month that the victim was ensnared by a drug dealer she met in the summer of 2019.
Orlando said the victim, 17 at the time, sometimes performed sexual acts on the dealer - who was 15 years her senior - in exchange for drugs.
According to Orlando, the victim's then-boyfriend told her the dealer had helped other girls get into modelling - the young woman's lifelong dream - and she was hopeful" he could get her into that industry.
Days after the victim turned 18, the dealer allegedly introduced her to two of his friends, whom she later met at a Cambridge hotel in early October 2019.
By this time, she thought she was in a romantic relationship with the dealer, and when one of his friends took photos of her in lingerie at the hotel, she assumed it was to do with modelling work.
Instead, Orlando told the court, the photos were used in advertisements for sexual services, with the victim given a pseudonym and told to provide a boyfriend experience" to clients.
Thus began a period of several months where the victim says she performed sexual acts on an average of eight to 10 men per day at various hotels in southwestern Ontario while being plied with drugs.
She turned over all the money she made to the accused, who told her the money she was earning was being saved up to buy a house for them all to share and for trips, including a trip to Paris, France," Orlando told the court.
But in the meantime, her minders monitored her phone use and installed a hidden camera in at least one of the motel rooms, while dismissing complaints that her insides were killing her" as a result of the work, Orlando said.
The victim eventually contacted police in January 2020 while at a hotel in Guelph. Officers picked her up and the OPP investigation began.
On Monday, the defence lawyer for one of the accused pointed out what she said were inconsistencies between the woman's testimony, and her past statements to police and at the pretrial hearing.
Lawyer Laura Giordano suggested the woman invented several incriminating conversations and pointed out that it was in fact her idea to go to a motel the night she allegedly saw her first clients.
But it wasn't my idea to go into the motel room and start selling myself," the woman replied.
The trial is scheduled to end April 15, with several civilian and police witnesses still to testify.
J.P. Antonacci's reporting on Haldimand and Norfolk is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. jpantonacci@thespec.com