[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, November 26, 1996
.1258 
[English]
The Chair: Again, we're carrying on with Bill C-27. Today we have, from the Ministry of Children and Families, Government of British Columbia, Cherry Kingsley, who is coordinator of the youth involvement project and about whom we've heard a great deal already.
Did you know that, Cherry?
Ms Cherry Kingsley (Coordinator, Youth Involvement Project, Ministry of Children and Families, Government of British Columbia): No, I didn't know that. Nice things, I hope.
The Chair: Yes, we know all about you.
We also have, from the Prostitution, Education, Empowerment and Resource Society, Megan Lewis, who is the chair of that organization.
I want to welcome both of you. We will be happy to hear your presentations and then we'll have questions.
Ms Kingsley: I want to thank you for the invitation to come before you and present, hopefully, a helpful perspective on the issue of child prostitution.
I think each person was given an outline. It's not a complete paper. It's an outline of what I want to present today. I know we're running behind, so in case I don't get to everything I want to give an outline. I will actually send a supplementary paper next week.
Included as well is a preliminary report, because recently in Victoria there was quite an extensive consultation with sex-trade workers in Victoria. There were about 75 interviews, each one about three hours in length. There will be a lot of information coming from that. That's a preliminary report I wanted to give people.
.1300
I now work for the ministry, helping to coordinate youth involvement in the development of policy, programs and services, and in the restructuring of child welfare that's happening in B.C. I try to organize the participation and involvement of street youth, juvenile sex-trade workers, native youth, youth in care, a lot of the hard-to-reach, marginalized, high-risk young people. I try to organize their participation and involvement in the restructuring process of child welfare. That's what I do now.
I actually come from an abusive family. My family was violent and sexually abusive, alcoholic, and neglectful. I lived with my mom and my step dad until I was ten. My mom is first nations, from the Secwepemc nation - Shuswap I guess people know them as - of Alkali Lake in British Columbia. My step dad is really my dad, I guess, because he's been my father since I was two. I lived with them until I was ten, and then I was apprehended by the state. I was in care for about two or three years before becoming a permanent ward, and then I stayed in care until I was eighteen. I stayed not necessarily in care, but in the places they put me. But I was a ward until I was eighteen.
In that time I had actually twenty placements. When I was fourteen I was introduced to drugs, street life and prostitution. I became a prostitute at the age of fourteen. I was turned out, which is what they call it, by a pimp, a nineteen-year-old guy. At the time I was in care in Calgary and I was taken to Vancouver. I didn't know anyone in Vancouver. I didn't know the city. Because of that he was able to really isolate me and keep me with him. I didn't know people; I didn't know the city. And because prostitutes are looked at as criminals or deviants, I certainly wasn't going to ask the police for help. He was very violent and some of the clients were violent. I felt as though I was the criminal, so I didn't feel I could ask the police or anyone for help, or that the justice system was a place of refuge for me at the time. I didn't feel that way.
That is how I was introduced to the trade.
I want to talk a little bit about some of my experiences and those of my friends, because I was involved in the sex trade from the age of about 14 until I was 22. Then I want to talk about what I perceive to be Canada's obligations in some of the domestic issues and what I think the role could be internationally. In a roundabout way I address Bill C-27, but I think I go beyond that as well.
Then Megan will give her presentation, and afterwards we can have a question-and-answer session, if that's okay with everyone.
I think people are conditioned to be exploited. When we look at prevention in terms of the sexual exploitation of children, I think we need to look at child abuse, child sexual abuse, neglect, children living in poverty, and things like that. I think those are all factors that go into the conditioning of children. In my family I wasn't sexually abused; my sister was sexually abused. I was beat up, physically abused, all the time. I was locked in closets, locked in a basement, stuff like that. It was really horrible; it was horrendous. My perception of things then was that my step dad really loved my sister and hated me. I perceived the sexual abuse as being some kind of love.
.1305
Then when I was 14 and a sex-trade worker, I didn't think these people loved me or anything like that, but I thought it was okay. I don't know how to explain it. I don't want to say that prostitution is empowerment, but I felt that for the first time I had a role in negotiating what happened to my body. I could negotiate what happened with people. As well, I got money for it, and I had never been given money for people hurting me before, so it seemed somehow a step up from things that had been going on. It seemed as though abuse was going to happen anyway, so this was a way to at least control what was happening and to have some money. Through this I could at least gain maybe a fragment of independence and power in that situation.
It's not empowerment, by any means, but everything being relative, it felt like a step up. There is a lot of abuse in the care system, and I never felt any kind of power or control over my life. When I was at home I certainly didn't feel that, or when I was in care, and I felt as though I was now getting some power and control over my body and my life. I had at least a role in negotiating what happened, and I was certainly conditioned to accept that kind of treatment. I viewed my body as a commodity, not just for money, but for shelter, for food, and for affection. I viewed my body as a way of protection. I could avoid a beating from people, things like that. It's not just purely an exchange of money.
I think we have to look at exploitation as trading our bodies for a lot of different things. A lot of young people, before they ever become prostitutes, will have had those kinds of experiences, will have traded their bodies for shelter or for food or something like that prior to engaging in money transactions.
My clients tended to be businessmen. They were teachers, lawyers, bankers, businessmen. They were fathers and they were husbands. They were pillars of society. I think sometimes the stereotype is that clients are somehow visible deviants, that you can spot them; you can just look at them and recognize who these people are. But it's not true. They were the pillars of society. A lot of them had respectable jobs, respectable roles.
I'm glad there's so much attention being given to the issue right now, because a lot of them didn't think it was abuse. They didn't think they were exploiting anyone. But that's what I was there for basically.
A lot of the young boys thought it was like a rite of passage. When you turn 17 or 18 you go and buy a prostitute. That's your introduction into manhood or into adult sexuality. It's a rite of passage. I think that's the way it's presented in society. There were times when I had a father bring his son and he thought he was buying him a present. That is sometimes how it is presented.
.1310
When I was out there I was subject to an immense amount of violence, harassment, marginalization and hatred. Carloads of teenagers would drive around throwing pennies at me, throwing eggs at me, calling me names like ``whore''.
Police would of course harass us. They would move us out of residential areas or away from businesses. If we were standing near a restaurant, they didn't want us to stand where the people eating in the restaurant could see us. They wanted us in the darker places, in the alleys. We were really in danger in those places. It was easier for people to hurt us and beat us up.
We're a lot more vulnerable in situations like that. There's just a lot of violence out there. There's violence from pimps, violence from clients, sometimes violence from police, violence from people just driving around throwing things at us.
A lot of my male friends encounter an incredible amount of violence against them. There's a lot of ``fag bashers''. Carloads of people from the suburbs just come and beat them up with sticks. They have the double stigma of the perception of being gay and being prostitutes. And they certainly don't have the protection of police or anything like that. They are reviled by the police and by communities. So they don't have any protection from anybody.
The other thing is the role that pimps played when I was working. I know that people want to see them purely as criminals, as these people who are evil. It's true. They are exploiting some very vulnerable people, but there's more to it than that.
Girls work for a pimp. There are strolls that are more organized, where pimps own different corners, and that's where their girls work. You'll find the girls are less vulnerable to violent clients, because usually they're looking out for each other. Sometimes a pimp will be watching what's going on and who they go with. There's usually a place they take their clients to. Perhaps they all share a motel room or an apartment. They all watch out for each other, because the pimp wants them to make money.
It's not true that their pimp will drug them up. A pimp might give them some drugs, but usually he doesn't want them to be an addict. He wants them to make money, and drugs cost a lot of money, so he actually prefers if they don't spend their money on drugs. He will give them a little bit, but he will actually try to keep them off drugs, keep them healthy, give them regular check-ups, keep them in nice clothes.
I only stayed with a pimp for the first year. Later on when I was a renegade - a girl without a pimp - I found we were doing our clients in cars or in dark parking lots or parks. We were much more subject to violence. We didn't necessarily have a regular place that we took our clients to. So if we went missing, no one would even really notice, if ever...it would be at least a couple of days, minimum, before anyone would notice. It's not a situation where someone would notice right away.
.1315
We didn't have someone pushing us to stay clean, off drugs, to be more professional. We were a lot less organized.
I had a serious addiction from the age of about 15 to 22 to heroin and cocaine. I was an IV drug user for a long time. That's one of the things that trapped me in that profession, as well as the stigma and the marginalization.
One of the things I found that was so hard when I was exiting from the trade was people just don't like you. If you've been a prostitute, I find women are really mean to you. They don't like you. Men either want to continue the exploitation or they don't like you either. People just don't like you.
Parents don't want you going to school with their children. People don't really want you in their community. They wish you would just stay where you are and quit working, quit doing drugs, but just stay there. They build these substandard housing places for us like foster homes, shelters, or institutions that deal with a multitude of populations, not just specifically sex-trade workers.
So they don't in any way really meet any of our specific needs or our sensitivities, or our counselling or addiction needs. That's another issue I'll get into.
There were so many difficulties with exiting because of the addiction, because of the stigma of what I had been and where I had been, because of the marginalization, because I didn't have any work skills.
I didn't know what to do with myself really. I ended up doing this. Some of my friends joke and say I never really left the life anyway; I just have a different role. Now I spend my time consulting with my friends and asking them what they think should happen. Then I come and talk to people and say this is what should happen.
I just wanted to give you a brief overview of some of my experiences, some of my issues, and some of what I've seen and felt. I want to get into some recommendations and into the role that I see ideally Canada could have domestically and internationally.
The first thing I want to talk about is amending the Criminal Code to reflect the idea that children are victims. In the transaction where sex is traded for money, shelter, or food, children are being exploited, children are being victimized...and reflecting that in the Criminal Code, so that is addressed in Bill C-27.
I don't know if people have addressed this or are planning to address it, but currently they're still criminalized. It's still a crime to solicit. The act of prostitution itself isn't criminalized, but soliciting and procuring and all that...the fact still remains that young people still are criminalized. There are young people currently in custody in young offender centres for that crime. They've been tried for soliciting and they are serving time for that reason.
If they're truly victims, then we need to reflect that in the Criminal Code. Just as we don't criminalize a victim of assault, then we wouldn't criminalize children in that circumstance, and certainly we wouldn't incarcerate them for that. So I think we need to differentiate between who are criminals in that situation.
.1320
We certainly need to target for prosecution the people who profit from that industry. Right away we think of pimps, we think of escort agencies or massage parlours. A lot of the bars that people work out of cater to this. There are those ``no-tell'' motels and hotels that cater to that industry. We need to look at this as well.
They charge those young people for everything. They make a lot of money off the backs of the young people. Young people will use them because they can then stay somewhat invisible, out of the public eye.
When we think of prostitution or sexual exploitation, the image that comes to our mind is people standing on the street corner. For the juveniles, they actually have to stay out of public view a lot of the time, unless they can look older. The ones who look young will tend to work out of bars, hotels, or restaurants.
I remember when I first started, even before I actually hit the street, the first few times I ever pulled dates was out of restaurants I knew I could go to. The owners set up the dates for me.
The Criminal Code needs to recognize and address these things. The justice system needs to address all the other places that profit from child exploitation.
The second issue is the abuse that takes place prior to the exploitation, such as sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect. I think we need to address it in a real way in the justice system. Legally we need to address it, because it's the whole conditioning...it creates the place, the community and the society for violence against children, for the sexual abuse of children. That's where it all begins; that's where it happens. Because we don't address it in a real legal way, those people exploit other children, beyond their own children. They go and buy children, rent children, whatever.
A community that tolerates or turns a deaf ear to the victimization of children in their own homes certainly is more likely to tolerate the sexual exploitation of children as well. So we also need to challenge communities to address those issues in a more real way. Of course, services are needed to rehabilitate children...easier access to counselling, to shelter so we can deal with the conditioning that has happened to them before they entered the trade.
From what little research does exist we know that 99% of the people who are in the trade have been abused. That's not to say that all people who have been abused go to work as prostitutes, but almost all prostitutes have been abused. That's where they come from. So we know that already.
We need to establish some kind of policy. We need to draw some kind of easy-to-remember, easy-to-identify line similar to the zero tolerance of violence against women. Because of that policy, because of that statement of morality or whatever, police can go into a home. They're not reliant on the consent of the woman. They can lay charges on their own. They can remove the man from the home.
There are safe houses in every community built on that premise. There is a sensitization of the courts and of the court process because of the zero tolerance of violence against women. There are counselling centres and rape crisis centres. This whole support system is built on the premise of zero tolerance. So I think we need something similar to that for children, zero tolerance of exploitation and violence against children or something like that.
.1325
The problem is too that people don't know when to intervene. It's up to everyone's own interpretation or tolerance of what violence is, what abuse is, what exploitation is. If we just have a line that says none of it is okay, then people will know when to intervene. I think a lot of times teachers and doctors and neighbours don't know at what point to step in. If we just say that none of it is allowed, I think people would make that phone call to social services or to the police a lot sooner. They know what line is drawn.
When we're looking at giving evidence, currently the whole enforcement problem around the procuring of children for sex has been that it's reliant almost completely on the testimony of the young people. That's really difficult because they're scared, because they're not connected to the justice system, because they're afraid - all of that. We need to work out something so that it's not just reliant upon the testimony of the young person, or if it is, that they get a lot of support to walk through the process so that it's easier for them to give evidence in those situations.
We need a lot more research. So little is known about the whole industry. We have stereotypes of who pimps are, who victims are, who the clients are, but we need some real research to develop some real profiles of those people, of where exploitation takes place, how it takes place, what contributes to the exploitation industry. We need a lot of research. We need research on rehabilitating the young people who have been involved in the trade. We just need to know so much more.
The perception is that it's primarily a female issue, but the reality is that there are a lot of men. There are a lot of boys involved, and they're so invisible because they have so many stigmas attached to them because of the homosexuality component. They have the double stigma of the homosexual component and the prostitution component. Then there's this whole thing about AIDS as well. They're so vulnerable to AIDS, which carries a lot of stigma as well. So they are really invisible.
We need to find out about them and we need to help them. In order to help them, we need to find out where this takes place. They're not as public. They're not as likely to stand on a main street. They're not as likely to stand outside where everyone can see them. It's a lot more hidden. We need to shine light in those dark places and we need to do research on it. We need to support people to do research on that.
I think we need to support programs. Right now in Canada there aren't any programs that specialize in serving that population. There are shelters, but they serve everyone, whoever needs shelter, and they tend to be seven-day to thirty-day stays. That's not adequate to address the needs of this population.
Detox places or addiction treatment centres don't deal with all of the other needs of that population. They don't get their needs met there, and it doesn't address their protection issues. They may need a lot of protection. They might be fleeing an agency or a pimp or something. It doesn't address any of that.
Counselling services, health clinics - nowhere. There is no specialized service for that population, and they have such specialized needs. There's nothing. We need to develop a service for them that addresses their needs. We need to develop a residential service that has some of their training needs, some of their long-term counselling and support needs, and some of their protection issues. I could go on and on, but we need to develop something.
.1330
We need young people involved in the identification of all the different issues and in the development of services, policies, legislation, and initiatives that address that issue. We need their participation because they are victims, that's true, but if we see them solely as victims... I don't want to be looked at as just a victim. I want a more active role than that. I don't want to be just a passive recipient of whatever service gets developed. I want more power than that.
I've always been under somebody's control. When I lived at home and had these abusive parents, when I was in care and when I was living on the street, I was always under someone else's control. It seemed as though I didn't have any rights over my body. So whatever process we develop for addressing the issue needs to be at least somewhat empowering, because that's the core issue - they have no power over their bodies and their lives.
We need to involve them, because we don't have the answers. We don't seem to understand all of the issues or how to address them. We need to have them involved. They have an expertise that is missing. At the world congress that took place in Stockholm, I was the only presenter coming from an experiential perspective. That seemed unbelievable to me. In the declaration and agenda for action that came out of it, it was obvious that there was no input from the people who have experience being exploited.
We need to have - I don't know how we would do this because that's not my expertise - input from people who have had experience pimping and people who have had experience procuring. I think we need to have some kind of input from them too. Maybe not input where they help to design policies in dealing with them, but I think we need to understand their perspective.
We need to do a public education campaign so that people are informed that when they procure prostitutes, when they procure children for sex, they are committing a crime. A lot of young guys don't know that; they don't think like that. A lot of people don't view it like that. They need to understand that it's a crime. We need to educate young people; we need to deglamorize that industry, because there's still a lot of glamour associated with prostitution.
We need to support self-help programs like the self-help support and advocacy programs or agencies or organizations. There are not many, but for the few there are, we need to give them core funding. What happens is that these agencies are trying to exist, but they have to do projects or proposal writing and constantly search for funding. A lot of us are not in a position where we can write proposals and manage projects and all of that. We just want to come together and have resources so that we can have a support group and do advocacy. If we reach the stage where we can do projects and write proposals and do research, then we could submit all those, but we need core funding so that we can exist as a self-help group.
.1335
We need a commitment to the young people themselves so that we can address prevention issues, so that we can address risk minimalization issues, so that when they're out there, we can reach them. We can try to minimize some of the violence that takes place, address some of the health needs they have, address some of the housing needs they have, address the multitude of needs they have when they're out there. We need to address some of that. We need to support services that do that.
Then, of course, there's exiting. We need a long-term commitment to the young people as they try to exit that trade. Sometimes they might fall back into it. It might be a situation of one step forward, three steps back some of the time, but if they relapse or whatever we can't stop our commitment to them. We have to walk them through it until they leave that life. So that is some of the domestic stuff.
Internationally, we have an obligation to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We just do. We've ratified it. We've signed it. We say that's what we're going to do, so we need to try to do it. Here at home and also abroad we need to ensure that people are implementing it.
We need to make strong laws against the trafficking of children and the transporting of children and the exploiting of children. I support laws that criminalize people who go abroad and buy sex from children and come home saying it's okay in Thailand or wherever. I support laws that penalize people who do that. I think that's important.
Canada, when it's making trade negotiations or economic negotiations with countries, can ask those countries...because Canada is in a pretty strong position. When they make trade agreements with countries they need to look at their history, how they take care of their children, how they protect children from exploitation and so on. That can be part of trade negotiations - I think, anyway.
Canada needs to develop a database. Criminals have these high-tech Internet and computer things they use to help them commit their crimes. I think we need to use technology at least equal to what the criminals are using. We need to develop a database that includes profiles of the victims, the pimps and agencies and stuff and the people who procure children for sex. It needs to include information about agencies, trafficking routes and methods and how to support the young people, or agencies or organizations that address their needs. But I think we need to do an in-country database and an international database. Then we need to share information with other countries and ensure that they share information with us.
Canada needs to support conferences and congresses and research into the issue, and we need to develop some pilot projects. Some of the third world countries have different needs and different issues from what we have, so we need to maybe support some of those third world pilot projects. We also need to support some pilot projects here to address the issue. We need to have a huge public education campaign. I think we need to develop an international committee that oversees the implementation of...
.1340
In Stockholm there was this big declaration and agenda for action that was drafted. Everyone signed it and agreed to it, but who's going to make sure they do that? We need some kind of international body. The countries that have membership in that... I think you need someone from the government, someone who can represent and make decisions and commitments on that committee, but someone from an experiential background too, so that it stays realistic and making sense, so that it doesn't get bureaucratic and all of that, so that this committee does work and is meaningful to the people who are being exploited.
So some kind of body or committee or whatever can oversee the development of a database and can oversee the implementation of laws, internationally and within different states. It can be like a monitoring body.
As well, I think we need to give special recognition to indigenous people worldwide, including here in Canada. They seem to have a unique or specific vulnerability, because we know they make up a disproportionate number of people in that trade. That is the case here in Canada, but also in different countries. For some reason indigenous people are vulnerable to being sexually exploited. We need to address that, because it's the decade of indigenous people and because we have an obligation to those people.
I don't know if I took too much time, but I'll stop there.
The Chair: Thank you, Cherry.
Megan Lewis.
Ms Megan Lewis (Chairperson, Prostitution, Education, Empowerment and Resource Society): Thank you.
I'll keep this brief, for one thing because I'm still on Victoria time. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to hold out.
The Chair: You're going to keel over any minute.
Ms Lewis: I'm starting to feel like it, yes.
I started working in the trade when I was 13. I'll just give you a brief rundown on where I fit in here. I worked for about three months for a guy that I had met. He had a shop in downtown Vancouver. In the back of the shop he had several girls working. I was 13, but I know I was by no means the youngest. There was a girl there who was as young as 11. After about three months I decided I didn't want to work for him any more, so I just stopped. Luckily, he didn't come looking for me or anything. He wasn't terribly violent, at least not to me. So I quit and went back to school and tried to be a good girl, but I ended up getting back in the trade again. That happened on and off from the time I was 13 until I was 24, which is when I finally quit working.
In the last two years I've been working with people who've been in the sex trade. Generally, they started young and there are a lot of stops and starts, where they quit and go back again, then quit and go back again. Looking at this and asking everybody what sort of things got them back in the trade once they tried to quit, a lot of really common threads started cropping up: really low self-esteem, conditioning, not being able to deal with life stuff on their own, and using sex-trade work as a way of numbing their feelings, much like an alcoholic would, for example. That seems to have some common threads.
There are other things they find they can't deal with. Eating disorders are really common, as is being suicidal and self-mutilation. I've never met anybody in the trade who doesn't have post-traumatic stress. Once they go to a doctor, they tend to get diagnosed with it, and there has been research done on that so far.
.1345
I worked in the trade until I was 24. By the time I was 16 or 17, I had drug and alcohol addictions. I finally quit when I was 24, because I was raped. This was the third time I had been raped in a fashion that left no question that it was in fact a rape. There are other incidents where I do have questions. They fall into a little bit more of a grey area.
I thought, okay, I'm way too old for this. I have to get out now. I did, and I got off drugs and alcohol. It was very hard. It was no mean feat, and I had a lot of support.
There isn't a lot of support, though. Unless you have a really strong family, which I was lucky enough to have, there's not a lot of support. A lot of people don't have their families. A lot of people grow up in care, like Cherry, and don't have people to help them get out. Many people don't. A lot of people end up dying.
There's a real lack of resources to help people get out of the trade and stay out. There's very little done by way of prevention or early intervention. If somebody's already been conditioned... As Cherry was saying, a conditioning takes place for somebody to become vulnerable to being exploited in the trade. There's not much done in the way of prevention or early intervention with youth who are made vulnerable through abusive home families or abusive situations.
The early intervention stuff seems to be either putting people in care or putting them in jail. That doesn't seem to be terribly successful. A lot of people still end up getting into prostitution.
You all have a copy of my notes - and that's exactly what they are; it's not an outline. I have some recommendations here. Cherry and I looked over our notes together, and we found that we have a lot of very similar stuff. I'm not going to go over a lot of what she's already gone over. However, when it comes to doing educational campaigns and amending the Criminal Code, both reflecting the attitude that buying children and youth for sexual purposes is child abuse, I really want to be clear that it can't be stated euphemistically. This is child abuse. This is pedophilia. It's not that they're buying an under-aged person for sex; this is child abuse. There's a real lack of understanding in society about this: youth equals beauty, and therefore it's okay to buy somebody for sexual purposes, even if they are only 13 or 14.
Through educational campaigns, through media campaigns and through amending the Criminal Code we can start changing those attitudes, because those attitudes are what's going to perpetuate this cycle of abuse.
On the international front, Cherry was speaking about databases being set up.
Did you speak about databases being set up?
Ms Kingsley: Yes.
Ms Lewis: These databases would track people who were buying youth and children, track people who were being bought, and track people who were selling.
One thing that I think really needs to be done is to take a really strong stand on advertising children for sex, or youth for sex, or young ladies for sex, or mail-order brides. You can buy in Canada catalogues of young women from different countries. You can buy books telling you where and what countries you can go to to get a virgin - how to do it, what questions to ask, how the policing works there, that kind of thing. The same kind of monitoring has to be done from the right side of the law as well, so that it's not just the bad guys doing all the research and all the monitoring.
Right now we're not allowed to advertise, say, cigarettes in Canada. I think the same kind of stand should be taken on advertising children and youth for sex. That's part of changing attitudes as well.
As far as resources go, there are some things we need to do to help people get out of it once they're in. Things like safe houses, counselling and relocation programs are important. A lot of times young people aren't taken seriously when they express their fear of somebody who's been selling them, and many times this fear is very valid.
.1350
The stereotype of the black pimps with the big gold necklaces and the track suits, although sometimes true, is not always true. A lot of pimps are far more influential and far-reaching than one might imagine. Among the women I'm working with, I have a couple who have pimps who track them through things like their medical cards. You and I can't do that. We can't just go into somebody's medical card and find out whether they've used that card in the last six months or not, but this person has. She tested it out several times by going to a doctor somewhere else and then finding there were people looking for her in that city, and this was the only thing she'd used to identify herself in that city.
These aren't dumb, little street hoods; a lot of times they're very sophisticated in the way they do things. I think we have to be just as sophisticated in relocation programs and in monitoring these people.
I think I'm going to cut this short now. The last thing I'd like to add is that when we do initiate any programs or directives for dealing with such exploited youth, I think it's very important that people who have been in the trade or who have been in exploitative situations be involved in this, whether in the counselling end of it or the policy-making end. We had all ex-prostitutes interviewing in the Victoria study of the 75 youth, and that drew a lot of information. I think it is important that this concept keep going. I think it makes for a lot more effective programs and resources.
Anyway, that's all I'm going to say for now. Thank you.
The Chair: Thanks, Megan.
Mr. Ramsay, did you have any questions? You have five minutes.
Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): Cherry, you appeared before the committee once before, didn't you?
Ms Kingsley: Yes.
Mr. Ramsay: It's good to see you back, and it's good to see you're still hanging in there.
Ms Kingsley: Thank you.
Mr. Ramsay: I have to again refer to a document presented by Kimberly Daum for the Downtown East Side Youth Activities Society. From that, she wrote an article that was published in The Ottawa Citizen, dated May 6, 1996. What strikes me is she is emphasizing that this bill is targeting the wrong people, that it should really be going after the johns, or your clients, in a more aggressive way. She says that convicting consumers gets the most bang for our law-enforcement buck and that it will reduce the market, save lives, and improve the quality of those lives. She points out that in the last eight years, only eight men have been charged for having sex with teenage prostitutes.
You indicated that some of your clients, when you were in the business, were pillars of society. Do you think that is a contributing factor to the fact that the johns are not being targeted, or is that part of it? Is it coupled with the fact that it's difficult for the police to build a sufficiently strong case to convict in court?
Ms Kingsley: Yes, there are some real tough enforcement issues, and one of them is to make charges and get a conviction. This almost always solely relies upon the testimony of the young person, and they get torn apart in court and all of that. They don't have a lot of support to go through the process, and many are too scared. That's one of the enforcement issues.
The other enforcement issue, which I've heard police say, is that in the law it talks about procuring sex from anyone under 18, but the police ask why not make the law read ``anyone who says they're under 18''. That way they can put police decoys out there and they don't have to put young people at risk. They'd have a better chance of arresting people. That's one option.
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Yes, they're pillars of society. A lot of people will just get warned. I've seen it happen, where if they're driving around a lot or whatever, the police will say, just get out of this area, or police won't even try because they don't...I don't know. The perception is that we're more evil than they are, that we somehow lure good men to evil ways, that we lure these good men away from their -
Ms Lewis: We've gotten phone calls from wives to that effect.
Ms Kingsley: Oh, yes, it's truly the perception.
It's hard to convict. It's hard to build a case, so a lot of police won't even bother. There are those two things that are factors, why police don't... Police will say it's unenforceable, but it's virtually untested. Eight cases in all those years. They haven't even tested it enough to see whether it's truly unenforceable, and a lot of it is because of who the clients are.
Mr. Ramsay: I recall that in my province of Alberta the Solicitor General had to resign because he was caught in the company of a child prostitute. So there's no question that whether it's difficult to enforce or not, the laws are not being enforced.
There is part of this bill, Bill C-27, that attempts to address this business of the decoys, where people used are 18 or over but who appear to be younger. There's a clause there that is designed to deal with this, but I have some concerns about the enforcement of it. I hope I'm wrong, but nevertheless...
Cherry, you came from a tough family situation, but I understand that you, Megan, did not.
Ms Lewis: No, I didn't.
Mr. Ramsay: What was the motivation for you to get involved with prostitution?
Ms Lewis: We were poor. My father had just lost his business and my mum and dad had just broken up, so there were poverty issues and there was family breakdown. I was also very alienated from the rest of my peers. I was going to a very wealthy school and tended to be ridiculed a lot and that kind of thing. So I didn't have a good peer support network when I was that age. The opportunity presented itself and I didn't know how not to. I didn't know how to even be aware whether it was something I wanted to do or not. Somebody asked and I didn't say no, and I lived that way for quite a long time.
Ms Kingsley: Can I comment on that? I think whenever a child or youth is marginalized, they're really vulnerable to all forms of exploitation. I think marginalization is when young people live on the fringe, when they're not in the centre of family, community and culture. So it could be all three or it could be one of them or whatever. But when they have a connection or when they're in the centre of even just one of them, they're not as vulnerable. They're not going to be vulnerable to all those different forms of exploitation.
Ms Lewis: It means they have some support of some sort.
Ms Kingsley: Ideally, they're in the centre of all three: family, community, or culture. That's marginalization, and marginalized young people are vulnerable to exploitation.
Mr. Ramsay: Thank you very much.
The Chair: Ms Torsney.
Ms Torsney (Burlington): Thank you to both of you. One of the reasons we wanted you to come here today was because I think sometimes we forget about thinking about the issue, or it's hard to sometimes imagine the issue from another perspective, and the empowerment of and choices that prostitutes make are sometimes things we don't think about.
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You identified a couple of reasons why pimps aren't such a bad thing; you did indirectly, even if you didn't mean to. One of the issues we have before us is that it will be a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. There will be no discretion for judges. There won't be a choice between ``In this case you were pimping, but, listen, the accommodations were great and her care was great, even though, yes, you took a percentage of her wages or whatever'', or the other person who is more violent and what have you.
Do you think there should be a minimum, or do you think there should be discretion for judges?
Ms Kingsley: Yes, I think there should be a minimum, and I think we need to be really tough on the violent ones, the ones who are really violent and the ones who are really mean, who just don't address any of their needs, things like that. I agree with a minimum, though.
Ms Torsney: What should it be?
Ms Kingsley: I think five years is a good start. That's the minimum, right? So it's not the maximum.
Ms Torsney: The maximum is 14.
Ms Kingsley: I'm in agreement with that.
Ms Lewis: What are you using as the definition of pimp at this point?
The Chair: Living off the avails of prostitution.
Ms Lewis: Does that include a boyfriend who's sharing an apartment, or a roommate, a child, or a parent?
Ms Kingsley: Not a child. Do you mean a dependant?
Ms Lewis: Yes.
Ms Torsney: The dependant wouldn't, but somebody in your family who maybe offered you some protection or -
Ms Lewis: Or is receiving gifts.
Ms Torsney: Or money; help paying the rent.
The Chair: Consideration.
Ms Kingsley: Do you have an issue with that?
Ms Lewis: That changes the idea of pimping.
Ms Torsney: Or two prostitutes who live together and one who books the dates - that's technically pimping.
Ms Lewis: Is that right? That changes the power dynamic a lot. When you're talking about a pimp, the negative connotation of the pimp, it's somebody who is -
Ms Torsney: Big, brutal.
Ms Lewis: - who has the power in the relationship, who is actively selling people. That's very different from somebody who has a mutual agreement that has a balance of power. Then it's two people making -
Ms Kingsley: No. We're talking about children here, though.
Ms Torsney: So a 19-year-old - let's say it's a woman - is booking dates for her 17-year-old friend and the two of them share an apartment. They both contribute toward rent, or maybe the woman who's the prostitute pays most of the rent. She can be convicted for a minimum of five years. If she's convicted she would get a minimum of five years if this law is passed. Do you think that's good, or should there be more discretion?
Ms Kingsley: I think there should be allowance for discretion.
Mr. Ramsay: Violence has to be involved.
Ms Torsney: The very concept of pimping a child...
The Chair: Not to be difficult, but I think there has to be an element of violence for the minimum of five years.
Ms Kingsley: Yes. I think there should be some kind of discretion.
Ms Torsney: Some people asked for that to be removed.
The Chair: I know, but there has to be an element of violence for the five years to kick in.
Ms Torsney: Okay.
Ms Lewis: So there are tiered levels of -
The Chair: Yes.
Ms Torsney: But some people argued that any time a child, anybody under 18, is involved with someone who's over the age...then it is in fact violence; it's child abuse.
Ms Kingsley: It is. It is abuse, and we need to recognize that, regardless of whether they're friends and all that, because it's just exploitation.
Ms Lewis: If there's somebody who is much older or something, then yes, you have the change in power dynamic as well.
Ms Kingsley: I know a lot of people who have boyfriends who live off them, and I think that is a crime.
The Chair: Whether they're prostituting or not.
Ms Kingsley: Yes.
The Chair: I want to thank you both very much for giving what for us is a unique perspective. Unfortunately, it's not a unique perspective, and that's why we're all here.
So I want to thank you for your contribution -
Ms Kingsley: Can I make one more comment?
The Chair: Sure.
Ms Kingsley: Can you guys recommend to the House of Commons that we be given some kind of support? We need tangible support to address this issue. We need resources. We need to have services. There's nothing. There's no place for us to go. If we quit, where is it that we go?
The Chair: Certainly, we'll pass that along.
Ms Kingsley: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you.
The meeting is adjourned.