Sex Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation

Trafficked persons, including minors under the age of 18, are sexually exploited when forced into prostitution or forced to perform sexual acts including exotic dancing or the production of pornography. Sex trafficking victims are coerced or tricked into forced prostitution.

  • Trafficked persons are often lured and groomed by people posing as boyfriends or girlfriends and are forced to hand over most, or all, of the money associated with these acts.
  • Violence and threats of violence are often used as a means of control to force trafficked persons to perform sexual services.
  • Debt bondage often results from gifts, expensive clothes and drugs that are supplied to the trafficked person by the trafficker during the recruitment phase.
  • Sex Trafficking can affect anyone – girls and boys, women and men – anytime, anywhere:
    • Those who are likely to be at risk include those who are socially or economically disadvantaged, such as some aboriginal women, youth and children, migrants and new immigrants, teenaged runaways, children who are in protection or are in Foster Care, as well as girls and women, who may be lured to large urban centres or who move or migrate there voluntarily.
    • High school students still living at home can be and are trafficked through the control and deception of organized crime groups, gangs, individual pimps and even peers.

The Centre speaks to The Anglican Church of Canada about sex trafficking: