Few charges laid against sex work customers

WARNING: This story contains graphic content related to violence and abuse, and may be disturbing to some readers. If you or someone you know may be a victim of human trafficking, you can call the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline: 1-833-900-1010

The signs of sex trafficking and sex work are often the same: online ads, curb-side pickups, or heavy foot traffic to a particular home or hotel room.

There is a constant in all these scenarios: the sex purchaser, also known as the John, or the trick. Advocates say police need to spend more energy on these people, who are breaking the law.

Canada follows what’s known as the Nordic model of prostitution laws, meaning that it is illegal to purchase sexual services, and illegal for a business to profit from them.

“The best chance we have of ending [human trafficking] is for police officers to charge sex purchasers, and for the courts to hold them accountable,” says Megan Walker, the now-retired executive director of the London Abused Women’s Centre.

Walker has worked with victims of human trafficking for more than a decade. As part of an exclusive investigation, CityNews joined her in staking out hotels in London, Ontario, looking for sex work customers.

“Any man that gets out of a vehicle without luggage, first of all, is a is a red flag for me,” she explains. “The first thing I do is take the car make. Then I want to take their license number, so if I do see the same car twice, I can confirm who it is. Then I take a bit of a description of the individual and look for the time in and out.”

She says the typical sex work customer is inside a hotel room for 30 to 45 minutes at most.  She stresses that while some people are consensually engaging in sex work, those who are trafficked are not. Walker says that by cracking down on customers, the incentive to traffic people into sex work would disappear.

“If we can cut off the demand, we’re going to cut off the supply. We don’t need that many girls anymore because nobody wants them,” she explains.

She argues police aren’t doing enough to find the people who need help, and to bring those exploiting them to justice.

CityNews spoke to a recent leader of the London Police Service’s human trafficking unit. We have agreed to conceal his identity because he does undercover police work.

“We do proactive things at times, such as John stings, as we call them, where we rent a hotel room. We put out an ad and we have the Johns contact us thinking they’re going to come and see a woman for sexual services,” he says.

When interviewed in May 2021, he told CityNews the he could recall two charges for sex purchasing being laid by London police since January 2020. He says his team knows more purchasing and more trafficking is happening, but the pandemic is impacting their ability to work.

“COVID-19 has a huge impact. It is preventing us from meeting with the sex trade workers as often as we used to. It is stopping us from doing John stings. We can’t do that out of concern for my team, and we have a responsibility to keep the Johns safe. We don’t measure our success on just charges.”

Data collected by CityNews reveals London police aren’t alone in struggling to charge Johns. In an 18-month period, police in Hamilton, Windsor, Halifax, Moncton and many other locations laid zero sex purchasing charges.

In Vancouver, a trafficking hotspot, police laid 15 charges. Peel Region, which includes Canada’s largest airport, and is next to its largest city, laid 39 charges. In Alberta, the ALERT law enforcement unit which is largely entrusted with combatting human trafficking, laid 36 charges — 35 in Edmonton, one in Calgary.

Map of sex purchasing charges laid under Criminal Code 286.1 from June 2020 to June 30, 2021.

After CityNews spoke to the London police sergeant, the service seems to have to have laid a flurry of charges. While laying just two charges against sex purchasers in the seventeen months prior, the LPS reported laying thirteen more in the next month.

Under Canadian law, human trafficking is punishable by life in prison.

The pandemic may have slowed down police, but Walker has kept going. When she spots men she thinks may be clients, she approaches them. With no power to arrest or investigate, she takes an indirect approach, telling them that she’s monitoring the hotel, and asking them to look out for signs of trafficking, and handing them flyers that say, “Stop Human Trafficking.”

She says the work is easier than she would like: “When the police tell me its too hard to find the Johns, I’m like look, if I can find a John, that you certainly can.”