Читать книгу The True Story of Canadian Human Trafficking - Paul H Boge - Страница 6

preface

Human trafficking is having a devastating impact on Canada. When people hear of human trafficking, they often associate it with foreign girls who are brought into our country. This is happening, and it must be stopped. Yet many are shocked to learn that human trafficking is happening to Canadian girls on Canadian soil.

Our girls—from all backgrounds and all financial statuses across our country—are being lured into human trafficking for the purpose of sex slavery.

And they are being used by Canadian men.

Human trafficking is a network of good versus evil that includes girls who are lured into trafficking, the traffickers who control them, the “johns” or men who use the girls for sex, and the many citizens, organizations, police, teachers, religious leaders and politicians who are fighting to stop it. People like Joy Smith.

I have known Joy for many years. We were seated together at a fundraising banquet in Winnipeg for street children in Kenya when we discussed the possibility of a book on human trafficking in Canada. I knew next to nothing about it. I had assumed that the men who used girls came from low incomes and lived at or near the streets. But she corrected me by saying that johns come from every walk of life in Canada and are mostly commonly 30 to 60 years old with a good job.

I felt the blood drain from my face. She was describing men who are in the same age bracket as me.

How in the world does a man who should be helping destitute girls get himself into a state of mind where he misuses his power to cause such devastation in the life of a young girl?

Moreover, I wondered how a Canadian girl could be deceived into the world of human trafficking.

The best way for me to find out was to sit down with Canadian survivors of human trafficking to hear their stories from the very beginning, through every unimaginable detail of their ordeal, to discover how human trafficking works and what would have helped prevent them from entering into that world in the first place.

There is much to be done in our nation in combatting human trafficking. And in spite of this darkness, there is more reason to have hope. It is my hope that this book will in some way be an encouragement to save one girl’s life, to prevent even one girl from being lured into human trafficking, to have one Canadian man stop using girls once he sees that the girls do not want to be there, to have one human trafficker change his ways, or to have one person enter law enforcement, politics or an organization in an effort to combat human trafficking. If any of these happen, I will consider this book to have been a success.

Please note: in this book, I have combined true stories of testimonies of human trafficking survivors into one main character. I have also combined stories of traffickers and stories of johns. I have compressed timelines for the sake of space. I have changed most of the names to protect people. In certain circumstances, I have changed locations.

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My sincerest thank you to each of the Canadian survivors of human trafficking who spoke with me in the preparation for this book. I am humbled and grateful for your willingness to share with me the unimaginable damage that was done to you. I admire each of you. I admire your courage to confront the dangers of human trafficking in Canada and your desire to protect young women in our country from being deceived into this evil. Thank you for sharing your stories.

Thank you to those survivors who, for many reasons, were not able to talk with me directly. The pain they had to endure was still too raw to be able to meet with me face to face, yet they wanted to contribute. And so they provided their testimonies and answers to my questions, on condition of anonymity, through Joy Smith, whom they knew personally.

Thank you to the reformed trafficker and the men who once used girls who spoke with me. Your insights helped me understand how a man can go down that path. And that there is hope for restoration and redemption from such a lifestyle.

This book would not have been possible without the constant support and encouragement from my friend Joy Smith. She has spent countless hours with me to help me learn about human trafficking. We would meet in her home, where I would take notes, often in disbelief at the scope of this unimaginable tragedy in our country.

I am grateful to Joy’s son Edward for his help. And also to Joel Oosterman, whom you will get to know in the pages of this book. I am grateful for every police officer, politician, non-government organization and the many volunteers who offered their insights.

My thank you also to so many of you who have been praying both for this book and for human trafficking to end. Thank you to each person who read the various drafts of the manuscript. Your comments and questions have made this a better book.

And as always, my sincerest thank you to Larry and Marina Willard for their willingness to publish this book. I appreciate your dedication and passion for combatting human trafficking in Canada.

Thank you for your interest and your time in reading this story. But be forewarned about learning about human trafficking in Canada. I close with the words of William Wilberforce, who spoke of slavery in Britain years ago when he said, “You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.”

—Paul H. Boge

Winnipeg, Manitoba

February 8, 2018