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TRAPPED
FOREVER
IN SEX
SLAVERY, EH? -
PART 1
Canada Is the World’s
Latest Portal of Human Traffic
WORDS AND PHOTOS
BY DOUGLAS HADDOW
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From the Chinese head tax in the days of the British Columbian gold rush (look it up, it’s fucked) right down to the Filipino chap who holds an architecture degree from back home but now flips your cheeseburger for minimum wage in Montreal, Canada has a long and illustrious history of fucking Asian immigrants right in the ass upon their arrival to the Great White North. In no industry does this happen more literally than in prostitution, and right now women are pouring into Canada from all over Asia like, um, the choicest and most delicate plum wine being dumped into a scummy beer barrel at a logging camp in the Yukon.
One might think that in the 21st century, a wealthy liberal democracy would be able to squash its tendency to subjugate newcomers fresh off the boat. But unfortunately for a nation that prides itself on once having been a safe haven for African slaves, the rhetoric of social progress doesn’t hold up against reality—Canada has become a major transit point for a booming $10 billion a year human-trafficking industry.
The Mounties (Canada’s horsey-riding version of the FBI) have made conservative estimates that around 2,000 women and girls are illegally trafficked into Canada each year, but the reality is probably closer to around 10,000. From countryside rice patties to inner-city slums and then all the way to the freshly vacuumed arrival lounge of the Vancouver airport, traffickers use a deftly engineered system of exploitation to covertly import Asian girls into the North American sex market.
Incoming traffickees are processed in Vancouver and spat out across the continent’s vast labyrinth of massage parlors, hostess clubs, and underground micro-brothels. Within the industry, there are two broad categories of victims: older, street-smart semi-professionals who know what they’re getting into and younger girls who have no clue that they’re about to have their lives and their futures turned to shit by monsters.
I recently got to know some of the women suffering under the yoke of sex slavery and they’ve told me their stories. One of the first women I met, who goes by the name of Yo-Yo, shares a dingy ground-floor apartment with her sister where they sleep on couches in the living room and turn tricks in the bedroom. Hailing from a quaint village in rural China, Yo-Yo enjoys spending her extra dough on Hello Kitty paraphernalia. She told me that when she isn’t providing what she refers to as “girlfriend experiences,” she sits around and watches pirated DVDs because she’s not allowed to leave the apartment without her pimp’s permission.
The typical narrative of people who are trafficked through Canada’s underground railroad of sex slavery goes something like this: A transnational crime syndicate such as the Viet-Ching or the Korean Mafia, or an independent white-collar slaver, will set up a front through which they meet vulnerable young women. The fronts come in a variety of forms, the most common being moneylenders, travel brokers, and school liaisons. Slavers target girls who come from the poorer regions of East Asia and who are looking for a way out of a hopeless life.
One of the most popular recruitment ploys is the ESL dream holiday, where a girl is tricked into thinking that, for a relatively affordable fee, she will be able to travel to Canada or the US and comfortably study English at a posh institute while being hooked up with a good job and nice digs.
The front will offer the girls all-inclusive travel-study packages and will then organize and facilitate every aspect of the journey, from passport and visa arrangements to plane tickets and living accommodations. After touching down at Vancouver International, the girls are brought to a sketchy motel room or condo. That’s where things start to go very, very wrong.
They are told that they owe their benefactors much more than was previously arranged—a debt typically exceeding $30K. Their passports are stolen and they are coerced, through violence and threats of imprisonment, to not attempt any contact with Canadian authorities. After a period of brainwashing, abuse, and training, the girls are introduced to their only possible payment method: whoredom.
| A couple of lucky cats sit in the living room of a condo brothel and beckon incoming johns. |
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Johns pay somewhere between $100 and $150 for an hour-long “girlfriend experience.” If they are lucky, the girls will get a 10 percent cut of the profits. |
CONTINUED
TRAPPED FOREVER IN SEX SLAVERY, EH? | 1 | 2 |
See all articles by this contributor Anonymous, on Sep 19, 2009 wrote:
Ufffff man i think this people who do this shit and the shit mens that pays for it, dont deserve to call himself humans, i think they dont deserve any kind of mercy, this world would be a better world without this scumbags, so i vote for KIL EM ALL! | | Anonymous, on Jul 28, 2009 wrote:
Does Vice have so much journalistic cred they don’t have to cite sources when they say " more like 10,000"? Not so compelling without a source.
Also, if you’re writing about heinous crime on large scale, shouldn’t there be some mention of current attempts at punishment?
| | Anonymous, on Oct 28, 2008 wrote:
this is fucking heart breaking.
and this is fucking true:
"...what’s worse is that no one else brings a damn thing to the table either..."
i want to do something good about something like this before i die. | | Anonymous, on Sep 2, 2008 wrote:
lying around all-day screwing guys, at risk of std’s and violence, while enslaved. Why does that always happen to someone else? There is just not enough choice in modern western democracies. | | Anonymous, on Sep 2, 2008 wrote:
yeah your right, it is all made up, theres no such thing as a ’canada’ | | Anonymous, on Aug 26, 2008 wrote:
victoria is super pretty city but also allegedly the child prostitution/deportation capital of north america. bottom line is it’s not small timers making this happen but folks with business and government ties, go figure. | | Anonymous, on Aug 25, 2008 wrote:
if you all haven’t realized yet most of the articles in vice are made-up/fake. | | Anonymous, on Aug 25, 2008 wrote:
this artcle is meant to tittilate the publication’s mostly teenage male readership. The author and magazine had no intent to help these girls. | | Anonymous, on Aug 24, 2008 wrote:
fuckin brilliant, this is totally fucked. | | Anonymous, on Aug 23, 2008 wrote:
hhong kong is so fucking rich yeah? | | Anonymous, on Aug 23, 2008 wrote:
the poor rural areas of HONG KONG?? This article needs to stop contradicting itself. | | Anonymous, on Aug 21, 2008 wrote:
The sexy photos of these exploited women really validates the article... | | Anonymous, on Aug 21, 2008 wrote:
UM IF YOUR GOING TO GO MEET THESE GIRLS AND WRITE A FUCKING ARTICLE, WHY NOT REPORT THIS TO THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT AND FREE THESE GIRLS FROM THIS LIFE? I DONT GET IT HOW CAN YOU JUST WATCH THIS, TAKE PICTURES AND HEAR/SEE IT ALL HAPPEN. WTF? | | Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2008 wrote:
This article is a piece of crap. The photos are professional shots. Vice is the uber-right | | Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2008 wrote:
Canada’s inability to act on this issue comes down to the RCMP being completely useless. They can hardly handle the Angels let alone asian gangs that live in ethnic enclaves and speak languages that aren’t English or French. | | Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2008 wrote:
That’s right people, it’s the white man that’s to blame, not the asian society for creating a homeland that makes these girls want to flee, or the asians who bring these girls over and enslave them. It’s the evil white man’s fault for having the money to pay... bad white man! | | Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2008 wrote:
its not all white guys who are the johns but its definately not asians setting the policy of inaction against human trafficing | | Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2008 wrote:
I think this is being allowed because horny white guys want to fuck asian girls without the "embarassment" of having to date them and being seen with them in public. White men are master hypocrites | | Anonymous, on Aug 17, 2008 wrote:
Head tax wasn’t racist. Only Chinese immigrants had to pay, while the Japanese, East Indians, and other asian nationalities were not taxed. | | Anonymous, on Aug 17, 2008 wrote:
what fucking idiot wrote the comment below me?
hey asshole, you are a fucking douche. | | Anonymous, on Aug 17, 2008 wrote:
Well, at least slutting in Canada is better than hopeless among billions in Asia. Yeah Canada! China, develop ur birth control system and stop spitting out future ho’s | | Anonymous, on Aug 16, 2008 wrote:
I taught in esl in sanchong city (taiwan) and it was preeety ghetto. | | Anonymous, on Aug 16, 2008 wrote:
hong kong? taiwan? those are not poor rural areas of china. There is something weird about this article | | Anonymous, on Aug 16, 2008 wrote:
According to an article I read in Der Spiegel, there have never been more ppl enslaved than right now. Only a small percentage of them ar sex slaves, most of them are kids sold to work by their parents. | | Anonymous, on Aug 15, 2008 wrote:
"I don’t see what the problem is. Guys like to pay for sex and women like to get money. Looks like a win-win situation to me."
How simplisitic can you be? Never mind failing to critiqe the rational decisions behind the womens ’choice’ how about the complex power relations involved in the sex industry. Idiot. | | Anonymous, on Aug 15, 2008 wrote:
it is easy to assume that women are trafficked in vastly greater numbers than reported, as such an occurrence is underground and everyone involved keeps their mouth shut about it out of greed and/or fear. one could assume 10,000 or more women are trafficked easily and this would not be ’biased’ nor poor journalism. | | Anonymous, on Aug 14, 2008 wrote:
"probably closer to 10,000"?? based on what? | | Anonymous, on Aug 14, 2008 wrote:
pretty sad situation, I just got this forwarded to me and I live in Vancouver - I had no idea shit like this was going down. | | Anonymous, on Aug 14, 2008 wrote:
note to viceland editors, demand more depth and detail. get your writers to really dig for shit and sign them on for a series of articles because the stories always change. the writer would most definitely go deeper if someone asks (pays) him to. | | Anonymous, on Aug 14, 2008 wrote:
"I don’t see what the problem is. Guys like to pay for sex and women like to get money. Looks like a win-win situation to me."
Thats only true if the women is constanting to doing that job...not if their being FORCED | | | Next 30 comments > |
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