- http://www.paralumun.com/issuescanada.htm CANADA FACTS ON PROSTITUTION Vietnamese and Chinese mafia are increasing operations in brothels in Toronto, Canada. They traffic in women from Southeast Asia. Agents pay recruiters up to $8,000 for a woman, who then sell the women to pimps for about $15,000. Agents take 10% of the earnings beyond the original contract. The women are forced to service buyers’ 12 hours a day, 400 buyers or $400,000 to pay off their debt. Women are abused and terrorized, being beaten and reportedly burned with hot irons. (Rob Lamberti, "Sex Slaves: Fodder for Flesh Factories the Women Earn Nothing But Tips Until They Pay Off Their $40,000 Contracts," Toronto Sun, 10 May 1998) About twelve 16-30-year-old Asian girls and women were trafficked into Canada each week on visitor's permits and sold into prostitution. The girls and women were bought in North America for up to $15,000 by a network that made about U.S. $1. 4 - $2.2 million annually. The women are sold to brothel owners in Markham and Scarborough Toronto and Los Angeles and forced into $40,000 debt bondage. (Police, "Police Bust Sex-slave Ring" 11 September 1997 & "Toronto police uncover sex slave ring," United Press International, 11 September 1997) Male buyers in Canada are increasingly seeking Filipinas more so than Thai women, because they believe Filipinas pose less of risk for AIDS. (Rob Lamberti, "Sex Slaves: Fodder for Flesh Factories the Women Earn Nothing But TipsUntil They Pay Off Their $40,000 Contracts," Toronto Sun, 10 May 1998) As many as 100 Honduran children have been smuggled overland into Canada from Honduras, by a professional drug ring trafficking children to Vancouver. The Honduran smugglers pay the childrens’ transportation costs and help them across the Canadian border. Once in Vancouver, the traffickers put the children in apartments, help them file refugee claims and sign up for welfare. In return, the children are turned out on the street as indentured drug dealers. (Adrienne Turner, "Drug ring lures kids as dealers: Hondurans as young as 11 deal crack in Vancouver," Ottawa Citizen, 20 July 1998) Motorcycle gangs and organized crime groups based in Eastern Europe and Asia, have trafficked foreign women to Canada under lawful pretexts, then forced the women into prostitution. ("Canada’s Paper for EU Conference on Trafficking in Women for Sexual Exploitation" 10-11 June 1996) There have been reports of extortion, coercion, rape and prostitution involving foreign exotic dancers, strip club managers and patrons. The women are vulnerable to sexual exploitation and coercion into criminal activities. Foreign exotic dancers tend to be recruited in their country of residence by "talent agencies". The talent agency pays all up-front costs associated with travel and initial accommodations. The loan becomes a form of debt-bondage. Many of these women do not speak French or English and are unfamiliar with the legal protections available to them under Canadian law. ("Canada’s Paper for EU Conference on Trafficking in Women for Sexual Exploitation" 10-11 June 1996) 11 women, aged 18-25, from the former Soviet Union, were forced to become exotic dancers in a strip club. The women were recruited from the former Soviet Union with the promise that they would become highly paid models in Canada. They entered Canada illegally, and the traffickers took their passports and other identification and held them in Toronto. The women went to the police in April 1991. Two men were charged and fined $1000 and $2000. ("Canada’s Paper for EU Conference on Trafficking in Women for Sexual Exploitation" 10-11 June 1996) 70 to 80% of those involved in the Canadian sex industry began as children. And 80 to 95% are fleeing sexual abuse that usually began at home. (Kimberly Daum, "Sexually Exploitated Children in Canada: The Law is Not on Their Side," Opinion/Essays, 17 October 1996) Hundreds of children under 17 years old are being exploited in the sex industry in Vancouver, Canada. Middle-aged male buyers are increasingly seeking girls as young as 11. The police are not trusted by the children, who have targeted them for arrests rather than the perpetrators. (Child advocates, Mark Clayton, "To Curb Vancouver’s Big Trade in Child Sex, Police Nab ‘Johns’," Christian Science Monitor, 1997) Children in prostitution are charged 59 times more often than are the male buyers in Vancouver. In six years, only 6 men were charged in Vancouver for buying children in prostitution. Two were convicted. During the same time period, 354 children were charged for involvement in prostitution. (Vancouver: Predator and Pedophile Paradise, a study by John Turvey, executive director of Downtown Eastside Youth Activities Society, Mark Clayton, "To Curb Vancouver’s Big Trade in Child Sex, Police Nab ‘Johns’," Christian Science Monitor, 1997) Three men sexually assaulted, threatened to kill and prostituted a 13-year-old girl in Toronto and Oshawa, Canada for 18 months. The men collected $100,000 from selling her as a prostitute. Robert Christian Chattaway, 20, of Scarboro, was charged with kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, procuring, living on the avails of a prostitute under 18 and having dangerous weapons. Warrants are issued for the two other men. (Mike Beauparlant Detective of the Juvenile Task Force, Tom Godfrey, "Child Forced to Hook Man Held After Girl, 13, Assaulted," Toronto Sun, 18 April 1998) Jalil Ali-Akbar Bahrami, a violent pimp, convicted of 60 offenses of drug trafficking, assault with a deadly weapon and living off the avails of prostitution was freed from prison and sent to his native Iran after claiming he is not using drugs and that he has found God. (Kelly Harris, "Violent Offender Finds God, Is Freed," Sun Media, 27 May 1998) "If what we're doing is so bad, then why are police officers and politicians some of our better customers?" Among the range of buyers include schoolboys to grandfathers, lawyers, top civil servants, businessmen, the laborer next door. Most are married. Some are in their 70s. All of their names are on computerized databases in escort agency offices. (One escort agency owner, Nick Pron, "Dating Services Bring Boom Times to Prostitution," Toronto Star, 1997) Womens Issues