June 16th, 2015: 'Loverboy' Grooming Evidence
September 16, 2024
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- Evidence,
- Text Transcripts,
- 2015,
- Loverboy Grooming,
- Trafficking
A Kitchener girl who was trafficked for sex in a Toronto hotel room is warning other young women after she was tricked by a man claiming he wanted to date her. It's a common way sex traffickers get access to young girls — posing as their boyfriends or love interests and then forcing them to have sex with strangers for money. They're called "Romeo pimps."
The Kitchener girl met her trafficker in 2016, when she was 14. He was in his 20s and pretended he was interested in dating her. "When he said those words, 'I love you,' I just believed him," said the woman, now 18, whose name CBC is keeping confidential because she was a minor when the offences occurred. "I thought that's what love was."
He bought her presents, including a new phone and posted photos of them as a couple on social media. He painted a picture of their future life together, she said, telling her they would live in a big house together and that she would get to meet his parents. "I didn't have anything, so obviously it's kind of nice when you get the attention," she said. The switch to trafficking began when she ran away from her group home to be with him. They went to a hotel, where he and another man gave her alcohol. She was then forced her to have sex with strangers in hotel rooms over the course of several days.
When she refused, she said the men took her phone and ID. Then, he hit her. "They put [their] hands on you.... You're scared, like you're terrified for your life," she said. She was ultimately able to message friends on social media, using an old phone she had in the bottom of her luggage. She hadn't yet switched her contacts to the new iPhone her trafficker had given her and then taken away.
Toronto police were alerted and showed up at the hotel room she was being trafficked out of. The man posing as her boyfriend as well as a Cambridge, Ont. man were charged in relation to the incident. He pleaded guilty to one count of trafficking in persons and was sentenced to six years, while the other man pleaded guilty to one count of advertising sexual services and was sentenced to two years.
Now, the teen who was trafficked by the pair is encouraging others who are in harm's way to reach out for help. "This is happening in every city in Ontario in Canada. Probably any hotel room or hotel chain you will see it," said Jeannette Eberhard, a King's University College professor who studied so-called Romeo pimps. Schemes like this are becoming more popular because, unlike guns or drugs, the same victim can be sold for sex over and over again, she said.
And, she said, once pimps have gotten in their victims' heads, they feel it's a safe bet that their victims won't feel confident testifying against them in court.