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Report of suspicious activity leads to human trafficking charges

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PARIS, ON Signs of human trafficking are not always obvious, says Brant OPP Insp. Shawn Nash.

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“Recognizing and reporting suspicious activity allows police to investigate and identify situations involving human trafficking,” said Nash, interim detachment commander. “Many victims do not identify as victims.”

The reporting of suspicious activity led to Brant OPP charging two Toronto-area men, aged 24 and 19, each with trafficking in persons under 18 and failure to comply with a release orders.

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Police said they got a call just after 9:30 a.m. on Saturday from a citizen who was concerned about activity involving some people at a business on Rest Acres Road in Paris. The people had left the area by the time officers arrived. But, with the citizen’s help, police were able to find them and determined a 17-year-old woman was a victim of human trafficking.

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Nash said it’s common for victims to believe their traffickers are helping or caring for them and may show loyalty to them.

“This doesn’t mean they are not victims,” he said.

Police say human trafficking involves the recruitment, transportation or harbouring of persons for the purposes of exploitation, typically in the sex industry or for forced labour.

“We’re committed to fighting human trafficking and working co-operatively with our law enforcement and community partners to support victims and enforcement efforts,” Nash said.

“Human trafficking victims are often from vulnerable populations and reluctant to come forward,” he said.

“We will continue to raise awareness, investigate suspicious activity, ensure survivors get the appropriate support and hold offenders accountable.”

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Ontario is making it mandatory for all school boards to develop a strategy to combat human trafficking by the beginning of next year.

The province said earlier this month that it will spend $2.4 million to support necessary training and resources for the move, which will help schools identify, respond to and prevent trafficking of children.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce said schools will increasingly play an important role in fighting the problem.

“We need to do a better job of protecting our most vulnerable because the sad reality is the trafficking impacts our children and students the most,” he said. “No child deserves to feel unsafe in their schools or in their communities.”

The province released a new policy framework that it said would help boards build and implement their anti-trafficking strategies.

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The strategies will need to support at-risk students or those being trafficked, train educators to identify or spot early warning signs of trafficking in youth and help raise awareness about sex trafficking in the province, the government said.

It added that school boards will work with police and community groups to develop their strategies, which the government wants in place by January 2022.

The province noted that, in 2019, Ontario had the highest number of police-reported incidents of human trafficking in the country and that 21 per cent of human trafficking victims identified by police were under the age of 18.

For more information about human trafficking visit www.ontario.ca/page/human-trafficking .

With files from Canadian Press

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