15
BATTLING TRAFFICKING ACROSS CANADA
The soft, steady beat of drums echoes through the streets of Winnipeg as more than a hundred people walk side by side from Thunderbird House to the Forks at Odena Circle. There a sacred fire is lit in the four directions. It will burn from sunrise until sunset.
This is the Grandmothers’ Sacred Walk, an annual procession of Aboriginal women leaders who aspire to reclaim the streets of Winnipeg from child sexual abuse and exploitation. The grass-roots initiative began in 2007 when clan mothers, elders, and grandmothers formed Kookum Gaa Na Da Ma Waad Abinoojiig, the Grandmothers’ Protecting Our Children Council. In the words of the group’s founders, its purpose is to “emphasize the sacredness of children and the importance of keeping them safe.... We are here to say that despite our damaged and painful history, our hearts are not on the ground, our nations are not conquered, and we don’t want to see our children hurt anymore.”
Having decided that they could no longer passively witness the abuse in their midst, members of the community took it upon themselves to raise awareness and educate the public about the sexual abuse of First Nations children in Manitoba. They hoped that greater understanding would bring about change.
We can learn a great deal from the wisdom and inspiring example of the grandmothers. They understand that a broader response from our society is needed to end exploitation in its many forms. If we fail to prevent this exploitation, it will continue to threaten and destroy the hopes, dreams, and lives of many vulnerable individuals.
In the Palermo Protocol, Canada committed to initiating comprehensive policies, programs, and other measures to prevent human trafficking, including the following:
• establishing educational campaigns in co-operation with nongovernmental organizations
• launching measures to improve the detection of trafficked persons at the border
• alleviating factors that make individuals vulnerable to trafficking
• discouraging the demand that fuels human trafficking
In pockets across the country, there are some encouraging examples of such initiatives. By profiling these programs, I hope to inspire a wave of new and expanded initiatives that could make Canada a global leader in preventing human trafficking.
Prevention education and raising awareness
Chantal Fredette works for the provincially supported Centre jeunesse de Montréal—Institut universitaire, which developed the Cinderella’s Silence program, introduced in Chapter 5. Reaching out to young girls who could be recruited by street gangs or others, the program explains the methods used to entice girls into sexual exploitation and the harsh realities that ensue.
Cinderella’s Silence includes a detailed facilitator’s handbook with discussion guide, relevant laws and statistics, information about victim psychology, lesson plans, activities and handouts, as well as contacts for resources. Targeted at youth between twelve and eighteen, the program is widely used. For instance, Projet intervention prostitution de Québec, which provides prevention programs in high schools, is one of the organizations that deliver Cinderella’s Silence to about seven thousand students each year in and around Quebec City. Coordinator Anick Gagnon feels it is essential to reach students at an early age when they are the most vulnerable and having various firsttime experiences.
In Manitoba, the “Stop Sex with Kids” campaign aims to prevent the sexual exploitation of children and youth through public awareness and education. Billboards, leaflets, and a powerful website portray tragic stories accompanied by shocking statistics from the provincial government, including the fact that an estimated four hundred children and youth are exploited each year in Winnipeg’s street-based sex trade. While the majority are girls, boys are sexually exploited too. Yet whereas women’s rape crisis lines and shelters are available in many communities, few, if any, similar services exist for sexually exploited boys and men.
Most sexually exploited youth in Winnipeg—as many as eight out of ten—are of Aboriginal descent, and the average age at which they were first violated is thirteen. Some were as young as eight, however. Almost three-quarters of those identified as sexually exploited children were at the time in the care of the provincial government’s Child and Family Services, and more than 80 percent of child sexual exploitation is conducted in “gang houses” or “micro-brothels,” small apartments or condos where the victims are isolated and to which johns are directed. Manitoba is one of the few provinces to mount a high-profile awareness campaign confronting demand.
At the national level, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection has developed excellent educational materials for children of all ages on topics such as sexual abuse and exploitation, and healthy relationships versus controlling ones, the goal being to build resistance to sexual predators. Unfortunately, however, most school boards across Canada have yet to incorporate the voluntary prevention materials into their curricula.
For its part, the federal government in recent years has launched modest awareness and educational initiatives to prevent foreign human trafficking. It produced an information booklet in fourteen languages for distribution in Canada and at embassies abroad that outlines the risks and warning signs of human trafficking. Citizenship and Immigration Canada has also distributed information about trafficking to temporary foreign workers and live-in caregivers, so that potential victims are familiar with employment, health, and safety standards.
In January 2009, Ottawa announced a partnership with the Canadian Crime Stoppers Association to raise awareness about human trafficking and to encourage tips about specific cases. Crime Stoppers is planning more public awareness efforts as part of the international “Blue Blindfold” campaign, which calls on citizens to acknowledge and report suspected human trafficking.
Public awareness about human trafficking is growing slowly, but a greater knowledge and understanding of the problem is needed, along with an appreciation of how to identify and assist victims and where to report suspected cases.
Open to trade and tourism, closed to terrorists and traffickers
The pristine blue skies, billowing white clouds, and swaying fields of golden wheat in southern Alberta are the latest backdrop to the fight against modern-day slavery. Farmers and border-town communities are being asked to report to the Integrated Border Enforcement Team any suspicious activity along the province’s expansive boundary with neighbouring Montana. IBET represents a joint Canada–U.S. multiagency initiative to identify, investigate, and effectively eliminate illegal movement of people and goods across uncontrolled stretches of the forty-ninth parallel.
To the west, the border between British Columbia and Washington State has also been made less porous thanks to the efforts of IBET officers, including those who participated in the foiled transit trafficking case at Osoyoos, British Columbia, described earlier. Criminal networks moving women from South Korea through Canada and into the United States for sex trafficking have been further disrupted because of successful prosecutions in Washington State. Keeping up with the changing routes used by these criminal networks is a constant effort requiring extensive co-operation between Canadian and American authorities.
High-tech measures are also being used to extend the watchful eye of law enforcement and border agencies across remote stretches of the land border. Unmanned aerial “drones,” or remote-controlled aircraft similar to those used in Afghanistan and Iraq, fly on the U.S. side of the shared border with Canada to beam real-time video images to analysts who may be thousands of kilometres away.
Just how effective are these cross-border programs and activities? We can only guess. Officials with the U.S. Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the RCMP’s Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre were unwilling to discuss any details of their joint efforts. In the absence of such information, independently evaluating their progress is impossible.
It is critical that Canada and the United States provide timely legal assistance to each other in confronting the problem of human trafficking. They must work together with source countries to dismantle entire criminal networks involved in human trafficking cases. It is not enough simply to prosecute the individual who moved the victims or directly exploited them in a sweatshop or brothel. A full investigation into all of the links in the trafficking chain is needed to take apart the criminal network. With anything less, the network can simply adapt and rapidly replace a convicted individual with another criminal.
Internationally, the CBSA Migration Integrity Officers network is trying to reduce illegal migration to Canada from over forty countries, including smuggling and human trafficking. The increased vigilance has led to a substantial increase in undocumented or illegal migrants with aspirations to come to Canada being intercepted in their native countries. Documents released by the CBSA under the Access to Information Act reveal that whereas only 30 percent of inadmissible persons attempting to enter Canada were intercepted overseas in 1990, the number had increased to more than 70 percent by 2005.
Outreach to youth at risk
In 2009, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs received funding from the federal government to combat sexual exploitation and trafficking of Aboriginal women and children. That July, a conference organized by Grand Chief Ron Evans brought together front-line First Nations social workers, government officials, and police officers to develop programs to prevent these atrocities. The event received extensive media coverage and contributed to the provincial government’s announcement that it would launch a task force to investigate missing and murdered First Nations women and underage girls in the province.
This general effort, having produced some early achievements, must be maintained. As Gord Mackintosh, Manitoba’s family services and housing minister, puts it, “We are in a constant race to keep at-risk youths out of the clutches of sexual predators and street gangs.”
As well, the Government of Manitoba continues to expand “Tracia’s Trust,” its Child Sexual Exploitation Strategy named after a fourteenyear-old victim. The $2.4-million strategy provides for increased resources to promote accountability of offenders who sexually abuse children and to raise awareness of the problem and develop services for victims, along with educational campaigns.
Also in Manitoba, StreetReach is a promising new initiative whereby community outreach workers help identify missing or runaway children and coordinate services to assist them, as well as track individuals suspected of sexually exploiting children. The program already has been credited with shutting down drug houses and other locations used to lure and exploit vulnerable youth.
Unfortunately, few other provincial governments have been similarly proactive—and yet prevention strategies are key to stopping human trafficking both in Canada and abroad. That’s why the Palermo Protocol also includes an obligation for countries “to discourage the demand that fosters all forms of exploitation of persons, especially women and children, that leads to trafficking.”
Sex, car seizures, and videotape
Cars start circling the block as the sun begins to set. Like the men inside them, they’re all makes, models, and years: luxury sedans, midsized cars, mini-vans, and vehicles whose next stop is the wrecking yard. Noticeably, some of the cars sport empty baby seats. The drivers seem like any others in the sprawling suburbs of the Greater Toronto Area, except they’re not out for the evening air—they’re cruising for women and girls.
On this night, the men have no idea that they’re in the crosshairs of an undercover “reverse-sting” operation run by the Peel Regional Police, Vice Unit. Within a few hours, ten men will have been arrested for “communicating for the purposes of prostitution,” meaning they negotiated for paid sex with an undercover police officer posing as a prostituted woman.
The female undercover (the “U.C.”) has smudged her teeth, avoided washing her hair for several days, and put on worn-out clothes. The men know that prostituted women in the area are disadvantaged and can’t afford proper dental care, so a woman with good teeth is a dead giveaway.
The entire operation takes place under the watchful eye of electronic surveillance equipment and fellow officers who will rush in if signalled by the U.C. To conceal her identity as a police officer, the U.C. is “arrested,” along with the male perpetrator.
The prospect of arrest deters some but not all. One man arrested in this evening’s operation will return again tomorrow night, intent on satisfying some desperate urge that costs him his money, his reputation, and perhaps his self-respect.
Such are the challenges of controlling street-level prostitution in the suburbs of Canada’s largest city. To increase the deterrent effect of these operations, the Vice Unit resorts to other tools, including seizure of the vehicles used by the men. One officer comments, “We were seizing their cars after a sweep … and we also brought a reporter along with us. It was all over the news: The police are stopping cars and seizing vehicles. How are they going to explain that to their wife?”
Another officer notes, “The registered owner has to go before a judge to get their car back. If a wife has to go to court to get her car back, she’s gonna find out.”
Similar operations are carried out sporadically in cities across the country. In November 2009, the Winnipeg Police Service announced the seizure of vehicles from thirty men attempting to purchase sex on the street, in some cases with underage girls. The men were charged with a range of offences, but their names weren’t made public.
Undercover operations that include vehicle seizures are often a response to complaints by local residents about “strolls” (circuits where prostituted women are on display to men in vehicles), and they result in short-term police activity. A major limitation of these programs is that they target only street-level prostitution, just one avenue of exploitation. They don’t reach behind the closed doors of brothels, strip clubs, massage parlours, or private residences, all of which are increasingly common sites where human trafficking victims are exploited and remain hidden.
Taking false comfort in assumed anonymity
Purchasers of sex acts assume they’re anonymous, especially when their activities take place indoors. They might be surprised to learn that a victim of human trafficking in a recent case in Canada kept a detailed logbook of her abuse: She recorded hundreds of telephone numbers, along with the dates and times of specific sex acts, as well as the amount paid. All the data went to the police when she was rescued. The underage victim kept this financial ledger to track how much money she’d given her trafficker, who claimed she owed him an exorbitant exit fee before she could leave. If the victim’s clients were found, each would be liable under the Criminal Code for a minimum of six months in jail and up to five years imprisonment for paying for sex with a minor.
While it is illegal in Canada to communicate in a public place for the purposes of prostitution, the same is prohibited indoors only if the prostituted person is younger than eighteen. A public place is defined as anywhere to which the public has access by right or invitation, and includes a motor vehicle in plain view. From the perspective of trafficking victims being sold for sex, it is of course entirely irrelevant whether their trafficker advertised them in a public place or behind closed doors. Instead of defining the illegality by location, a more effective legal response would be to criminalize the purchase of sex acts regardless of where they take place. As we’ll see in the next chapter, this technique has been used with some success in Sweden and is becoming an attractive international model. But what happens when johns are caught and convicted? John School furnishes one answer to this question.
John Schools have no happy students but many informed graduates
As discussed earlier, John School attempts to discourage men from continually purchasing sex acts by confronting them with the consequences of their behaviour and the damage to the victims.
Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Toronto, and Ottawa have used John Schools, or “First Time Prostitution Offender Diversion Programs,” as part of their response to the demand for paid sex. The Toronto John School operates as a diversion program, which means that participation is open to “first-time, non-violent” offenders who’ve been charged with solicitation. In other words, the program is only available once to the accused, the first time he is apprehended for solicitation. If the accused completes the program, the prosecutor will withdraw the charges and the accused escapes with no criminal record.
According to Professor Alexis Kennedy at the University of Las Vegas, this program and others like it recognize that whereas the prosecution of offenders “may act as a deterrent, the social and community issues, along with the human consequences of prostitution, are largely ignored.” John Schools typically require offenders to pay about five hundred dollars for a program—usually six to eight hours over one day. As one John School advocate puts it, “If they don’t get the point in six hours, they won’t get it in sixty.” Many John Schools direct the fees to programs for victims. For example, Streetlight Support Services in Toronto applies the revenue from its John School to pay wages for female counsellors who are survivors of the sex trade and to fund programs that help women break the cycle of exploitation.
While each John School is unique, most cover the following key elements:
• laws and “street facts” on prostitution
• health awareness regarding risk and prevention of HIV/AIDS and other STDs
• effects on the community or neighbourhood and other victims
• survivor testimony from former prostituted women, and education on effects of prostitution on the lives of the women
• pimping / human trafficking
• child exploitation
• sex addiction
The Toronto John School uses real case studies to illustrate its points:
Here’s a guy who picked up a prostitute, went into a hotel room, got his trousers off, the door swings open, a couple of hooligans bust in, and the next thing you know not only has he lost his wallet and all of his identification, he’s lost his clothes and now he’s stuck at the hotel room, and he doesn’t even have his car keys, and you know, so who you gonna phone?
The scenarios are “to scare the bejesus out of them,” says John Fenn, who administers the Toronto John School. “We’re starting to show them that they can be victims, too.”
Survivor testimony and information about the effects of prostitution, as well as the reality of the sex industry and pimping, aim to dispel myths and fantasies. Fenn describes a “typical” survivor’s testimony, delivered directly to the johns in the classroom: “She explains her story, how she got in, what it was like while she was there, the abuse on her, the johns, when business was bad what she needed to do to bring money in, the beatings, the whole scenario of what the world’s really about. The branding, the cigarette burns, the sexual assaults by more than one man at a time, being in a room with a john and three of his buddies show up. It’s hard to hear sometimes.”
As well, community speakers try to connect with the johns who are also fathers, husbands, or neighbours to make them understand that this could happen in their communities, to their wives or daughters. “They tell the stories of ... the teenage daughter going to the corner and being harassed by a guy in a car thinking she may be a sex trade worker,” says Fenn.
Are John Schools an effective response or just window dressing?
Evaluations of the effectiveness of John Schools are based on participant surveys that measure changes in attitude toward prostitution and sexual exploitation throughout the program. Re-offence rates by participants have also been used to monitor the success of the programs.
The Vancouver Prostitution Offender Program recorded a significant increase in agreement with the following statements by participants who completed that city’s John School classes:
• Prostitution is a serious problem in our society.
• Prostituted persons are victims of pimps.
• Most prostituted persons live in poverty.
• Prostitution exists because of the demands of the customers.
Evaluations of Toronto’s John School are also encouraging. According to the program’s directors, participants were more likely to accept responsibility for their actions, more likely to admit that they might have sex addictions, and less likely to report favourable attitudes toward prostitution.
The number of John School attendees who re-offend is also encouragingly low. Having completed the program at Toronto’s John School, fewer than 2 percent of participants were subsequently arrested by police for solicitation.
Some critics question the validity of relying on this low rate of re-offence, however, suggesting it may be more attributable to the arrest itself than to the educational and awareness program exclusively. Being caught by police, appearing in court, and confronting the possibility that others could learn of their illegal conduct may suffice to discourage some johns from future offences. This explanation applies only to those John School programs that include arrests, charges, and court appearances, which not all do.
Alternatively, the low re-offence rates among John School participants could suggest that graduates understand more fully how police operate and are better able to avoid detection; or they may opt to purchase sex acts in non-public venues to conceal their ongoing activities.
On balance, the available evidence supports the effectiveness of John School as a preventative measure for first-time offenders. The program inspires other debates: Should attendance at John School be voluntary or should it be court-ordered? Should the police lay criminal charges against the men and only have those charges withdrawn upon completion of the John School program?
Proponents of John School as a pretrial diversion program believe it’s more effective when the participants attend voluntarily because they have an incentive to complete the program. In some U.S. cities, the court also may order John School upon conviction, as a condition of the offender’s sentence or probation. This also ensures that a criminal record is registered against the offender.
At the other extreme, Vancouver’s Prostitution Offender Program offers John School to alleged offenders before charges are laid. Women’s rights groups have expressed concern that this approach, which fails to expose and publicly condemn the behaviour, undermines the seriousness of the offence and doesn’t serve as an effective deterrent.
Lee Lakeman of Vancouver Rape Relief believes that men caught for solicitation should not benefit from the privacy and secrecy of pre-court diversion. “Why are they getting diverted?” asks Lakeman. “If the police think that’s such an effective sentence, charge the guy, convict him, and let’s have the sentence be that. But why the secrecy? Why is he being protected? Why is his reputation being protected? Why are we all going along with that?”
Lakeman feels too that John School reduces the incentive for police to investigate further to determine whether or not more serious crimes also were committed. “So men in fact never ... get charged with any of the related crimes, including more serious charges,” says Lakeman.
The criticism that Lakeman and others level at John School is not without merit. At the same time sending non-habitual, first- time offenders to John School before trial can help to change their attitudes and behaviour. So when and how should John School be used?
The police and the criminal justice system must address the role of men in driving demand for sexual exploitation and human trafficking to a greater extent than they currently do. A better approach would insist that men caught soliciting for the purposes of prostitution be arrested and charged with the offence in order to drive home the seriousness of their actions. If a man used a vehicle to commit the offence, it should be seized and released to the registered owner on a court appearance based on the relevant legal provisions. Moreover, police investigations should be complete before a Crown prosecutor decides how to proceed with a case, and a case that includes any of the following should always proceed to trial:
1 The accused previously has been arrested, charged, or convicted of any prostitution-related offences or violent crimes.
2 The accused is alleged to have solicited a minor under eighteen years of age, or a probable victim of human trafficking of any age, regardless of whether the accused knew, or suspected it.
3 The police investigation includes allegations of a more serious nature beyond solicitation.
4 The accused is unwilling to accept responsibility for his conduct.
If none of these factors are present, the Crown prosecutor should carefully review the evidence against the accused to determine whether or not John School represents an appropriate option as a diversion program, assuming the accused accepts responsibility for his conduct in open court and agrees to complete the program. In addition to attendance at John School, measures such as community service and donations to charitable organizations that assist victims of sexual exploitation should be requested by Crown prosecutors. Once the accused has completed this program, including the payment of the registration fee and any other terms, the charges against him should be withdrawn. Trial judges also should consider separate John School classes for convicted offenders as part of their sentences.
John School can be valuable in preventing first-time offenders from becoming habitual users of prostitution. However, a more complete response to prostitution and human trafficking is needed, including stronger laws against the purchasers of sex acts, wherever they take place; increased law enforcement efforts to investigate and arrest purchasers, both in public and indoors; routine use of car confiscation where available; greater media coverage of policing activities that target purchasers and of the harm caused by the commercial sex industry; and stronger sentences for convicted purchasers of sex acts, particularly repeat offenders.
Even these measures aren’t enough in some circumstances. As we’ve seen, especially from my experiences in Cambodia, some purchasers of sex acts who target children seek to escape the scrutiny of Canadian authorities by travelling to poor and often-corrupt countries. Fortunately, many of the tools needed to bring these perpetrators to justice are already in place. They simply need to be applied more vigorously.
Ending vacations for Canada’s travelling child sex offenders
Canada’s child sex tourism law is valid and enforceable, as discussed previously, but it requires more proactive implementation. A recent article of mine in the Canadian Criminal Law Review catalogued the existing treaties between Canada and child sex tourism destination countries—and it found that all of the necessary tools are in place to hold Canadian citizens accountable for child sex crimes abroad. What’s missing are the political will and resources to implement those laws effectively.
To put it bluntly, Canada’s record in prosecuting its child sex offenders abroad is an international embarrassment, especially compared with the proactive approach taken by countries like Australia and the United States. For years, federal law enforcement agents from both of these countries have been investigating, arresting, and prosecuting their nationals for sexually exploiting children abroad. The results speak for themselves.
From 1995 to 2007, the Australian Federal Police conducted 158 investigations into extraterritorial child sex offences committed by Australian nationals, resulting in 28 persons being charged and leading to 19 convictions, with several cases in process. Between 2003 and early 2008, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made 67 arrests under the child sex tourism provisions of the PROTECT Act, resulting in 47 convictions and others still being prosecuted. The United States has even caught Canadian citizens in its dragnet.
Canadian John Wrenshall, a sixty-three-year-old former Scout leader who had been convicted of sexually abusing young boys in Calgary, was free to travel abroad without any restrictions. He moved to Thailand in 2000 and became the mastermind of an operation that arranged trips for foreign pedophiles to sexually abuse children as young as four. Wrenshall’s “customers” even photographed and videotaped their unspeakable abuse. Although Canada could have pursued Wrenshall, it was U.S. authorities that successfully prosecuted him in May 2010 because some of his “customers” were American.
“Unfortunately, we are totally dropping the ball,” says Rosalind Prober, executive director of Beyond Borders, about Canada’s inadequate enforcement of its travelling child sex crime legislation. “We seem to find ourselves able to prosecute cases that fall in police laps, but in terms of doing any sort of proactive work to stop this crime, Canada’s doing absolutely nothing.” Prober is pleased, however, that under U.S. law the sentence for Wrenshall likely will be substantial—over twenty years in jail.
Only four individuals have been convicted in Canada for child sex offences committed abroad between 1997 and 2010. In June 2008, the U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report specifically criticized Canada’s progress in addressing child sex crimes committed by its nationals abroad and recommended that it “increase efforts to investigate and prosecute, as appropriate, Canadians suspected of committing child sex tourism crimes abroad.”
The following October, the Report of the Canada–U.S. Consultation in Preparation for World Congress III Against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents also found “the lack of enforcement of the law against child sex tourism [to be] the most glaring law enforcement gap” in Canada’s response to child sexual exploitation.
“Internationally, we’ve got to be set up better,” concedes Staff Sergeant Rick Greenwood of the RCMP National Child Exploitation Co-ordination Centre (NCECC), who has publicly stated that police forces globally are “overwhelmed” with the number of child sex tourism cases.
Though Canada maintains RCMP liaison officers in sex tourism destination countries such as Thailand, these officers are assigned primarily to issues ranging from drugs to terrorism and money laundering. This contrasts with the mandate for liaison officers from other countries, which include child sex crimes on their priority list in global hot spots.
“The whole system in Canada was asleep”
It took over a decade before Canadian authorities extradited Ernest Fenwick MacIntosh, a Canadian citizen, from India to Canada in 2007 to face charges of child molestation. During this period, his passport was renewed several times while he remained in India where he allegedly sexually abused two young boys. Canada’s failure to take swift action confused and outraged Indian officials. “I don’t understand why he was able to get a new passport, or why we weren’t asked to arrest him sooner,” says Inspector Awanish Dvivedi of the New Delhi Police. “It appears to me the whole system in Canada was asleep.”
Canada routinely issues passports to convicted sex offenders, even since the MacIntosh incident. When these men pay hard currency abroad in exchange for sex with impoverished children, they power the local demand for human trafficking. Above all, in their quest to evade detection and prosecution, they gravitate to countries that are both poor and corrupt where they can abuse children with impunity.
International co-operation remains a key component in securing convictions for sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Interpol—with 187 member countries, the largest police organization in the world—is foundational in supporting international requests for information and assistance among countries with respect to these crimes. The Interpol International Wanted Persons notices, or “Red Notices,” can be issued to facilitate the apprehension of suspects before the filing of formal extradition requests. Red Notices are supported by detailed arrest warrants issued by national judges and contain information about fugitives, including physical descriptions, photographs, and fingerprints, as well as occupations, languages spoken, specifics of identity documents, and other details. The Red Notice system played a vital role in the 2007 identification and apprehension of Canadian Christopher Paul Neil in Thailand, a case discussed earlier.
“Green Notices” are another Interpol tool. They help prevent previously convicted child sex offenders from travelling abroad and re-offending by equipping all Interpol member countries with warnings about the presence of known offenders. Since 2006, the United States has had a separate criminal offence for convicted child sex offenders who fail to notify their government of travel abroad. The notification must be made twenty-one days before travelling to a foreign country, and again on the convicted offender’s return to the United States. The law also requires that appropriate authorities in the relevant foreign country be notified, leaving them to decide whether or not to admit the individual.
Canada has yet to take decisive action to restrict and punish offenders who fuel commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking abroad. Convicted sex offenders from Canada are free to roam the globe. Their vacation must come to an end.