KAMLOOPS THIS WEEK
By
Jeremy Deutsch - Kamloops This Week
Published: April 22, 2010 2:00 PM
Updated: April 22, 2010 2:41 PM
The mother of a missing Kamloops woman is getting a chance to take her fight against human
trafficking to the hallowed halls of Parliament.
Glendene Grant is thrilled to have been asked by a Conservative Manitoba MP to attend committee meetings in Ottawa for Bill C-268 — a private member’s bill that would set mandatory minimum sentences for anyone convicted of human trafficking.
Grant’s daughter, Jessie Foster, went missing after moving to
Las Vegas with a boyfriend in the spring of 2006.
Grant believes her daughter has been taken into the world of human trafficking.
“All I’m thinking is more people are going to hear about Jessie,” Grant said. “I didn’t think about anything else.”
It wasn’t until later the mother of four realized she might help change laws.
“I have a hard time wrapping my brain around all that,” she said.
Grant admits she doesn’t know much about politics, but she hopes her presence at the committee meetings and her heartbreaking story will help educate politicians on the issue of human trafficking.
“Laws need to be changed,” she said.
Grant suggested all the education and effort will go to waste if there isn’t anything done to protect victims who have the misfortune of getting caught up in human trafficking.
She believes the bill, which is currently in front of the Senate, will be a good start.
The bill seeks to set mandatory minimum sentences of five years for anyone caught trafficking persons under the age of 18.
Grant was invited to Ottawa by Kildonan-St. Paul MP Joyce Smith.
The two met at the Walk With Me ceremony in Toronto earlier this month.
Organizers of the event named an award after Grant and Foster in recognition of the work Grant has done to bring attention to the issue of human trafficking.
The Jessie and Glendene Award honours police officers, social workers and media for their work with human trafficking and victims of the crime.
Grant has also been inspired to start her own non-profit organization, tentatively called MATH (Mothers Against Trafficking Humans), that will further her efforts to thwart modern-day slavery.
In March, KTW published a four-part series on human trafficking, written by staff reporter Jeremy Deustch. What follows is the complete series of MODERN-DAY SLAVERY:
MODERN-DAY SLAVERY: THE SERIES
KTW LAYOUT
Modern-Day Slavery: The four-part KTW series on human smuggling in its entirety.
By Jeremy Deutsch
MODERN-DAY SLAVERY
A KTW FOUR-PART SERIES
PART 1: A SURVIVOR'S TALE FROM THE MEAN STREETS
It was a frightening proposition Heather Cameron just can’t shake from her mind.
On one of the many nights she would spend on the streets of Vancouver’s
Downtown Eastside, a familiar john offered her $500 to lure a 14-year-old girl to join the pair for sex.
Money is always tempting to a drug addict, but Cameron couldn’t do it.
“I remember that scaring me,” she told KTW.
She took a pass on the proposal.
It was an ironic situation for the Kamloops resident to find herself in as Cameron was a victim of a form of human trafficking — even if she couldn’t identify her plight at the time.
While experts tend to define human trafficking as an individual who either recruits, transports or controls someone for the purpose of exploitation, it’s a rather sterile definition to a teenager caught up in a world of addiction and prostitution.
Cameron’s journey began long before those two words would enter this country’s criminal lexicon.
The blonde-haired mother of two grew up in an upper middle-class home in Kamloops.
She attended Aberdeen elementary and Sahali secondary schools.
On the outside, Cameron was the girl next door.
Inside, however, she struggled with self-esteem issues throughout her childhood and what she calls “the disease of addiction.”
She began her dark behaviour by cutting herself.
When Cameron was 13, she was placed in a psychiatric ward and put on medication, but she progressed to an eating disorder and heavy drinking.
Her family did the best they could, but no one could figure out was wrong with her.
Once she got a taste of hard drugs as a teen, Cameron was hooked.
At the age of 15, she tried crack for the first time with a boyfriend several years older.
The pair then befriended a drug dealer in town who introduced her to heroin.
That’s when her drug use spiraled out of control.
“Looking back now, even though I wasn’t prostituting, it’s sexual favours for drugs is how it started,” Cameron said.
At 18, the former A-student married a man who made her work the streets of Vancouver as a prostitute.
Cameron said she had no idea what she was getting into.
“When you hear human trafficking, you think it will be upfront or you’ll know the warning signals,” she said.
“It’s a slow, progressive, subtle process. All of the sudden, you’re in it and you’re trapped.
“I remember looking around and thinking, ‘How did I get here? This is insane.’”
She naively thought the drug dealers were being nice, but she was never in control.
“The dealers will give you dope if you work right after,” she said.
At first, Cameron’s husband convinced her she didn’t have to sleep with the men. She just had to bring them back to their apartment so they could get the cash to buy drugs.
But, as her habit progressed, she became fully entrenched in the lifestyle.
After the short-lived marriage, she met the father of her soon-to-be first child and moved to the poorest neighbourhood in Canada — right on the corner of Main and Hastings streets in Vancouver.
“At that point, it’s very normal down there. It’s not like anyone calls anyone their pimp. It’s very normal that you need protection,” she said.
She eventually became pregnant with her first daughter, finding out in a less than glamorous way — while languishing in jail.
Cameron tried to go to detox several times, but it only fueled her boyfriend’s anger.
“It’s scary to leave,” she said.
“The scariest thing for me ever was to leave that five-block radius.”
But, 30 days before her due date and fearing the loss of her unborn child, Cameron summoned the courage to make a call.
“I didn’t want to lose that kid, like so many other women down there,” Cameron said.
She phoned her mom.
“Come get me tomorrow,” she desperately pleaded with her mother.
It would be the last night Cameron would spend on the streets of Vancouver.
The next day, her family picked her up and drove her home.
Now 27, Cameron runs Mothers For Recovery.
As part of the Kamloops Family Resource Society, the grassroots agency lends support to mothers or pregnant women who are trying to break their addiction — the same situation Cameron was in just a few years earlier.
But the road back to reclaiming her life wasn’t as easy as the three-hour drive up the Coquihalla Highway.
Upon her return to Kamloops in 2004, Cameron stayed off drugs for five months, until she relapsed.
She looked for services in counselling to help her leave the sex trade, but felt there wasn’t enough being offered to keep her clean.
After three more years on the streets of Kamloops, it finally clicked for Cameron and she got clean.
But it was an effort she describes as a “long process.”
She credits her sobriety to having other female friends who were fighting the same, horrible battle.
“I never had that before, like friends,” Cameron said.
“I was very isolated. It was me and him in our apartment and that’s what my world revolved around,” she said.
Years later, Cameron remains haunted by her time on the streets.
“That’s the thing that screws my head the most — the flashbacks around the sex trade —
“Those memories and traumas.”
PART II: IT'S HAPPENING IN KAMLOOPS
It could easily begin with a smile or a Facebook poke.
It might then progress to a gift or a secret rendezvous.
Often, a vulnerable teenage girl is the target.
She’ll be showered with gifts and given access to any drug imaginable. Without even suspecting a thing, the teen is being groomed for a life of prostitution.
They are common tactics used to lure young Canadian girls from their homes into a life of modern-day slavery.
According to one leading expert on the issue of domestic human trafficking, it’s happening right here in Kamloops.
Benjamin Perrin, an assistant professor at the UBC faculty of law, has studied human trafficking for several years and has just completed a two-year study on Canada’s involvement in the issue.
His research has found that, not only do trafficking rings operate in larger cities, but they’re active in smaller communities — recruiting young women from towns in the Interior of B.C.
In many cases, girls are lured to cities like Vancouver or across the border by lavish promises from a “boyfriend”.
They’ll offer drugs or gifts, such as a free airline ticket to a vacation destination.
But, in the end, the victim — often through the threat of violence — ends up being sold for sex.
“Kamloops has come up in our research as an area where traffickers have engaged in efforts to recruit Canadian victims,” Perrin told KTW.
Social-media websites like Facebook and MySpace have made it easier for traffickers to operate across vast geographical areas with the push of a button.
One of the highest-profile suspected cases of human trafficking in Western Canada is that of Jessie Foster.
The Kamloops woman went missing in the spring of 2006 after moving to Las Vegas with a boyfriend.
If getting caught up in human trafficking appears easy, getting out is a different story.
The underground nature of the crime makes it difficult for law enforcement to detect it within a community.
According to Perrin, the traffickers — most of them men — have ties to violent street gangs.
The federal government made human smuggling a criminal-code offence in 2005, but Perrin argued the province has been slow in prosecuting human traffickers.
While Perrin noted 30 active RCMP files of trafficking, not a single person has been convicted of the crime in B.C.
The province has also created an office to combat trafficking — but the B.C. Office to Combat Trafficking in Persons (OCTIP) has six staff members whose primary focus is on Victoria and Vancouver.
Perrin suggested there is little offered for Canadian victims of trafficking in the way of counselling, shelter or exit programs from life in the sex trade.
There is also little help for communities to defend against the growing scourge.
“We don’t see the same level of support for victims of human trafficking in our country as we witness in other jurisdictions,” Perrin said.
Instead, he said, victims are often left to fend for themselves once they are identified and rescued.
But the head of OCTIP said the agency’s intention is to pull together in a variety of communities the same sort of network of services it has on the Coast.
“Not building anything new, but linking and training the various community partners and agencies that would be involved,” Robin Pike, the executive director of OCTIP, told KTW.
The groups would include social agencies, child-protection workers and law enforcement.
Besides providing education and awareness programs, OCTIP works with the police when it encounters a situation of human trafficking.
Pike noted the agency has been to Kamloops to bring public awareness to the issue, but it hasn’t been asked to help specifically on any cases in Kamloops.
Pike couldn’t say just how large a problem domestic human trafficking has become.
“We just know there is a fair amount of movement of women,” she said, noting the agency has been involved in 50 different cases in the last year.
OCTIP hopes to start a greater public-awareness campaign this year. Pike said the first step is to help communities understand what human trafficking looks like.
If human trafficking is happening in Kamloops, it hasn’t come to the attention of the local RCMP.
Kamloops Mounties said they have yet to deal with a single trafficking file, nor do they have members set aside to deal with any cases.
Complaints of human trafficking are typically dealt with out of RCMP offices in Vancouver.
However, if there was an incident reported, RCMP Const. Pat Nagy said, police would treat it like any other file, with the seriousness of the complaint determining where on the investigative ladder it would fall.
MANY CITY MINORS 'OWNED' BY GANGS
Experts on human trafficking say there isn’t enough being done to help women once they get out of the sex trade.
It was the same helpless feeling that drove Kamloops’ Heather Cameron, a former prostitute, to create Mothers For Recovery.
The grassroots agency lends support to mothers or pregnant women who are trying break their addiction.
Cameron spent years on streets of Vancouver before finally getting free in 2004 (her story was featured in the March 17 edition of KTW and can be read online at kamloopsthisweek.com).
But, when she returned to Kamloops, she had trouble staying clean and out of the lifestyle.
Cameron believes part of the problem is the general attitude to the local sex-trade industry.
“It’s such a hidden thing, especially behind closed doors in Kamloops,” she said.
Cameron knows just how much of a problem the lure of prostitution is in the city. When she began her agency in 2007, she surveyed 30 mothers and found 17 were involved in the sex trade.
The AIDS Society of Kamloops’ SHOP (Social and Health Options for Persons in the Sex Trade program) has 94 open sex-trade client files.
An open file refers to someone who has had contact with SHOP in the past year.
That’s mostly at street level and doesn’t include escort agencies and massage parlours.
Heidi Starr, the SHOP co-ordinator, said the number of sex-trade workers in Kamloops is disproportionate for the size of the city.
She contends many of the minors involved in prostitution are owned by local gangs, often caught up in the lifestyle after being lured by a supposed “boyfriend” and a promise of drugs.
Starr said communities like Kamloops are popular recruiting grounds for human traffickers because there is the promise of going to bigger cities, like Vancouver.
After spending years in the trade, Cameron has some well-earned advice for teens who may find themselves in her shoes.
“Learn to listen to your own intuition,” she said. “If I look back, I know that feeling in my tummy told me something was wrong and I never listened to it.
“I got to the point where I could block it out.”
In addition, Cameron said it is crucial that young girls find women to look up to and confide in. Though it might not be a parent, Cameron said it can be someone who is safe and confidential.
KEEPING YOUR EYES OPEN
They are the signs of modern-day human slavery.
A growing number of teenage girls are being targeted and recruited into the sex trade, in what is effectively human trafficking.
While the crime is difficult to detect, experts say there are warning signs parents and teacher can look for.
According to Benjamin Perrin, an assistant professor at the UBC Faculty of Law, the signs a teen is falling victim to human trafficking include unexplained absences from school, an inability to keep a regular schedule, bruising and depression.
In some cases, there could be some form of branding on body parts, like a tattoo.
PART III: OPENING INNOCENT EYES
At first glance, it would appear Mark Price and Glendene Grant would never need to cross paths.
Price is a gruff former cop who now heads the Kamloops and District Crime Stoppers Society.
Grant is a quiet mother of four and grandmother who worked at the Convergys call centre in Valleyview until recently being laid off.
But tragic circumstances have brought the two together for a very important project.
Grant’s daughter, Jessie Foster, went missing after moving to Las Vegas with a boyfriend in the spring of 2006.
Her disappearance is a case of suspected human trafficking.
Since then, Grant has worked tirelessly to find her.
Today, the cop and the mom are teaming up to educate Kamloops teens on the growing problem of human trafficking.
The pair will be a part of a three-person, 45-minute presentation at local high schools that will touch on two aspects of modern-day slavery — trafficking into the sex trade and slave labour in the global trade market.
The presentations will target senior grades in a classroom setting.
Grant hopes to use Jessie’s story as a warning to other teens, so they can avoid being lured into slavery.
“The kids need to learn while they’re in school that they could be a potential victim at that age,” Grant said.
No one knows that better than Grant herself.
While her daughter was seen as beautiful, she said she wasn’t as self-confident as she appears in her photos.
Grant said it’s easy for a girl with low self-esteem to be drawn to somebody who compliments her.
“Unfortunately, she [Jessie] fell victim to someone who gained her trust while still in high school,” she said.
For her presentation, Grant has put together a short video, set to music, filled with pictures that encapsulate Jessie’s story.
Experts on human trafficking say victims are often too afraid to come forward and get help.
Grant believes that was the case with her daughter.
That’s where Price and his organization come in.
Crime Stoppers International has been involved in human-trafficking education campaigns for several years.
Price intends to tell the kids that, if they are being targeted and don’t know where to turn, they can call Crime Stoppers.
“They can phone in and feel safe,” he said.
The idea for the program was actually the brainchild of Debra Noel, a member of the Catholic Women’s League.
She was interested in the subject and figured Grant and Price would be the perfect duo to talk to kids.
Noel said she wants to shine a spotlight on human trafficking and offer solutions to teens to avoid getting caught up in the sex trade.
“As I think about it more, often it bugs me that people don’t know enough about it,” she said.
“The problem of slavery is very well hidden. People get locked away and no one sees them.”
Noel will be presenting the slave-labour portion of the program.
While the group has just started putting a package together to bring to the schools, there’s already interest in the presentation.
St. Ann’s Academy, an independent Catholic school, has expressed interest, and Noel is confidant public schools in the Kamloops-Thompson district will follow.
Grant hopes the program will make its way through every school in the district and beyond.
“Even if all they saw was the video, I think it would be extremely effective,” she said.
THE HUMAN COST OF SMUGGLING
• Trafficking in Canada has consequences estimated between $120 million and $400 million per year and accounts for approximately 8,000 to 16,000 people arriving annually in Canada illegally.
— Organized Crime Impact Study, Solicitor General of Canada
• Although accurate statistics on human trafficking are hard to obtain, the U.S. State Department estimates between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year.
Of these, 80 per cent are women and girls and up to 50 per cent are minors.
The International Labour Organization estimates there are 12.3 million victims of forced labour (including sexual servitude) at any given time.
Other estimates range from four million to 27 million.
The RCMP estimates between 600 and 800 victims are trafficked into Canada each year, while another 1,500 to 2,200 persons are trafficked through Canada to the United States annually.
Trafficking in people ranks with the drug trade and arms smuggling as a major source of revenue for organized crime.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations estimates the trade in human life generates global profits approaching $10 billion annually.
— The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada
PART IV: A MOTHER'S AGONIZING ODYSSEY
Flipping through the pages of the neatly organized newspaper clippings of Jessie Foster is like opening a vault to a heart-wrenching mystery.
With each turn, her bright hazel eyes, blonde hair and slightly roguish smile still seem to light up the pages.
But the images are in contrast to a brutal reality.
They were captured before the 21-year-old Kamloops resident vanished in 2006 after moving to Las Vegas with a boyfriend, a case of suspected human trafficking.
Four years later, that vault of stories is her mother Glendene Grant’s bible.
The collection also represents the crusade-like efforts by the mother of four to find her daughter and shine a spotlight on the issue of human trafficking.
Monday (March 28) will mark the four-year anniversary since Jessie was last seen alive.
She would be turning 26 in May.
Foster’s disappearance is a disturbing tale of modern-day slavery that has hit close to home for many in the Kamloops community.
Grant believes Jessie was lured to Las Vegas by a boyfriend who eventually forced her into prostitution.
She spoke with Jessie on the phone just days before she went missing.
At the time, Grant recalled having a sense something just wasn’t right with her daughter.
There was something in Jessie’s voice in those last phone calls that didn’t sit well.
Grant was close to Jessie and assumed the adventurous girl would open up.
She didn’t find out what kind of living hell her daughter was living in until it was too late.
“I knew better, but I didn’t think it was happening,” she said.
Following Jessie’s disappearance, Grant learned her daughter, who had maintained regular contact with her family, had previously been arrested by Las Vegas police for prostitution.
Jessie was last seen by her boyfriend, Peter Todd, a Jamaican national authorities have labelled a pimp.
Up until Jessie’s disappearance, Grant thought of human trafficking as a Third-World problem.
That was until the crime came crashing through her white picket fence.
She never thought her own daughter would end up in an international human-trafficking ring. She hopes her struggle will serve as a reminder to parents to talk their kids and not take answers to their queries at face value.
As the days turned into weeks, then months and now years, Grant has never given up hope the daughter she held in her arms countless times will some day return.
“My heart just isn’t telling me she’s dead,” she told KTW.
“I can’t argue with that.”
But Grant has not been sitting idly by, waiting for Jessie to walk through her front door.
Instead, she has worked with a dogged determination to find her daughter in the years following her disappearance, along the way educating others on the shadowy world of human trafficking.
Besides the dozens of stories in the media, including appearances on America’s Most Wanted and The Montel Williams Show, Grant hired a private investigator, flew to Las Vegas twice to hold her own search, held fundraisers, created websites and acquainted herself with various social media.
Grant is also teaming up with the Kamloops and District Crime Stoppers Society to give a presentation to local schools on the subject of human trafficking.
Most importantly, she will tell Jessie’s story to anyone who will listen with a kind ear.
Grant conceded her effort has almost become an obsession.
Her laptop computer rarely leaves her side.
“Not one person out there considered missing deserves to be missing and have their case sitting in a drawer,” she said.
But the preoccupation has taken its toll on Grant, both mentally and financially. Her teenaged daughter recently divulged to her that she can’t wait until Jessie is found so she can get her mom back.
Surely a sad admission, but even if Jessie were found today, Grant said she can’t go back to being the mother she once was.
“That mom is forever gone,” she said.
Grant also decided to take on the stress of Jessie’s cause alone, so the rest of the family can move on and try to live a normal life.
“Even if I don’t get Jessie back and, even if anything I’ve ever done will prevent one child from going missing, all that I’ve done was so worth it,” she said.
Matters were only made worse after she was laid off from her job at the Convergys call centre in November. Grant has spent thousands of dollars of her own money in the last four years in her search for her daughter.
While those efforts have left her near-destitute, none of that seems to matter to Grant.
All she wants is Jessie to come home.
GRANT'S JOURNEY CONTINUES
While the case of Jessie Foster appears to have gone cold for investigators, it hasn’t for her mother, Glendene Grant.
The Kamloops resident has led a crusade to find her daughter and keep Jessie’s case in the media spotlight.
To mark the four-year anniversary of Foster’s disappearance, Grant will be flying to Vancouver for an interview on CTV’s Canada AM program on Monday, March 29.
She will be joined by forensic artist Diana Trepkov, who recently sketched new age-enhancement drawings of Foster.
A couple of weeks later, Grant intends to fly to Toronto to attend the Walk With Me ceremony.
Organizers have named an award after Grant and Foster in recognition of the work she has done to bring attention to human trafficking.
The Jessie and Glendene Award honours police officers, social workers and media for their work with human trafficking and victims of the crime.
The ceremony takes place on April 15.
For the latest updates and more information on the case, go online to
www.jessiefoster.ca
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