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YOUR Independent Community Newspaper
Vol. 7 Edition 4
THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2019
Frosty fun at the Polar Plunge
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Our girls are not for sale By Mary Beth Corcoran mary@chathamvoice.com
Sarah Schofield/The Chatham Voice
Tom Elliott from Comber reacts to the bone-chilling cold waters of the Chatham-Kent Polar Plunge on Saturday. He braved the snowy roads to take part in the plunge, held at St. Clair College’s Thames Campus. Presented by the Ontario Law Enforcement Torch Run, $40,000 was raised for the Special Olympics Ontario.
WE ARE A
DRIVING FORCE
The reality of human trafficking in Chatham-Kent hit hard for the 600 plus people who attended the town hall meeting hosted by Chatham-Kent Leamington MPP Rick Nicholls at the John D. Bradley Convention Centre in Chatham Thursday night. Representatives from area police, victims’ services and related agencies joined a human trafficking survivor in explaining the reality of young women, and men, who are forced into providing sex services for their pimps along the Highway 401 corridor. Statistics presented to the woman, men and teens in the audience showed that 93 per cent of human sex trafficking victims in Canada are Canadian-born, with an average age of 14. And Hwy. 401 in Ontario is a major corridor where traffickers will drive girls to different cities along the highway and force them to service men for a couple of days before they move on to the next city. The girls are told what to wear, where and when to
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eat and sleep, if at all, have their ID taken away, and threatened with physical violence to them or their loved ones if they disobey. Statistics compiled show that of the cases the police know about: 93 per cent of victims are female and seven per cent are male, 25 per cent of the victims are under the age of 18, and 91 per cent of the victims know the person accused of trafficking them. Chatham-Kent Police Service Const. Meredith Rota and OPP Sgt. Kim Miller, both involved in anti-trafficking in the region, explained to the audience that trafficking isn’t just girls from other cities, happening somewhere else – “it is happening right here, to our girls, under our noses.” Miller explained the most well-known method of trafficking a victim starts with targeting vulnerable young girls, called the Romeo/pimp method. She said the recruiter will learn all about the girl from social media, or through watching her habits and then befriend her. Continued on page 3
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