Human sex trafficking survivor seeks shares story to protect vulnerable sector

By Colin Graf

SARNIA—Elaine Antone is counting on social workers in southwest Ontario to learn from the horrors she has experienced so they can save Indigenous youth from falling prey to human traffickers.

Antone is from the Oneida Settlement, southwest of London Ontario, and she recently spoke recently to over 100 social service and health workers in Sarnia about her experiences of being sex trafficked. Her story started with sexual abuse at a young age and progressed when she entered an orphanage at age 12 and escalated to a life of drug addiction and prostitution to earn money for the drugs.

Her message to the workers is to be vigilant in watching for signs young people they work with may be the targets of men or women looking to exploit them.  If young people seem to be withdrawing from families or friends, and start to change the way they dress or have new possessions they are showing off, it may indicate someone is befriending them in order to direct them down a dangerous path, she says.

“We need to educate these people to look for the signs of a child that’s from a poor inner-city home or First Nation’s home and see if they are being dressed well, have stuff that other kids don’t have,” such as iPads, new video game machines, or expensive cell phones, Antone adds.

Managing to change her life in her late 20s, Antone raised two daughters and graduated with them from university.  Still, the scars of her younger days remained, and having “no real purpose” in her 50s, she returned to the drug-fuelled life, emerging once more only within the last year.

Even so, keeping her daughters safe during their upbringing has given Antone insight she wants to pass on so others can keep their children safe too.  She wants parents, teachers, and “everybody who deals with our youth” to know the warning signs of a teen being groomed to join the sex trade.

“These people are going to give them material stuff that they don’t have access to in their own home and they’re going to give them attention. These kids are going to become withdrawn, away from their teachers, away from their parents, and then the kids are going to be gone, they’re going to disappear into the underground world of being sex trafficked,” Antone says.

She was open with her own daughters about her early life struggles, Antone explains. Growing up in the orphanage and in foster homes, she vowed, “if I ever have kids they’re not going to go through the system the way I did.”

She’s counting on others following that example.

Antone believes that families should “be talking with your children about trafficking, not only daughters but sons too, about how people who might befriend you are just setting you up to become part of the trafficking network.”

Indigenous people, and women specifically, are particularly vulnerable to the lures set by traffickers, says Nancy Peters, Cultural Resource Coordinator at the Sarnia Friendship Centre. Feelings of displacement and rootlessness are so prevalent among First Nations’ people that many women are “really reaching out for something, and that’s where those risks of exploitation come from. People don’t even realize they or their family members are at risk,” says Peters, who helped organize the Sarnia seminar.

According to Peters, every story of trafficking is unique, but the exploitation of First Nations’ women is “something that’s been placed upon our people since the time of contact”. Peters explained that in traditional societies, “women were held in high regard, governed our nations, and took care of our education.”

“Today they are not being seen as something sacred. Our indigenous women and girls are growing up knowing that … We’re more of a disposable unit than non-native women are. We’re more invisible and we know how to be victims easier,” says Antone, who was interviewed by a commissioner from the inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIW) last Oct. in London.

The links between sex trafficking and the MMIW in Ontario are not fully documented yet, Peters believes, but any beliefs that the missing or murdered problem is only a big problem in the West or North are wrong.

“That’s absolutely not true” she says. “We face similar issues here as the rest of the country. There are women who are going missing, there are murders that are happening on the First Nations communities locally.”

The day-long seminar is a prelude to a research study about to launch in the Sarnia area to find out more about sex trafficking in the area. The two-year study, a partnership between Lambton College and the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Centre in Sarnia, will examine human trafficking in the area more closely “to put a face” on the experience, according to Ruth Geurts, professor in the Department of Community Services at the college, who spoke at the seminar. Funded by the federal government, a full-time researcher and two assistants will speak with survivors, youth, unions, and local industries.

As part of the study, Peters will interview a number of First Nations’ survivors to find out “what this looks like in the indigenous communities.” She will also host focus groups at the Friendship Centre in April to find out what local First Nations people know about human trafficking and what they feel about the dangers posed to local families. The Centre will be careful to provide supports for people who are coming forward to speak of their experiences.

Peters also hopes to educate people coming through the friendship centre about the problem.
She says that “a lot of people don’t ever think this is an issue.”  Peters says that the general attitude is often “that doesn’t happen in First Nations communities, not in my community, not in yours”.

“It’s really stigmatized as being a larger city problem, but it is very much prevalent here.”

The study will also be trying to figure out if youth are more likely to fall into being trafficked if they live on First Nations territory or in the city of Sarnia, which Peters calls “a hub” for local Indigenous communities. Examining if Sarnia’s location bordering the United States also has an impact on the human trafficking problem will also be studied, she says.

Social workers from Aamjiwnaang, Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point, and other First Nations from the region attended the seminar, giving Peters hope for protecting their youth.
“It’s great to see the Indigenous community come out with open hearts and open minds to learn together and shows there’s a lot of community caring for our relatives.”

Elaine Antone hopes the seminar is just the start of efforts to protect First Nations’ youth from sex trafficking.  She dreams of being able to “get help to these children faster and quicker,” to include the topic in both elementary and high school learning, and to bring victims “who have been lucky enough to get out,” into schools to speak to young people.

“Kids today need to know they can be exploited just as soon as they are old enough to use social media,” she warns.