Editor’s note: The following contains details which may be disturbing to some readers.
Human trafficking is not the burly guy covered in tattoos and heavy gold chains smoking a cigar. It’s not an unmarked windowless white van. It’s the person who could be the guy – or girl – next door offering a helping hand.
On Tuesday, April 14, members of the RCMP Provincial Counter Human Trafficking Unit BC (CHTU-BC), formed in February 2025, held an awareness workshop in Salmon Arm for local organizations, with 53 people in attendance.
One of the unit’s goals is to make the public aware that perpetrators seem too good to be true until it’s too late.
“They can look… like anybody,” CHTU-BC Cons. Gurvinder Ghag said. “He can appear as a boyfriend or, more increasingly, it can look like the best friend… approaching younger girls.”
Those girls are referred to as the “bottom bitch,” the pimp’s most loyal girl who has been in the game the longest, and by recruiting girls under her, she has to do less of the sex work, but she got their by being a victim herself.
Human trafficking is when someone is forced to provide a labour or service through some kind of manipulation for the material or financial gain of the trafficker, with no benefit to the victim. Of those victims, 95 per cent are women and girls and, while just six per cent of B.C.’s population is Indigenous, they make up 50 per cent of the victim pool.
In order to recruit their victims traffickers mask that intent in a variety of ways, and target the at-risk sectors. Const. Sandal Jawanda with the CHTU-BC said they target the most vulnerable population, people who don’t have a support system, people looking for a connection, such as the “chronic missing,” the unhoused and youth and group homes.
According to Canadian activist and trafficking survivor Timea Nagy, “the child welfare system is a trafficker’s Costco. They know where the group homes are and that children don’t feel welcome. No one reaches out to them the way pimps do.”
Traffickers also target, schools and universities, fast food restaurants, transit, malls, “wherever young people are hanging out.”
“How do they groom or recruit? They’re going to hunt for the vulnerability… they’re going to look for those young, impressionable minds that are easy to manipulate. The ones that are seeking the love, the validation, or maybe they’re seeking escape.
“It’s not bad choices; it’s unmet needs being manipulated by the trafficker.”
Once they’ve lured the girls in, traffickers keep them under control by “Romeo” or “Godzilla/gorilla methods,” with the former lavishing the girls with love and the latter breaking them down, keeping them in line and controlling their state of mind.
“Coercion, psychological manipulation is a huge factor,” Jawanda said. “It doesn’t have to be physical and threats, it can be all these other needs being manipulated.”
In the presentation, the CHTU-BC showed some video testimonies, with multiple victims reaffirming that mental control that left them hopeless:
“Even though I physically could have left, I honestly felt like they had a hold on me from the inside, from my mind.”
“I told myself that this is it, and I just have to accept it, that I’m never going to have a normal life. They had completely controlled my state of mind, which in turn controlled whether I stayed or went, which there was no option.”
“They would say things to make me feel good about myself, and then they would say things to really belittle me and make me feel like I was just damaged goods. There was no choice, even though there was a choice.”
Ghag added that’s what makes it so challenging for police, the girls being mentally chained and refusing to cooperate either out of love for their “boyfriend,” or fear of punishment if they say anything.
Despite the resistance faced, those victims are the priority of the CHTU-BC, getting them out and getting them help above all else.
“We are teaching our members to do more diligence and be more patient when they’re investigating… maintaining a victim-centric approach,” Ghag said. “Yeah, we want charges, we would love that, that’s what we do, but our victim is our main priority. So, getting her the help and support she needs.”
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