[Music]
[Brenda] This can happen
to anyone, like this happens
to rich people,
this happens to poor people.
It happens to educated
family members,
to non-educated.
It's not prejudice to anybody
or any place or anything.
[Augusta] He knew that I
wanted to look after my family.
He knew that I
wanted to be self-sufficient,
and I wanted to pay for school,
that I had all of these,
like, aspirations
of being financially stable,
because that's really,
really hard to do.
I didn't really think
of it in a sense of like,
oh my God,
he sees the fact that
I'm vulnerable,
he sees this as an in.
It didn't cross my mind once.
[Mallory] I thought I
was just a sex worker who met
the wrong guy, who got
myself in a shitty situation,
who met some
really crappy people,
and I was just
lucky to get out of it.
I was a perfect target,
a perfect target.
I had no family that
was regularly checking
up on me at
that point in my life,
I could disappear
and nobody would notice.
It was probably one
of the easier targets for him.
I was insecure,
I was uneducated,
I didn't really have any
skills and he fed into that.
He was-- he is a predator
and I was the perfect
prey for him.
That was hard for me to accept
that he knew what he was doing.
Like, it's easier
for me to think that
I set this up
so easily for him,
like this was my doing
and that's what he groomed me
to walk out thinking,
is that it was still my fault.
And...
I still struggle with
it some days.
[Charlie] I was
trafficked between the ages
of eight and around 14, 15.
From ages zero to six,
I was in about four
different homes.
And then from six
to 11 is when I was
with my granny,
my grandparents divorced.
Like as the different
family members were coming
in and out of my life,
that's when the trafficking
started and my
granny had no idea.
[Raine] I would run away
from the group homes because it
was literally like
a bed and your food.
But there was no love,
there was no belonging,
there was no
connection to the workers.
There was-- like,
it was missing heart,
like it was just a job
to some people
and so I ran to the streets
because it
gave me a sense of belonging.
It gave me a sense of power.
I was 12,
so from 12 to 16
I was in Child and Family
Services and...
slept on the streets,
I was homeless.
My drug of choice
was methamphetamines.
My substance use wasn't
like out of control addiction
at that point,
I think it was more just coping
with the pain,
but in order to be homeless
and on the streets,
you turn to drugs and alcohol
to support--
to help deal with that trauma.
[Music]