In the summer of 1991, Janice Randhile was coerced by her boyfriend into the sex trade on the streets of Ottawa when she was just 17 years old.
“We had been dating, we were in a relationship, and then he said, ‘I want you to go to work,’” Ms. Randhile, a member of Alberta’s Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation, recalled in an interview. “I was like, ‘What?’ I wasn’t homeless, but I didn’t want to go home. So I did it.”
At the time, Ms. Randhile was living with her boyfriend in a rooming house, grappling with fear of abandonment and struggling to find her identity. She is among the Indigenous children who were apprehended from their families and placed in non-Indigenous homes as part of the notorious Sixties Scoop.
Decades later, Ms. Randhile worked for the Alberta government, first as a family liaison with a child-welfare agency and later as a support to people whose Indigenous loved ones had been murdered, gone missing or were being exploited.
Sometimes, she said, the Indigenous families told her that an individual had been lured into trafficking and was being advertised on certain sex sites.
“In my experience, the connection between missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and sex trafficking is real,” she said.
Now, new research from Thomson Reuters is examining the connection between the crimes. The report, released Monday, used geospatial analysis to uncover trends of sex ads and cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. It’s believed to be the first time the two sets of data have been overlaid to detect potential linkages and patterns.
The research showed that Edmonton and Ontario – particularly the Greater Toronto Area – have high numbers of both disappearances and sex ads featuring Indigenous women. Edmonton and Ottawa also showed significant connections to the U.S. sex ad ecosystem, where contact information on Canadian ads matched the information listed on American sites.
“The sex ads present new and substantive information,” said Heather Panton, the senior adviser for social impact and human rights at Thomson Reuters. “[The analysis] really encapsulates, from a data perspective, what is happening with women who are going missing and then appearing shortly thereafter on websites.”
The findings, she said, indicate that the intersection of disappearances and sex ads warrants further investigation among law enforcement agencies and public policy makers, particularly as it relates to hot spots. (Woodbridge Co. Ltd., the Thomson family holding company and controlling shareholder of Thomson Reuters, also owns The Globe and Mail.)
The closing ceremony of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in June, 2019. The inquiry’s final report highlighted the vulnerability of the demographic to sexual exploitation.CHRIS WATTIE/Reuters
The focus of the report is uncovering trends in human trafficking and sexual exploitation, rather than voluntary sex work in which the individual is willfully exchanging sexual services for money or goods. For the purposes of the analysis, sex ads were considered to be an indicator of human trafficking. This is because online sex ads provide avenues for traffickers to recruit victims and advertise their exploitation.
Human trafficking – a complex crime that involves the recruitment, transport and control of vulnerable individuals – is a criminal offence under Canada’s Criminal Code and under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. In 2023, 570 human-trafficking incidents – including sexual exploitation and forced labour – were reported to police, according to Statistics Canada. But that figure, the agency says, provides only a partial picture of trafficking in Canada because it’s an often hidden and underreported crime.
Research has shown that Indigenous women and girls are more likely than other groups to be targeted for sexual exploitation or trafficking owing to systemic issues such as poverty, lack of access to services, racism and historical trauma.
For the Thomson Reuters report, analysts collected 3,485 sex ads posted in Canada since 2016 that claimed to feature Indigenous women or girls and then mapped the ads based on the individual’s stated location. They also collected data on 185 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls from 2010 to the spring of 2024 and plotted those cases geographically.
The findings of the report, entitled Missing and Stolen: Disappearances and Trafficking of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, were in some ways unsurprising and in others quite striking to the researchers.
The urban areas of Winnipeg, Edmonton and the Prince Albert-Regina-Saskatoon triangle had concentrations of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls cases, which correlates with the population demographics of Indigenous peoples in Canada.
The Prairie provinces account for three of the top five provinces in terms of Indigenous population. (Ontario has the highest population of Indigenous people, followed by British Columbia.)
The Greater Toronto Area and a stretch of the Yellowhead Highway in B.C. – known as the Highway of Tears because of the high number of Indigenous women and girls that have gone missing or been found murdered along the route – also showed concentrations of disappearances, the report says.
The urban areas of Vancouver, Edmonton and the Windsor-Toronto-Ottawa corridor along Highway 401 were identified as hot spots for sex ads featuring Indigenous women and girls. Sex trafficking and sex ads typically follow demand, the report states, so it was expected that more highly populated places would show a higher demand.
Although Winnipeg was the city with the most disappearances, the sex ad ecosystem in the Manitoba capital was determined to be relatively sparse.
“This disparity could be for a variety of reasons: the higher Indigenous population may have an inverse effect on the demand for Indigenous sex trafficking, or victims that are trafficked from Winnipeg may be moved to other places like Edmonton,” the report says.
Edmonton, the analysis found, also had a significant connection to the sex ad ecosystem in the U.S. “More research is needed to examine this phenomenon, but it may be due to its status as a major metropolitan area close to natural resource exploitation,” the report said, referring to the oil fields in northern Alberta.
Anupriya Sethi’s research identified what she described as an emerging trend: an increase in trafficking of girls because of the flourishing oil rigs and mining businesses in Alberta.Supplied
In 2007, researcher Anupriya Sethi published the first study on the issue of domestic sex trafficking of Indigenous women and girls in Canada. It pointed to several root causes that put Indigenous women and girls at risk.
Her research also identified what she described as an emerging trend: The increased trafficking of girls owing to the flourishing oil rigs and mining businesses in Alberta.
“Significant number of men travel back and forth from Saskatchewan to northern Saskatchewan or Alberta for short periods of time to work in oil rigs or at uranium mines,” the study said. “In keeping with their movement, girls are increasingly being moved around and sexually exploited.”
In an interview with The Globe, Ms. Sethi said she is still sometimes asked to speak at public policy or law enforcement events about her research, despite the fact that nearly 20 years have passed. She recalled saying to an Indigenous police officer who asked her to speak at an event in Toronto, “Are you sure you want me? My research is out of date.” The officer replied, “Is it?”
The federal National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls highlighted the vulnerability of the demographic to sexual exploitation. Traffickers, the inquiry heard, will target group homes, medical travel homes and bus stations serving remote and northern communities.
The inquiry’s final report, published in 2019, also described the so-called “boyfriend method” in which a trafficker approaches a woman or girl as a suitor and grooms them to be more easily coerced into the sex trade, as was the case for Ms. Randhile.
Patrick Dussault, who used to be an OPP officer and the anti-human trafficking liaison for the Akwesasne Family Wellness Program, says he’s not surprised that the corridor along the 401 was found to be a hot spot for sex ads.Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail
Former Ontario Provincial Police officer Patrick Dussault, who has experience investigating human-trafficking cases, said this type of coercion is classic. “These girls sometimes don’t see it as being trafficked or victimized, they see it as a choice – ‘I’m just helping my boyfriend,’” he said. “They don’t see him as a trafficker.”
He pointed to a case in 2022 in Akwesasne Mohawk Territory, which straddles Canada and the U.S. in Quebec, Ontario and New York. At the time, he was working as the anti-human-trafficking liaison for the Akwesasne Family Wellness Program, which provides emergency and long-term housing for vulnerable people in the territory.
Between Christmas and New Year’s Day, a young Indigenous woman from the Quebec area of the territory was reported missing to local police. Later that day, authorities located her in Ottawa through an ad posted to an escort website.
Mr. Dussault said when authorities reached her in the nation’s capital, the young woman said she had left the territory willingly and was not, in fact, missing.
Heather Panton, the senior adviser for social impact and human rights at Thomson Reuters, says the report’s findings indicate that the intersection of disappearances and sex ads warrants further investigation among law enforcement and public policy makers.DEE DWYER/The Globe and Mail
Ms. Panton from Thomson Reuters said she has worked with many victims who were initially adamant that they were not being exploited and then later recognized that they had been tricked or coerced. “It’s possible the woman took it up on her own volition, but from the buyer’s perspective, it’s still exploitation,” she said. Canada’s laws don’t criminalize the sale of sex, but the purchase of sex is illegal.
Mr. Dussault, who is now vice-chair of the Cornwall Police Service Board, said he’s not surprised that the Thomson Reuters data analysis indicated the corridor along the 401 is a hot spot for sex ads.
“That’s a main pipeline for human trafficking,” he said, noting there are many First Nations communities along that route. “If I’m a trafficker and I recruit a girl from the Cornwall area or Akwesasne, she’s not going to be working there. We’re going to go to Ottawa, Montreal, Kingston. I’m taking her out completely. I don’t want her to have any contact with her friends or family or network. We’re gone. Bye-bye.”
Mr. Dussault said sex ad sites typically don’t post an individual’s real name, and oftentimes descriptions are done in code, using abbreviations or emojis.
The Thomson Reuters report acknowledges there are limitations to the analysis. Some disappearances are not captured owing to reporting issues, and inevitably some sex ads involving Indigenous women are not included. Some ads don’t state ethnicity, while others may feature women and girls who are Indigenous but are advertised as another ethnicity.
Researchers also identified some ads that purported to feature Indigenous women and girls but described them using derogatory terms or by specific tribal affiliation. For the purposes of the research, the ads were filtered for the terms “Indigenous” and/or “Native American.”
“It appears that Indigenous women and girls are sexualized in a way that makes them marketable, unfortunately,” Ms. Panton said.
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For the Thomson Reuters report, analysts collected 3,485 sex ads posted in Canada since 2016 that claimed to feature Indigenous women or girls, some which described them using derogatory terms or by specific tribal affiliation.”Missing & Stolen: Disappearances and Trafficking of Indigenous Peoples in Canada’, Thomson Reuters”/Supplied
Despite the limitations, she said she hopes the research will put a spotlight on the role that data and technology can play in explaining connections. She also said the findings show the need for cross-border collaboration in tackling sexual exploitation.
“To be able to identify someone online in this way is new and emerging,” said Ms. Panton, who has held public service and policy positions, including at the White House and the U.S. State Department. She said sex-trafficking survivors and advocacy groups have flagged the link between sex ads and disappearances. “Victims will say, ‘I was advertised online. Why didn’t anybody notice?’”
The report emphasizes the need for a national database for Indigenous disappearances and recommends that law-enforcement agencies use victim identification tools to search for pictures of missing people in sex ad data. This, the report says, could be key to “opening the possibility that a recently missing individual could be quickly found if a sex ad was posted featuring the same individual.”
The Edmonton Police Service said in an e-mail that investigators working on missing persons cases conduct interviews and review law-enforcement databases as well as publicly accessible websites as part of their probe. “Investigators will ask specific questions about sex ads and what platforms the person may be on,” spokeswoman Cheryl Voordenhout said.
Specifically, the police service has access to software that compares ads, photos and phone numbers across the internet. Investigators also use reverse-image search tools. “This assists in determining if the missing person is involved in the sex trade or human trafficking, as the software would locate ads being posted across North America,” Ms. Voordenhout said.
Ms. Randhile says that in her experience working with Indigenous families, she believes the connection between missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and sex trafficking is real and deserves attention.Todd Korol/The Globe and Mail
Ms. Randhile said it’s important that policy makers and law enforcement prioritize the exploration of the links between deaths and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls and sex trafficking.
“Whether it’s an ad online, or someone out there working the streets,” she said, “sexual exploitation is very much something that’s happening to our people.”