A survivor’s story—how her human traffickers were aided by dangerous pitfalls in our child protection systems 

Cassandra Harvey is the hero of this story. 

She was neglected by the very systems put in place to protect her. It left her vulnerable. Human traffickers and their criminal associates soon came circling like sharks. 

She was tortured. She was abused emotionally, physically and sexually. They tried to drown her in a sea of financial debt.

But she refused to die in the depths. 

She survived.  

Now a happy mother of two, she refuses to turn her back on the other girls and young women constantly circled by these predators. She is an advocate for the growing number of them being pulled into the unimaginable terror that she survived. She’s studying to become a lawyer, and plans to apply to Harvard. She’s clearing the debts her traffickers anchored her to.

For the first time, Cassandra is sharing her story. She wants other young women to stay clear of the pitfalls that almost swallowed her. She is educating policy makers about all the holes in our education systems, in criminal justice, our child welfare “safety net” and the healthcare networks meant to keep people just like her safe. Too often, these systems do the opposite. 

Survivor stories are an incredibly valuable resource for government agencies working to eradicate the increasingly sophisticated crime of human trafficking. Canada is in the early stages of a critical review of its national anti-human trafficking strategy which expires at the end of this year. Survivors provide life saving information to stay ahead of the criminal enterprises that make their fortunes from the bodies of women. 

“Not many people make it out and not many people live to tell their story,” Cassandra says. “I want to show people you are more than your lived experience.”

Human trafficking often starts long before a young woman meets the man who will eventually exploit her. Men and boys are also trafficked, but the large majority (94 percent) of victims and survivors are women and girls.

The vulnerabilities that can make someone an easy target are often forged in childhood. 

Cassandra was born in Kingston in 1998 to parents who were battling their own demons. Mental health struggles and addiction issues led to routine run-ins with police. 

There was very little stability for her at a young age. Experts study the strong correlation between early childhood trauma—absent parents, emotional abuse, the utter lack of a foundation for a healthy life—and vulnerability to human traffickers later on. 

Bouncing between different foster homes, or spending time with family members and friends, she lived with someone close to her mother for eight months, then in her uncle’s house for a year.

By sharing her story, Cassandra Harvey hopes other survivors will be inspired to speak up or seek help.

(Joel Wittnebel/The Pointer) 

In 2009 she was living in Kingston when child welfare workers picked her up from the school yard.

Her situation didn’t improve. 

Despite the need for a system that works like a safety net to catch children in harm’s way, and the significant benefits the Children’s Aid Society provides across Canada, these organizations can be riddled with problems that often blowback onto the very children they work so hard to protect. 

According to the National Foster Youth Institute, 60 percent of U.S. human trafficking victims were involved in the foster care system at one time. 

The first home Cassandra was placed in was on a farm in rural Kingston. It was a nightmare. 

She was abused by both the foster parents and their biological child. She endured physical and horrific mental abuse. 

“They had bulls and cows and they would lock me in this cage in the barn and, like, cut the bulls horns off in front of me, and the blood would splatter everywhere,” Cassandra recalls. “I would cry and ask them to stop but they literally never did.”

It was approximately three months before a CAS worker noticed a black eye and removed her from the home. 

Things didn’t improve. 

In another house the parents were physically and verbally abusive. She attempted to run away. She tried to get help from social workers. She called. She complained. It seemed like nobody wanted to listen. 

“Eventually no CAS workers or anyone was really listening to me or paying attention to the red flags.” In her early teens, she got so tired of the abuse that eventually she ran away from the abusers and never looked back.

She moved in with her boyfriend at the time who was living in an Ottawa trap house frequented by drug users and dealers. Without a job and without a real home, feeling listless and abandoned by all of society’s systems meant to shield her, there was an attraction to this alternative lifestyle. She romanticized the illegal activity, the “hustle”, the tight-knit group of friends she needed to create a sense of family: the “ride or die” boyfriend who would be beside her no matter what. 

Cassandra got her first smartphone. Social media algorithms did their job. She was surrounded in a feedback loop of videos and images of people living beautiful, extravagant lifestyles. The addictive posts were like a drug, as she plugged into the illegal behaviour glamourized on apps like Snapchat. 

“When you’re like 15, 16, 17, you’re in a wormhole of girls who make money and being entrepreneurs, and people who deal drugs and all of these things.” 

By the time she was 20, she had two young daughters to care for. With no post-secondary education and few job prospects, earning enough to support her kids became a constant struggle. 

Then, in 2017 two things happened at once that significantly changed Cassandra’s life. 

She reconnected with a guy she had known in her early teens. He was a friend, he was fun, and loved to party—just like her. 

Then her mother suddenly passed away following a drug overdose in November the same year. The news shook her entire world. 

The relationship with her mother was complicated from the beginning. Cassandra had briefly moved into her place in Kingston while she was pregnant with her first daughter, but the living arrangement did not work out. The two remained amicable. She knew her mother struggled with addiction, but she had been up and down—sober for a while then not for longer stretches. Cassandra had long clung desperately to the hope that her mother would turn things around. But the highs were always followed by lows. It became the dreaded rhythm of her life. She still never expected anything like this, though. No matter how cruel her circumstance, Cassandra could hang onto the belief that her mother was out there, somewhere.   

“I didn’t process it...I didn’t get counselling or anything and that really sent me into a spiral.” 

She was drinking a lot, spending a lot of time in bars, doing everything she could to forget about her mother’s death, to numb the pain.

A man she met years before recognized the opportunity. He slowly circled. She was vulnerable to his company, to the sense of fun — of escape — he carefully created. 

Then, he started the slow process to trap Cassandra in the complex world of human trafficking. 

“It was very slow. In the beginning we just started talking, like having fun, going out partying, doing stuff like that.”

Cassandra had placed her two young daughters into a temporary care agreement with the Children’s Aid Society in Ottawa, knowing that in her current state, she was incapable of giving them the attention and support they needed. It was only supposed to last for 30 days. 

After that, her “friend” made his move. 

The temporary set-up with CAS was meant to be a period for Cassandra to get the help she needed to deal with her mother’s death; perhaps find a job, go back to school, do what would help her be a supportive mother. 

Instead, the man she was fooled by began trafficking her for sex. 

“I was already in such a horrible situation and I think traffickers know. They know who to pick, they know who struggles and because I had known this person previously, he knew about the passing of my mother and where I came from and everything. I was struggling financially and he was already pimping other girls.”

According to the Polaris Project, one of the leading anti-human trafficking organizations in North America, numerous factors can lead someone vulnerable to human trafficking, including an unstable living situation, a history of domestic violence, a family or caregiver who has substance abuse issues, exposure to poverty and economic hardship, having to run away from home, entering the child welfare system.

Cassandra was a perfect target. But having sex for money was not something she wanted. 

“At the time, I was like I’m not doing that, that’s disgusting…but then he started talking about how much you can make.”

They could charge $200 an hour, he said, and she wouldn’t even need the entire hour. Most men don’t last that long. At most, it would be 15 to 20 minutes, he told her. 

With few other options, it really didn’t seem that bad, Cassandra told herself. 

She travelled to Whitby, at his request. 

A confluence of unfortunate circumstances made Cassandra Harvey a perfect target for traffickers. But she’s not allowing her past to define her, instead wanting to use it as a force for good.

(Joel Wittnebel/The Pointer)

According to the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, the Highway 401 corridor is frequently used by traffickers and their victims due to the high number of hotels and motels that are easy to get to in major urban centres built along the route. Big cities mean big business. 

The first time was at a Motel 6. It was an old man. It was disgusting.

Cassandra had broken the law before, but not like this. The impact it had on her psyche, those past criminal acts were like spilt milk compared to the violation that happened in that hotel room. 

When the man finally left. Cassandra immediately showered. But no matter how much she scrubbed with the cheap motel soap, she could still feel the act hanging on her. 

“I couldn’t shower enough to get the feeling off of me.”

The money lured her.

She held the $200 in her hands. It made what happened barely tolerable. It was pushed deep down into the back of her mind.

The human brain has a survival instinct to compartmentalize trauma; shrink down and numb the bad, cover it up with anything that can seem like it feels good, maybe even better than what’s being hidden away. 

For her, it was the money. 

The sense of, I can’t wash this feeling off, faded like the credits on a movie screen, replaced with the words, was it really that bad?

Her “friend” turned trafficker had quickly trapped her. The manipulation twisted deeper. 

The cash didn’t stay in her hands long. He offered soothing words. He tried to soften her first experience with sex work. Then, immediately, he took the money, assuring it would be kept safe. 

“If you don’t want to do it anymore, that’s okay,” he told her. 

She didn’t. The relief was immediate, but short lived. 

“But I paid for this hotel room,” he told her. There was also all the food, clothes, ads on Leolist (a classifieds website now frequented by traffickers to post advertisements). 

He had invested in her.

It was relentless. 

The pressure and lingering reward of the money was too much. 

After the initial 30 days, the temporary care agreement for her girls was extended. She didn’t tell anyone what was really happening, choosing instead to shove the truth into the back of her head and trust that she would be able to make enough money to pull her life back together. 

“In the eyes of all these workers (at CAS) I’m just some mom who has issues and just having fun and partying. Nobody really knew what was happening to me.” 

No matter what she tried, it felt like reaching dead ends around every turn. She tried to go back to school, was even accepted into Algonquin College. She soon dropped out. It was impossible to hold everything together while being trafficked.

Shortly after, she knew the only way to come out from the other side was to get away from him. She would not reason with him. No talking. There would be no easy exit. He rented a car to take her to Toronto to work. She found an opening and fled. 

“I took all the money that I had earned that weekend and I took off from him and came back to Ottawa.”  

She hid, avoiding any communication with him and those who knew him. It was lonely, and like many young people seeking companionship, Cassandra turned to dating apps. 

Her young daughters remained in the care agreement with CAS, and with no family there were few places she could look to for the love all humans need. 

Unfortunately, Cassandra stumbled into yet another space frequented by traffickers. 

“Hearing other people’s stories, to me, was like ‘wow, this is not something you should be ashamed of,” Cassandra Harvey states.

(Joel Wittnebel/The Pointer)

Despite the widespread misconception that human trafficking is an international crime facilitated by complex criminal networks, the vast majority of survivors are trafficked by someone they know, typically an intimate partner or family member. Increasingly, these relationships are being forged through online dating apps and websites that traffickers are using to target victims. 

“Online recruitment may begin with commenting on potential victims’ photos and sending direct messages, carefully building the rapport and intimacy needed to entice victims into a false sense of trust,” a report from the Polaris Project explains. 

Cassandra says the conversations with the man started off normally. Then he asked if she had worked before—sex work. She thinks he recognized that her profile picture was taken in a hotel room. 

“At the time I didn’t know I was being trafficked, I didn’t know that existed. So I told him, “Yeah, I’d done it before’.”

He immediately made his move, showering her with promises and dreams of all the money he would make for her. Cassandra’s defences were already down, crippled by the first experience. With few other options, she did what he wanted.

She returned to Durham Region and the Motel 6, which at the time was a hot spot for trafficking. 

But this only lasted one night. While they were there, someone attempted to break down the door to the room Cassandra was staying in. It was someone looking for her trafficker. Whether it was a rival trafficker, someone seeking payment for a debt, or something else Cassandra didn’t know. For the rest of the weekend they did “out calls”, which saw Cassandra driven directly to the door of those paying for her services. The man she met on Tindr took most of the money, leaving her with little. 

For two months, this arrangement continued almost every weekend, mainly in Niagara Falls—the tourist destination is another hot spot for sex trafficking.

Similar to her first experience, Cassandra eventually had enough. One weekend near the end of 2018 when her trafficker was unable to make the trip with her, she took the money and fled back to Ottawa.

With few places to turn, Cassandra returned to the circle of friends she’d grown up with after escaping foster care. Some in this group had escalated from drug dealing to financial crimes, including credit card and bank fraud. 

One of these was a man named Samuel (not his real name) who became her boyfriend near the end of 2018.

It didn’t take long for him to start exploiting her as well. But Cassandra did not know the extent of the crimes she was experiencing. It was muddled by her own willingness to participate. 

It’s common for those experiencing trafficking to feel they are partially to blame for the exploitation they experience. Whether that’s through posting their own advertisements on classified websites or connecting with clients. This semi-involvement prevents many victims and survivors from seeking necessary assistance or reporting the crimes—because they don’t see it as a crime at all. 

From seeing clients in her apartment, to travelling to major cities like Montreal and taking business in Airbnbs, Samuel was there taking the money. He would buy her food and other necessities, but most of the thousands of dollars she was earning found their way into his pocket. 

He assured her he was going to “flip it” and make her more money. But then he would disappear for a weekend and Cassandra would start receiving packages of luxury goods he had shipped back to their apartment: Moncler jackets; Balenciaga shoes; Palm Angels track suits—thousands of dollars worth of clothes, all for him.

At the same time, he was wracking up serious debts with multiple credit cards, payday loan services and banks-—all in Cassandra’s name. 

For the first four months of 2019, this was her life. She worked hard to try and afford the type of lifestyle she was providing for the man exploiting her. 

“I wanted to have designer clothing and I wanted to look good, to feel good and I wanted everybody around me to see that I was successful, even though I really wasn’t,” Cassandra says. “That’s what took over my mind when I was being trafficked, that it’s all going to be worth it because I’m going to make so much money.”

But this was only a candy coating over a rotten core. 

The work was awful. 

She would tell clients no. She would tell them to stop. They wouldn’t listen. 

Sometimes she was able to get out of it, collecting the money and telling the man she had her period. It required her to do much less. However this didn’t always work. Some men would block the door, telling her she couldn’t leave.

And when one appointment ended, there was another waiting right after. At times men were lined up in hotel lobbies, waiting just for her. 

“It got to the point where I was so depressed and so disgusted with myself that I would do anything to get myself out of that situation,” she says.

Eventually her body had enough. 

In April 2019 Cassandra got very sick. She thought it could be some kind of sexually transmitted infection (STI). Samuel was furious. 

When the tests came back clean and she was released from the hospital she thought he would be happy. 

Instead he locked her in their apartment and subjected her to some of the worst abuse she’d ever experienced. 

“I don’t know if you believe in demons, but after that day I truly believe they are a real thing. His neck was twitching, maybe he was on drugs, I don’t know what it was.”

He grabbed her by the neck and threw her against the wall. He dragged her across the apartment by her hair. Choked her. Raped her. 

“If you cry I’m going to beat you more,” he told her. 

But she couldn’t help it, and the beating continued. 

When he was finally finished, days had passed. He left the apartment and Cassandra fled to the hospital. 

“I remember walking through the emergency room and saying, ‘please help me, he’s going to kill me.”

It felt like her entire body was bruised. She thought she might be dying. 

The police were called and Cassandra told them everything that had happened. She provided a 10-page statement to officers detailing the horrific assault. She barely remembers writing it as her brain disassociated in order to avoid reliving the terror of what she experienced. 

Samuel called the hospital over 100 times looking for her. 

Despite the abuse, she eventually returned to the relationship. 

When the police followed up with her about her statement, she had already gotten back together with him. 

“At that time, I thought I was in love with him. I thought this was normal, he apologized and everything was fine.”

When the police came asking about the brutal assault, he forced her to lie. 

Cassandra told them she lied, that the entire thing was consensual and her fault. 

According to numerous studies, the trauma bond that can form between a victim and their trafficker is incredibly strong. 

“Victims who experience this traumatic bond suffer emotional, physical, and mental exploitation, which can impact their safety and well-being. Trauma-coerced attachment (TCA) is a powerful and abusive emotional relationship that is dynamic and constantly changing, and the attachment can persist long after the relationship ends,” a 2022 study from Canada’s Department of Justice explains. “TCA compels the victim to submit to continued exploitation and to protect the perpetrator despite having every reason to do the opposite. As well, victims who experience TCA are more likely to return to the perpetrator or to the sex-trafficking environment, which makes it difficult for police officers to help victims exit or to see a case through to its conclusion in court.”

Cassandra continued to work for Samuel, and the abuse continued along with it. She would reach out to the detective who took her initial statement, and sometimes Samuel would be arrested for assaulting her. But he’d always get bail. 

The charges were always for assault, not trafficking, because at the time Cassandra didn’t know she was being trafficked. 

It wasn’t until 2021 that she learned what was really happening to her. 

Cassandra signed up for a sexual assault therapy class through SASC Ottawa. Through the program she was introduced to a lawyer specializing in human trafficking survivors and after hearing her story, told her that what was happening to her was more than assault, it was human trafficking.

Confronting her past and accepting what happened to her has been a long process for Cassandra Harvey.

(Joel Wittnebel/The Pointer)

Extricating oneself from trafficking is not easy. It involves coming to terms with what has happened; breaking the trauma bond that binds a survivor to the man who tormented them; and having to deal with lengthy court fights. While Cassandra did file a formal police report that saw Samuel charged with a number of crimes, including trafficking in persons, she backed out of the trial, unwilling to relive all that had happened to her. Instead, she chose to move on. 

But Cassandra is still not free of it all. Adding a sick insult to the egregious injuries she has already dealt with, the debts Samuel accumulated in her name have now fallen to her. Her first trafficker also added to this problem by allowing his associates to use Cassandra’s bank and credit cards. 

She is currently working with Reclaim—a program run by Victim Services Toronto— focused on helping human trafficking survivors eliminate fraudulent debts accrued while they were being trafficked.

Right now, the focus is on debts incurred while her trafficker was fraudulently obtaining tax benefits under her name, including the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and child tax benefits while Cassandra’s children were still under the care of CAS. According to a letter from Reclaim sent to the CRA and shared with The Pointer, Cassandra’s trafficker accepted overpayments in CERB and CTB in the thousands of dollars. These amounts are now being deducted from Cassandra’s tax returns until the debt is cleared. 

With the help of Reclaim, Cassandra’s case is the first in Canada to be sent to the Canada Revenue Agency for review of coerced debt through human trafficking.

“Cassandra has made significant strides to reach stability in her life, despite the trauma and victimization she faced,” the letter from Reclaim reads. “The disruption that this coercive debt is causing serves as a constant reminder of her experience while having an impact on Cassandra’s continued success and journey of healing.”
 

The government of Canada is currently in the early stages of consultations for the review of its national anti-human trafficking strategy. The current strategy, which has had varying degrees of success, is set to expire at the end of this year. 

“We are calling on the government to undertake a meaningful consultation process that prioritizes survivors, front-line agencies, and other levels of government from across Canada,” James McLean, Director of Research and Policy at the CCET previously told The Pointer. “Taking the time to hear from those most impacted by trafficking will give the federal government the insights they need to develop a whole-of-government strategy that will make meaningful progress toward eradicating all forms of human trafficking in Canada.”

Cassandra believes this sharing process can also help survivors heal. 

“Hearing other people share their stories, to me, was like ‘wow, this is not something you should be ashamed of.’”

Cassandra is hoping to use her story to help other survivors. To contact her about possible speaking opportunities, connect with her on Linkedin. 

Email: [email protected]

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