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The following is a guest column from Orillia resident Krystal Brooks.
During my stay in a shelter, I became friends with one of the other girls there. I made a lot of friends through being in shelters, but this particular ‘friendship’ has always stuck with me.
It was a women’s shelter outside of Orillia. She had come into the shelter after me and we connected almost instantly. We had such similar lives and she made me feel understood. She seemed to genuinely care for me and was a big support for me in one of the hardest times in my life. That was purposeful, though. She was there seemingly because she had nowhere else to go, but that was part of a facade she put on with the sole purpose of luring.
She was there only to seek out and target other girls or women to victimize. She was open about being a sex worker, but she was deceptive about everything else. I was a pretty easy target for her, I imagine.
I had all those vulnerabilities a human trafficker looks for. I was already a victim of human trafficking previously and was struggling with severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of that unresolved trauma. I was being retraumatized with what was happening in my life at that time. I was on the brink of another relapse. My confidence and self-worth were at their lowest. And I was deeply depressed.
She started walking with me on coffee runs and we’d have long conversations about everything. She bought me things I needed. She shared her clothes with me because I had been wearing the same three outfits I had brought to the shelter for weeks. I had a few things I grabbed when there were donations, but nothing fit me properly. I was a Size 2 and absolutely nothing fit me. I had lost weight after I got to the shelter. I was 130 pounds going in, 105 pounds after a few weeks. I eventually did relapse, but my weight loss happened before that. Depression will do that sometimes.
She helped me in the beginning. Then she started borrowing my phone. She had her own, but she claimed her phone service had been cut off. I didn’t mind letting her borrow mine, but I also didn’t know what she was really doing. She cloned my phone. You’d be amazed how easy this is to do without the person knowing. She started taking selfies of her and me — all seemingly innocent for friends to do with each other.
I remember her letting me borrow a dress of hers and, when I tried it on, she took a picture of me because she thought it looked really good on me. What I didn’t know was she really only wanted pictures of me to send to her handler. I was being ‘approved.’ Pretty gross, eh?
Then I became desperate and an opportunity was exploited. It was taking forever to get on housing lists and Ontario Works. I didn’t have proper identification when I got to the shelter. So, I had no money and I needed to pay for my medication and my phone that was about to be cut off. She listened to me cry and panic about this and everything else going wrong with my life at that time and told me she had a way to help me.
She knew I had been a sex worker previously and told me I could take a couple of her clients. And I was just desperate and emotionally exhausted enough to take the bait. So, just like that, I was back into sex work again.
I got paid for the first little while, but then the money stopped coming to me entirely. I got hooked on fentanyl. It’s difficult to give you a clearer picture because it’s far more complicated than what I’ve simplified it to be and there are details I have to leave out entirely, but the reason I’m sharing this at all is because I was recruited back into human sex trafficking in a shelter. A place that is meant to provide safety and shelter for vulnerable people.
Shelter staff try extremely hard to spot this and prevent it, but it’s incredibly difficult. They are notoriously underfunded and it’s impractical to expect them to act as human trafficking ‘spotters’ on top of the countless other pressures they have.
I see many claiming a solution to getting homeless people off the streets is expanding shelters and increasing funding. We do need to expand them and increase funding, but shelters are an emergency resource. They are a great stepping stone to stability for vulnerable people. There’s a misconception about what shelters really are, though.
Homelessness goes beyond shelters. It’s just not enough. Adequate and affordable housing is what’s needed most. It’s also unfair to just tell a homeless person to simply go to a shelter, like it will solve all of their problems.
I’m not sharing my experience to deter anyone from going to a shelter, but people who have never been in one need to understand there are issues in every social service system out there. You just can’t put the weight of the burden on shelters and shelter staff like that when you don’t understand the depth of the issues. Homelessness, mental health and addictions, poverty and human trafficking/survival sex are all that deeply rooted. No one solution is going to fix all of this.
At the time, I couldn’t see any of it for what it was. You just don’t see the full picture when you’re in it that deep. It still perplexes me knowing I fell back into that pattern of revictimization. I was on such a downward spiral and I saw no way out. By the time I began realizing what was happening, it was already too late.
Everything I’ve mentioned thus far is what led me to a rental deal with a sleazy landlord to exchange sex for rent. What’s most disturbing is the fact he wasn’t a landlord at all. Just someone posing as a landlord. As if an actual landlord doing this isn’t already bad enough. I was desperate to leave the town and situation I had found myself in and I thought a two-bedroom apartment in Orillia that I could pay for in that way sounded like a dream compared to the hell I was living. At least I wouldn’t be homeless anymore. He wasn’t following through, though, and I became more desperate.
So, I began reaching out to the OPP for help. I was told I needed to make better decisions with my life. I didn’t even have a chance to share what was happening. I was just immediately told there was nothing they could do.
When things got worse, I asked a uniformed officer on the street if he could help me get in contact with the detective I had spoken to previously. I told him I needed help and his response was to agree that I needed help and he told me I should be more diligent about paying my drug debts. He laughed at the cigarette burn on my face and just kept walking. I often wonder if he might have been one of the officers who attended the 911 call when I tried to take my life shortly after that interaction.
The cops eventually did listen and there are a couple of officers I owe a lot of personal growth to because they helped build me up and treated me like I mattered, but those words and interactions from the others have stuck with me, too. We have a long way to go regarding how vulnerable people, particularly homeless people, are treated. I have faith we’ll get there one day. The kindness I have seen from a few officers keeps me hopeful.
I have enormous faith that we, as a society, can do better as well. I am angry, but I try to use that as motivation instead of just sitting with it and allowing it to consume me. I sometimes miss that mark, but I wake up and try again.
It’s incredibly important that, when issues such as mental health and addictions, homelessness, human trafficking and sex work and poverty are being discussed, those who have never experienced these issues personally are the ones listening the hardest, learning as much as they can and advocating with those who have these experiences rather than advocating for them or over them.
There is a difference. It’s incredibly important that front-line workers and decision makers are informed and have empathy as well. Currently, that is lacking despite how many incredible people there are out there who pour their hearts into making a difference.
I was treated exactly as I presented by some people who could have helped if they cared to. I was treated like I was homeless, addicted and a prostitute. And, yes, I was all of those things. But I was also a human being. I was treated the way much of society views people in those situations. There’s nothing special about how that officer treated me. I do think it’s reflective of our society, though. I’m not perfect, but I am thriving. I’ve come a long way since all of that, and that happened because I was treated like a human being by other professionals I came into contact with and had the support I needed.
The way I was treated initially, though, is very much a symptom of a bigger problem where too many people are shouting ‘solutions’ over one another, especially those directly impacted. Everyone has a ‘solution,’ but many don’t factor in the ones who are directly affected. I’m exhausted trying to help others understand how bad it all really is, just to have people shout over me and others, when they don’t have a clue or the respect to even try.
The best way to begin to make a difference is by breaking the stereotypes. I was not someone who needed to be ‘dealt with.’ I needed help and eventually got it. Homeless people today don’t need to be dealt with, either. They need kindness, compassion, understanding, clear and constructive solutions they are a part of, and empowerment.
Humanize the issue and then start throwing solutions and dollar signs around.
