After nearly a decade trapped in human trafficking, a Durham Region woman is speaking publicly for the first time about how she was recruited, exploited and repeatedly pulled back into the sex trade — and how she ultimately escaped.
“Cindy,” whose real name is protected by court-ordered publication bans, says her ordeal began with a single message on a dating app when she was 18.
“If I had known what answering that message would cost me, I never would have replied,” she said.
At the time, Cindy was young and impressionable. Curious about the man she had been chatting with online, she agreed to meet him in person — her first such meeting through the app. The man, then 29, took her on what appeared to be a normal date at a Durham restaurant, telling her about a successful construction business he claimed to run in Ottawa.
He soon offered her a job, promising easy money. Cindy accepted, unaware that she was being groomed.
Instead of meeting him as planned, she was picked up by a woman and driven to a hotel in Ottawa. There, she was told the truth.
“She laughed when I asked about the construction job,” Cindy said. “She told me the man I was seeing was a pimp and that this was the sex industry.”
When Cindy demanded to speak with him, his tone shifted dramatically. Gone was the attentive partner; in his place was a threatening trafficker.
“He said he knew where my family lived,” she recalled. “He said he had weapons and would hurt my family — even kill my mom. I was scared sh—less.”
Under threat, Cindy was photographed in her underwear and advertised online. For the next year, she was moved from hotel to hotel along the Highway 401 corridor — including stops in Oshawa, Mississauga, Vaughan, Oakville, Niagara Falls, Toronto and Windsor.
She estimates she was forced to see between eight and 15 men a day. The money — often $1,000 to $2,000 daily — went entirely to her trafficker.
“All I got were threats, violence and control,” she said. “I was branded with his nickname. I ended up hospitalized from malnutrition.”
Cindy eventually escaped while left alone for a few hours and contacted police after reaching a relative’s home. But the danger did not end there. Months later, she was abducted from a plaza and forced back into exploitation by associates of her trafficker.
After escaping again, Cindy was placed in a Toronto homeless shelter, where she says she encountered additional traffickers. There, she entered another abusive relationship — unaware at first that the man was also exploiting her.
“He pimped me out for a year and a half,” she said, describing the abuse as primarily psychological but no less devastating.
That relationship ended violently when the man attempted to push her from a moving vehicle on the Gardiner Expressway.
Following police intervention, Cindy spent two years in supportive housing in St. Catharines. But even then, she was tracked down and coerced once more by the trafficker who first recruited her.
Authorities eventually determined that extreme measures were required. Cindy was taken out of province and placed in a specialized shelter and rehabilitation program for trafficking survivors in British Columbia.
Since then, she has received ongoing support through SafeHope Home in Durham Region, including counselling, trauma recovery, life-skills training and education.
“They even taught me how to cook,” Cindy said. “All I ever knew was hotel rooms.”
Cindy has since testified against multiple abusers. At least five individuals, including her original trafficker, have been convicted and sentenced to prison. He is serving a 10-year sentence, with other cases still before the courts.
Now rebuilding her life, Cindy plans to attend college this fall, hoping to work in the same field as the police officers and social workers she credits with saving her life.
The long-term impact of trafficking remains severe. Cindy lives with anxiety, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, and says her physical health has also suffered.
“I went in healthy,” she said. “Now I can’t sleep without medication, and I have Crohn’s disease.”
Her message to other young women is unequivocal.
“The quick money isn’t worth it,” Cindy said. “It’s not safe.”
She also cautioned against online platforms that normalize or monetize sexual content.
“It might seem safer than escorting, but it’s still the sex industry,” she said. “And it’s easy to get pulled in.”
This is the first in a two-part series on human trafficking. Support and resources for victims are available locally and nationally.