EDITOR'S NOTE: This article contains graphic content and may be triggering to those impacted by human trafficking.
For years Jessica Desmond-Solomon was under the complete control of her pimp, enduring countless beatings and acts of rape - not only from him, but her clients as well - until she was able to ‘beat the game' and escape human trafficking.
Clutching an eagle feather, Desmond-Solomon shared her story with a stunned audience during the last day of the Anti-Human Trafficking Conference at the Delta Waterfront on Friday.
Her story begins in Sault Ste. Marie, where she witnessed drug addiction at an early age, growing up in a home where she says violence and dysfunction were normalized.
“I’d get punched out by people up here - from people that didn't like my family," Desmond-Solomon told the conference.
By the time she was 14 or 15, she was "flying around on Harleys," attending Outlaw biker rallies and hanging out with "sugar daddies" - men she says she was introduced to by her own family.
The perfect prey
A couple years later, Desmond-Solomon ended up in jail, serving time at the Central North Correctional Centre in Penetanguishene, Ont.
It was there that her cellmate, Alicia, referred Desmond-Solomon to a guy she knew in Toronto.
“He’ll really like you, and he’ll love you,” she remembers being told.
After doing her time in Penetanguishene, Desmond-Solomon was standing outside the bus station in Barrie, with no means of getting back home to the Sault.
A stranger then approached her, offering her a ride to Toronto.
“Well, free ride. I can just jump out when I get there, but it wasn’t the ride that I expected there,” Desmond Solomon said.
The man attempted to initiate sex with her shortly afterward.
“He offered me money, and I said no,” said Desmond-Solomon. “By the time we got to Toronto, he kicked me out of the cab and just left me there at Dufferin and Eglinton.”
With nowhere else to go and still wearing her jail scrubs, she ended up calling the man that Alicia referred her to during her stay in jail.
The man, along with one of his friends, eventually picked her up at a gas station.
Desmond-Solomon was questioned by the two men before being brought to a hotel in Scarborough.
She was offered booze and drugs by the men before being asked to dance for them.
“I was just like the perfect prey for him,” she told the audience.
Desmond-Solomon was offered money - which she took, thinking only about going shopping at the time.
“Next thing you know, he’s flashing big stacks of money at me,” she said. “I agreed to it, but I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. He raped me that night.”
From there, Desmond-Solomon told a number of stories of how her life went on a downward spiral.
Her pimp - whom she showed photos of during her presentation - routinely and mercilessly abused Desmond-Solomon for years.
“He raped me for like, the next six years straight - and not just once a day, five to ten times a day,” she said. “Plus I have to get raped by all the clients that I did, like 10, 20, 30 times a day, and I was forced into this.”
She was forced into stripping and turning tricks by her pimp, working at a number of hotels and strip joints - those clubs usually attended by a number of bikers and members of mafia - around the Greater Toronto Area and its outlying areas.
She called the ordeal “hell on earth.”
“I’ve been tortured in this hotel, beaten up outside,” said Desmond-Solomon while pointing to a photo of a hotel that she frequented while she was trapped in ‘the game.’
“I would be standing outside for hours sometimes, and I don’t have nowhere to go, don’t have a phone, no money,” she said. “I just want to come home to Sault Ste. Marie, but I can’t.”
Desmond-Solomon would come to ‘beat the game,’ leaving her former life behind for good.
She told the audience that connecting with her Anishinaabe roots - receiving her Anishinaabe name, clan and colours - helped Desmond-Solomon on her healing journey.
“I found out who I was, and then I started walking the red road,” she told the crowd. “I fought and fought and fought.”
“It wasn’t easy leaving that guy.”
A pit stop for human trafficking
Eva Dabutch, Anti-Human Trafficking Coordinator with Missanabie Cree First Nation, says the two-day conference is a joint effort between several frontline agencies, including Hope Alliance, PACT Grandmothers and Nimkii-Naabkawagan, a women’s crisis shelter based in the Sault.
“I think it’s really important to bring awareness of human trafficking, of this issue, because a lot of people don’t realize it’s happening,” Dabutch told SooToday. “Especially from an Indigenous perspective, for people to understand the history and how colonization contributes to Indigenous women becoming vulnerable.”
Dabutch says that being a border town and having the Trans-Canada Highway run through Sault Ste. Marie makes the city a prime spot for women being trafficked - as well as women looking to break free from ‘the game.’
“This is a pit stop for a lot of traffickers,” said Dabutch. “Women are being trafficked through here, and most often we’re seeing that maybe they’re trafficked from Toronto, moving along the Trans-Canada Highway and they escape here, so they’re not even from the community.”
“They come from other places in Ontario, but they exit here.”
While the frontline agencies address basic emergency needs for women looking to escape human trafficking, Dabutch says there’s a need for ‘safe homes’ in the Sault.
That, Dabutch says, requires a coordinated effort from local agencies.
“I think that’s why it’s so important for all of us services and agencies that are doing work in anti-human trafficking to work together so we could better provide that support needed for women when they’re exiting.”
An anti-human trafficking walk organized by PACT Grandmothers is scheduled for Saturday.
The walk departs from Delta Waterfront at 9 a.m.