Using lived experience to fight human trafficking and abuse: Michelle Abel, Armando de Miranda, and Peter Copeland for Inside Policy Talks

Every year, thousands of women and children in Canada and the United States are drawn into human trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, and online abuses. These victims are often hidden in plain sight, but the harms they endure ripple out across families and communities.

It's a gut-wrenching issue, but there's some signs of hope. Our culture is becoming more aware of how vulnerable people are targeted, and how all of society is affected by factors like the omnipresence of pornography. In that context, there's growing talk about the need for laws, policies, and enforcement tools to adapt in response.

But at the same time, less attention is given to how the broader liberalization of sexual norms has rapidly destigmatized behaviours that once carried moral and social boundaries. It’s a trend that coincides with – and perhaps contributes to – greater prevalence of social ills.

To discuss the work they are doing to combat these challenges, Michelle Abel and Armando de Miranda join <em>Inside Policy Talks. </em>Abel is a survivor of family-based human trafficking who has spent the past 15 years working directly with victims, survivors, and their families in Canada and the U.S. She is the founder of the non-profit organization Bridge2Future where she leads research, advocacy, and policy work. De Miranda is a former UN peacekeeper who now works closely with Abel as the legislative strategist at Bridge2Future.

On the podcast, Abel tells Peter Copeland, deputy director of domestic policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, that adverse childhood experiences – known as “ACES” – like the ones that she experienced growing up, lay the groundwork for further abuse.

“Traffickers don't need to create this conditioning. They just need to exploit it,” says Abel.

In that context, she pushes back against the idea that terms like “sex work” should be used to refer to activities like prostitution – which is often tied to trafficking.

“I absolutely reject the term sex work, because it obscures the reality of exploitation,” says Abel, noting that around four out of every five women who enter prostitution before the age of 18 have experienced childhood sexual abuse.

“They're minors, so they're not making informed employment choices,” says Abel. “The term sex work makes it look like it is a legitimate job or a career, and it's absolutely anything but that. Exploitation is never a form of a profession.”