Canadian Convulsions > Canada's privacy laws protect sex traffickers from border police

 

In 9 years of Trudeau, I can't find a single Act of Parliament, or Order in Council, that deals with sexual abuse or child sexual abuse. Canada is possibly the only country in the Western world that has completely ignored what I believe to be the worst atrocity mankind has ever committed.

Canada’s privacy laws limit cross-border sex trafficking probes: U.S. envoy

Canada’s privacy laws are one of the “real barriers” to addressing the significant issue of cross-border sex trafficking, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Canada says.

Sex trafficking is one of several border security concerns that have been routinely discussed between the two countries under the Biden administration, Ambassador David Cohen says, long before U.S. president-elect Donald Trump began pushing Canada and Mexico to address irregular migration and drug trafficking or risk punishing tariffs.

While Cohen points out progress has been made on those fronts, he said there was still work to do on other border issues.

“Not mentioned in the president-elect’s social media post is a problem we have with sex trafficking between Canada and the United States,” he told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired Sunday on The West Block.

“Sex trafficking between the United States and Canada, and between Mexico and the United States as well, is a significant issue, and it is one of the real focus areas of our Customs and Border Protection personnel (in the U.S.)”

2:14

Canada to beef up border security amid Trump tariff threats

Cohen said the biggest issue was adequate information sharing and cooperation between Canadian and American law enforcement agencies — particularly privacy laws surrounding the National Sex Offender Registry.

Canadian law states information in the registry is only available to police for limited investigative purposes. By contrast, U.S. sex offender data from across the country is openly accessible to the public and is easily shared between police forces.

“One of the real barriers to full cooperation, maybe the way the United States would like to see it, is the heightened privacy rules and regulations that exist in Canada, as opposed to the United States,” he said.

Asked if the U.S. felt those laws were protecting sex traffickers, Cohen responded, “Correct.”

Cohen said legislation is being considered in Canada after conversations with the U.S. that would give convicted sex offenders “a lesser level of privacy protections.”

Canada and the U.S. also entered into negotiations in 2022 for a bilateral agreement under the U.S. Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act, which would enhance cross-border sharing of data between law enforcement agencies.

2:10

‘So many crossings’: Canada-U.S. border security a growing concern

The latest U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report said that while Canada meets the minimum standards for combatting human trafficking, there are gaps in both police data collection and victims services and protections, with the latter deemed “inadequate.”

Chief U.S. border patrol agent Robert Garcia said in October in a social media post on X that agents in the Swanton Sector, which covers Vermont’s border with Quebec, apprehended more than 19,000 people from 97 countries in the last year — more than the last 17 years combined.

Cohen said there have also been “very significant conversation” during his tenure between federal, provincial, territorial and Indigenous leaders about addressing the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, “which is another form of border control that is very important.”

At the same time, he pointed out Canada remains concerned about the smuggling of illegal firearms from the U.S., which officials say is the top source of guns used in crimes in Canada.

The current debate around border security has focused on irregular migration and fentanyl trafficking, after Trump vowed to lay 25-per cent tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico over the issue.

Cohen said those issues have also been concerns for Biden administration, and that diplomatic and top-level talks have “moved some of the levers” toward enhancing security.

2:01

Trudeau briefs opposition leaders on Trump, border issues

Although encounters of migrants seeking to enter the U.S. through the Canadian land border saw a 306-per cent year-over-year increase in June, the number has since dropped by 50 per cent to 1,792 as of September, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics.

The agency says it seized more than 5,000 kilograms of illegal drugs at the Canadian border between October 2023 and September 2024. That included 19.5 kilograms of fentanyl — a more than 200 per cent increase from two years prior.

Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told MPs last week that Canada will commit more personnel and equipment for border security before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

Cohen said Trump’s proposed tariffs would have “significant economic impacts” on both sides of the border and could even increase inflation, which Trump has vowed to “get rid of.”

But the ambassador also pointed out it was too soon to say definitively what the impact could be — or even if the tariffs will happen at all.

“All we’ve seen about this policy is a one-paragraph Truth Social post, and that’s not a full policy,” he said. “It doesn’t capture necessarily what the tariffs would look like.

“You don’t impose tariffs by social media post.”

Survivors of sex trafficking looking for help can contact The Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline 24-7 at 1-833-900-1010.

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This Week's Global Pervs and Paedos List: Filipino Traffickers Convicted; Aussie Border Force Failed Young Girl; Another Gang Rape in India

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Six Filipino Child Traffickers Convicted

International Justice Mission, IJM 

Southeast Asia

Praise God for the conviction of six Filipino traffickers in four different cases within four weeks! 

The traffickers, five women and one man, were each sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment and must pay a minimum of $13,000 for sexually abusing children in their care and selling the abuse online to overseas consumers. 

Please continue to pray that the perpetrators of these crimes will be brought to justice.

Also, pray for the victims, for their complete recovery from the abuse.

Border Force missed evidence of sexual abuse

then it continued for years: victim

By Nick McKenzie

June 12, 2022 — 7.05pm

Border security officials failed to thoroughly search the mobile phone of one of Australia’s most notorious paedophiles at Melbourne Airport in 2015 despite being warned the 64-year-old was a suspected child sex offender travelling overseas with a minor.

The victim, Tiffany Skeggs, has now told The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes that at the time, both her phone and that of offender James Griffin contained “extremely exploitative and pornographic material of myself [aged 15] for certain”.

Tiffany Skeggs was abused between the ages of 11 and 19.

Griffin was a pediatric nurse who was employed at several Tasmanian government institutions who may have abused or groomed up to 30 children. Tasmanian police have already faced searing public scrutiny for their failures to act on multiple tip-offs over many years about Griffin. He killed himself before any of his victims could see him face justice.

After the failed search in 2015 the pair, who were returning from Turkey, went back to Tasmania. Skeggs was 17 at the time of the trip, and her abuse at Griffin’s hands did not stop until she was 19. Until now the details of his interaction with the Australian Border Force have remained clouded by agency secrecy.

Skeggs says the failure to adequately search the notorious offender at the airport may have also enabled Griffin to seek and find other victims. She has now publicly shared her battle to uncover why multiple agencies missed opportunities to stop his offending until he was finally charged in 2019 after Skeggs gave Tasmanian detectives a statement.

Skeggs says Griffin had near complete control over her between 2008, when she was 11 years old, and 2017, and that he was raping her several times a week. Griffin groomed Skeggs as a child netballer. He was a volunteer at Netball Tasmania.

Border Force misses evidence of sexual abuse

Tiffany Skeggs tells how she and her abuser were stopped at Melbourne airport but allowed to continue travelling, despite evidence on their phones.

An ongoing commission of inquiry into child sex abuse in Tasmania was ordered last year by the state government in connection to the Griffin scandal, as well as allegations of abuse in the Ashley Youth Detention Centre. However, the inquiry does not have jurisdiction to look at the action or inaction of federal agencies.

Skeggs said the ABF missed damning and easily retrieved evidence in May 2015 when border security officials at Melbourne International Airport approached the pair and demanded to search some of Griffin’s possessions. ABF were acting on a federal police international passenger alert that Griffin was a suspected child sex offender travelling overseas with an unnamed child.

Skeggs says there was video evidence on her mobile phone, and the phone of Griffin, of the pediatric nurse raping her as a 15 year old while he was about 64 and in a position of authority.

Skeggs said that if ABF had conducted a forensic search on one or both of the phones, they would have discovered “a particular set of images and videos that were of he and I in his bedroom, in his bed. And the video is a recording of him penetrating me and sexually assaulting me aged 15.”

Skeggs said the failure of ABF to conduct a more thorough search meant “that I still had years of abuse to come”.

“I would never have another opportunity like that for any authority in this state or this country to help me. I was on my own. I had to fend for myself and continued to be raped by him, as did others.”

Seven years after the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service temporarily seized Griffin’s phone at Melbourne Airport’s international terminal, the agency is not willing to respond to specific questions. In a brief statement, the ABF said a thorough internal review has shown it “took the appropriate action in compliance with our legislative obligations”.

Skeggs also revealed she had been involved late last year in confidential briefings, where she took detailed notes, with a senior Border Force officer who had told her that a possible technology failure was the reason why no electronic forensic phone search or download was conducted.

Skeggs insists ABF took possession of both her phone and that belonging to Griffin, although ABF records from the evening only record Griffin’s phone being taken and then manually searched.

This masthead has confirmed that ABF did not conduct a forensic search on either phone, a process which involves a computer scanning photo thumbnails to detect indicators of pornography, such as a high proportion of skin tone.

The ABF did not respond to a list of specific questions, including why a forensic search was not conducted or whether it disputed Skeggs’ clear recollection that her phone was seized in addition to that of Griffin.

One possible explanation for the failure to conduct a more thorough search is that the ABF believed it was under federal police direction not to alert Griffin that he was the subject of law enforcement interest, rather than the subject of a random border phone seizure. However, Skeggs dismisses this, noting that the moment ABF approached the pair at the airport, Griffin panicked, fearing he was an abuse suspect.

Skeggs said this belief increased as the pair had to wait at least 1½ hours at the airport while ABF conducted its search.

Skeggs with Alysha, a clinical care worker from the Ashley Youth Detention Centre, who have joined forces to expose issues in Tasmania’s institutions.

 

“After they handed back our phones and let us go, he made me delete the images and videos off my phone,” she said.

This masthead also asked the AFP if it had given Border Force express instructions not to conduct a forensic phone search. The ABF conducts searches at airports of passengers listed by the AFP as suspects or potential targets, but is often given limited information about the underlying federal police inquiry.

The AFP said it could not comment while the commission of inquiry is underway.

The AFP also referred its intelligence about child sex abuse, Griffin and his travel overseas with a minor to Tasmanian police at the time of the 2015 trip.

Last year, Tasmania Police apologised to sexual assault victims after revealing the force was also tipped off about Griffin in 2009, 2011 and 2013. Three state police officers were disciplined as a result of an internal police review, which recommended reforms to ensure tip-offs are more thoroughly investigated.

This weekend, this masthead and 60 Minutes also revealed how whistleblowers had exposed the mishandling of abuse allegations at the Ashley youth jail in Tasmania. Griffin worked at Ashley in 2017, despite suspicion he was an abuser. It is unknown if he offended against children in detention in addition to his other Tasmanian child victims.

Hyderabad gang rape case: Sexual violence against women needs to end

The Hyderabad case shows us that the country has learnt no lessons

from the Nirbhaya case

Published:  June 13, 2022 08:08

Nidhi Razdan, Special to Gulf News

  

Image Credit: Shutterstock

The gang rape of a 17 year old girl in posh part of Hyderabad has shocked India. The accused belong to influential political families and 5 of the 6 accused are minors.

The young survivor was at a day time party on May 28 with her friends, where the accused got to know her and offered her a ride.

What followed was six hours of horror and trauma. The survivor was initially too traumatised and too afraid to speak but her parents grew suspicious after finding injury marks on her and she opened up about what had happened.

The accused have now been booked for gang rape and under the stringent POCSO ACT for minors. The punishment can be as stringent as the death penalty or life imprisonment till death or, in less severe cases, 20 years of jail. They have also been booked under the IT Act for circulating the videos and pictures of victim on social media.

Crimes by minors

What is even more appalling is how minors are committing these crimes. In the weeks that this case made headlines in India, so too did the case of a 16 year old video game addict from Lucknow who shot and killed his mother because she told him to play less.

Hyderabad's police commissioner C V Anand told NDTV that they would seek trial for all the accused as adults, so that they can get maximum punishment. He has also argued that it may be time to consider reducing the age of being treated as adult in such cases from 18 to 16.

The Hyderabad case shows us that India has learnt no lessons from Nirbhaya. In December 2012, Nirbhaya, a 23 year old physiotherapy student was gangraped brutally on a moving bus in Delhi and then left to die on the road. She bravely fought for her life in hospital for several days as the country prayed for her recovery. But she didn’t make it.

Her gang rape and murder lead to a huge outcry. There were unprecedented street protests in the national capital and elsewhere, which ultimately forced parliament to change rape laws and make them tougher.

Delay in conviction

Rape was redefined and the death penalty introduced but despite the overwhelming evidence, it still took 7 years to hang the 4 men convicted in Nirbhaya’s case.

Fast tracking justice is clearly easier said than done. And, it shows that the death penalty by itself is not much of a deterrent.

According to Human Rights Watch, since the laws were strengthened, there has been a 39% increase in rape complaints reported to the police, which implies that the new laws have had some positive effect.

However, the report found that despite an increased willingness to report sexual violence, there are still glaring gaps in the enforcement of these policies and cases are still frequently being handled inappropriately, so survivors are not necessarily getting justice.

About one in four rape cases actually results in a conviction, the Washington Post reported. According to most recent data by India’s National Crimes Records Bureau (NCRB), rape cases continue to have a low conviction rate of only 39%. Over 43,000 rape investigations were launched during 2020, but only 3,814 rape cases resulted in a conviction.

As far as crimes against women are concerned, we have a long, long way to go.

Nidhi Razdan

@Nidhi

Nidhi Razdan is an award-winning Indian journalist. She is a Consulting Editor with NDTV and has extensively reported on politics and diplomacy

Cyntoia Brown - From Prison to Advocate, A Voice for the Voiceless

‘The More Things Change...’: Cyntoia Brown-Long Pens Op-Ed in Support of 17-y/o Chrystul Kizer

Anne Branigin, The Root

Photo: AP Images

Cyntoia Brown-Long, freed in August after spending half her life behind bars for killing the man who had trafficked her for sex, vowed upon her release to work on behalf of other survivors of sexual abuse and exploitation. In the months since, Brown-Long has been a fierce public advocate for these women and girls, particularly those who find themselves trapped in a justice system that too often criminalizes their attempts to survive.

This week, Brown-Long penned a focused, urgent op-ed in the Washington Post in support of one such victim, 17-year-old Chrystul Kizer, a Wisconsin girl accused of murdering the man who allegedly trafficked her and about a dozen other black girls.

“It is now painfully clear to me that my clemency has not translated into larger-scale change,” Brown-Long wrote in the article, published on Christmas Eve. “As I spend my first holiday season at home since my release, many women languish in prison cells as a result of the same laws and practices that affected me.”

17-Year-Old Chrystul Kizer Faces Life in Prison for Killing an Accused Trafficker Who Allegedly Abused...

Brown-Long, who founded the juvenile justice advocacy program GLITTER (Grassroots Learning Initiative for Teen Trafficking, Exploitation, and Rape), paid specific attention to the need to reform laws around child sex trafficking. She pointed out that while cases like hers and Kizer’s have drawn national attention, many more girls have suffered similarly in cases that will never gain public recognition. She writes:

We know about the 14-year-old trafficking victim, identified in HuffPost by her nickname “Lici,” serving 20 years in Texas. We know about Alexis Martin, a 15-year-old serving 21 years to life in Ohio for playing a role in the killing of her trafficker. Now, thanks to reporting by The Post’s Jessica Contrera, Kizer is in our timelines. But how many others are out there? And how do we advocate in a way that reaches beyond the few to the many?

For every injustice we see in the criminal-justice system, there is a law, practice or policy that allowed it to happen. That is where the change must happen. In Kizer’s case, a loophole in the law allowed a judge to deny her the ability to use an “affirmative defense” — the option to argue that she should be acquitted because the crime occurred as a result of her being trafficked. Now, unless her appeal is successful, a law specifically designed to protect victims of sex trafficking simply would not apply to Kizer. It is only when we bring the cracks in the system to light that we can effectively lobby to close them. It is only in closing these cracks that we can ensure justice for all.

In her piece, Brown-Long cites a 2016 Vera Institute report which found that 86 percent of all imprisoned women have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime; 60 percent of women in jail specifically reported caregiver violence, which is abuse at the hand of a parent, guardian or other authority figure.

“I, too, was assaulted by a man who told me that I needed to prostitute myself to survive. I know my situation was far from unique,” Brown-Long writes.

In previous interviews, Brown-Long has been transparent about how she didn’t fully come to grips with the abuse she suffered until she was in her 20s.

“It took many, many years,” Brown-Long told CBS News in October. “For so long, you know I had thought, ‘No, they said that I was a teenage prostitute. I knew what I was doing.’” When Brown-Long was a teenager, her boyfriend sold her to other men for sex.

Kizer’s case has received an onslaught of attention this month after a Post investigative report on the killing.

As the Post reported, Kizer’s alleged abuser, 34-year-old Randy Volar, was arrested and charged with child enticement, second-degree sexual assault of a child, and using a computer to facilitate a child sex crime months before Kizer killed him. Despite the fact that he was suspected of human trafficking and child pornography—and a mountain of evidence, including photos and statements from one of his alleged victims—he never once spent a night in jail (Kizer’s photo was among those police found in Volar’s possession).

Responding to criticism about the way he’s handled the case against Kizer, Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Gravely stood his ground on social media, writing a “lengthy statement” on his Facebook over the weekend, according to the Kenosha News.

“I am respectfully asking folks who are interested in the Chrystul Kizer case to reserve judgment until the facts are presented in court at trial,” Graveley wrote, adding that he refused to base his decisions on public pressure.

On Monday, Gravely said he published his statement on social media because of all the interest his office had fielded regarding the case. Some of those messages were questions about the case, he said, others called on him to drop the charges against Kizer. Some were threatening, Graveley said.

A GoFundMe started by Kizer’s mother, Devore Taylor, recently hit its $10,000 goal to help Kizer as she awaits trial (she’s currently being held on $1 million bail). A petition on Change.org calling for the charges against her to be dropped amassed more than 75,000 signatures as of Thursday afternoon.

If convicted, Kizer faces a mandatory life sentence. The trial is scheduled to begin March 16.

But, as Brown notes, the fight to free Kizer is bigger than one case. Ensuring that other victims of child sex trafficking have access to an “affirmative defense” could ensure protections for future survivors of abuse.

Brown-Long writes: “It is our responsibility to become stewards of a system that exists to serve, and not to subject. That responsibility involves looking past the emotions, digging into the details and committing ourselves to advocating for change that affects everyone—not just the names we know.”

Madeleine McCann Kidnapped by Paedophile Gang, 1 of 2 New Theories

I don't think you can call this a 'new theory', I have always suspected this as a good possibility, though reluctant to suggest it. Whether the police suspected it or not is another question.

Scott Palmer, Newshub

An international think-tank has revealed an explosive new theory about what happened to missing British toddler Madeleine McCann - she was kidnapped by an international paedophile gang.

Madeleine disappeared from the holiday apartment her family was staying at in Portugal in 2007, and hasn't been seen since.

The shocking allegations were made by John Whitehead, president of conservative human rights organisation Rutherford Institute and an expert on child sex abuse.

He believes she was taken by a sex trafficking gang the same way other children are taken.

"Oh I think she was. Kids are being snatched all over the world," Whitehead told UK tabloid the Daily Star.

"When you look at migrant children coming across the border in the US, they just go missing.

"It's big business. You can get more money than from drugs and guns because you have kids doing multiple sex acts a day and they're being filmed. A child might be raped up to 6000 times in a five-year period of servitude and it's all money."

His comments come as Portuguese detectives investigate a convicted paedophile who was in the country at the time.

Officials have reportedly identified a German man who was in Portugal at the same time Madeleine disappeared.

Madeleine McCann investigators probe convicted child killer from Germany

The Telegraph

A convicted paedophile and serial killer from Germany has emerged as a figure of interest in the hunt for missing Madeleine McCann, according to a former Portuguese detective.

Martin Ney, 48, who is serving life in prison for abducting and killing three German children between 1992 and 2001, is reportedly being investigated by officers from Portugal's Policia Judiciaria.

The 48-year-old child sex monster is said to closely resemble a photofit issued by detectives in the case and was understood to have been in Portugal in 2007, when the three-year-old was abducted.

Ney, who is in jail in his native Germany, has previously been interviewed by detectives investigating Madeleine's disappearance but has denied any involvement.

Originally from Hamburg, the predatory paedophile targeted children on holiday sometimes entering their apartments or tents wearing a mask and carrying a weapon and other times using camouflage in order to ambush them.

In 1992 he killed 13-year-old, Stefan Jahr, the following year he struck again, abducting and murdering eight-year-old Dennis Rostel and then in 2001 he killed eight-year-old Dennis Klein.

He is also suspected of killing another child in Holland in 1998 and one in France in 2004.

All of Ney's previous victims have been boys, but police working on the McCann case have continued to consider him as a person of interest.

After training as a teacher he is known to have travelled extensively, including to Ecuador, Peru and Portugal.

Police issued a photofit of a suspect in 2013

He resembles a photofit issued in 2013 of a man who was spotted acting suspiciously in Praia da Luz around the time Madeleine was abducted.

Clarence Mitchell, the McCann's spokesman said: "It might be him and he fits the profile, he is a known predatory paedophile and he's a foreigner.

"It is quite possible and plausible police are looking at him again but it could be someone else. There is a degree of credibility it is Ney but we cannot speculate.

"Ney has been previously interviewed by detectives over Madeleine's abduction, and denied it. He is in a German jail now."

He added: "Kate and Gerry are not in a position to comment on this, nor would they because it is operational detail and they will not discuss it."

Last Friday marked the 12th anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance from her parents' holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz.

Scotland Yard currently has a small team of detectives continuing to work on any potential leads.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard refused to comment on the claims that a foreign paedophile was now being probed as part of the investigation.

But Goncalo Amaral, the controversial former Portuguese police chief, who was sacked in 2007 after claiming the McCanns were involved in their daughter's disappearance, told the Australian media that a jailed German paedophile was now the main suspect.

Last week Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police confirmed that a small dedicated team, from Operation Grange, continued to investigate Madeleine's disappearance and were following up a number of lines.

She also said they were awaiting a decision from the Home Office whether to continue funding the unit for another year.