Invisible Chains (24 page)

Sometime later, fourteen-year-old Audrey, a First Nations girl described as having a “fragile mental state, low self-esteem, limited education and [a] past with abusive adults,” was taken by Ramsay to the same remote forest road and forced to perform various sex acts for him, an incident repeated a number of times over three years. Because the girl was facing criminal charges as a young offender, Judge Ramsay promised that he'd “let her off sentences” if she kept his acts secret. As the presiding judge on eight separate occasions when Audrey appeared in court, he was able to make good on his promises.

At just twelve, Hannah was Judge Ramsay's youngest victim, a girl with a troubled past who, like Audrey, appeared in the judge's courtroom facing several criminal charges. Sometime after her appearance in his court, Judge Ramsay picked up Hannah on the street
and told her he wanted to “simulate aggressive sex” with her for one hundred and fifty dollars. When she became scared, Hannah pushed Judge Ramsay away and escaped from his vehicle as he yelled at her that no one would believe her if she went to the police. Remarkably, court records refer to this twelve-year-old victim as a “juvenile sex trade
worker.”
A more appropriate description would be a “sexually exploited youth” or “sex crime victim.”

Judge Ramsay's most violent behaviour was directed at Sandra, a Métis girl of sixteen. Following the pattern, he picked her up off the street and drove her to a remote area, where he demanded sex acts in exchange for money. When Sandra removed her clothes and reached for a condom, Judge Ramsay became enraged, and according to court records,

[h]e slammed her head on the dashboard, causing her forehead to bleed. After some struggle, she made it out of the truck. However, he caught up with her and pinned her to the ground. He slapped her across the face and proceeded to penetrate her with his penis as she cried. He got up, threw her clothes out of the truck and left. No money changed hands. She made her way back to the highway and hitchhiked back to town.

This was not the last that Sandra would see of Judge Ramsay. A year later, during a custody battle for her son, she was shocked to find him sitting on the bench, presiding over the hearing and deciding the fate of her child. In fact, the shock was sufficient to motivate Sandra to report Judge Ramsay's actions, launching an investigation that, over the next two years, revealed the extent of his actions and the number of victims.

Judge Ramsay's suicide attempt failed, and he was sent to hospital for twelve days before his trial could begin. Although he resigned as a judge when the allegations came to light, it was widely anticipated that he would launch a vigorous defence. Surely the allegations couldn't be true, could they?

Just before his trial, Ramsay shocked his friends, his children, and his wife by admitting that Cynthia, Audrey, Hannah, and Sandra were indeed telling the truth. Rather than endure the girls' testimony in court and cross-examination by their lawyer, Ramsay pleaded guilty to sexual assault, breach of trust, and three counts of obtaining the sexual services of a minor for money.

His statement to the court satisfied few people in understanding how he could have acted as he did. “I'm at a loss to explain to you, the complainants and my family, how I could work so hard in all other aspects of my life, yet fail by engaging in such disgraceful conduct,” he said in the same courtroom where he had sat in judgment of others for years and now stood as a confessed criminal. “I cannot undo that which has been done, nor take away the pain or the indignity I've contributed to their lives.”

At Ramsay's sentencing hearing, Associate Chief Justice Dohm called his colleague's conduct “utterly reprehensible,” finding that Ramsay had treated the teenage victims in the same manner that

one might discard a pair of old shoes.... He freely engaged in sexual activity, including violence, with young women who were highly vulnerable because of youth, disadvantaged backgrounds and addiction. He sat in judgment on them for the very behaviour in which he himself was instrumental in causing them to engage, when he had full knowledge of their personal circumstances.... [T]he accused used his office both to solicit satisfaction of his perverted lusts and to shield himself from their consequences. In our society judges are the trustees of the administration of justice. One can hardly imagine a more infamous breach of trust.

On June 1, 2004, Ramsay was sentenced to serve seven years in prison for his crimes. Justice Dohm, in giving his reasons for sentencing, commented on the stark contrast between Ramsay's brutal actions and his reputation in the community: “It is difficult to imagine a more astounding example of the split personality phenomenon....
He has brought shame on his former colleagues, on the judiciary generally, his family and on himself.”

During the trial, it was revealed that police had probed Ramsay's actions several years earlier but had been unable to find anyone willing to testify against him. Ramsay would never have been held accountable for his actions as a purchaser of sex acts and an abuser of vulnerable girls if not for their courage in coming forward despite his threats. Encouraged by the victims' bravery, more than twenty other young women began preparing complaints against Ramsay.

Ramsay would never answer those additional allegations. He died of cancer in January 2008 while serving his sentence in a New Brunswick prison. Despite fears from several quarters that he might be released within two years of a seven-year sentence, he was denied parole on the grounds that he had made “no meaningful attempt at remorse or rehabilitation on his part since arriving at federal penitentiary.”

A demographic of Canada's johns

Purchasers of sex acts, including those who select vulnerable children, may include powerful and upstanding members of the community like Judge Ramsay. Researchers have concluded, however, “the average client is the average man.” A 1988 Gallup poll estimated that 7 percent of Canadian men have paid for sex; more recent estimates are lacking.

From time to time, news reports reveal that many “ordinary johns” may not be so ordinary after all. A Quebec City investigation called “Operation Scorpion” rattled the community and captured international headlines because of the diverse array of men arrested for purchasing sex from underage girls. Their sellers were a street gang called the “Wolf Pack.” The seventeen “johns” arrested included an aide to former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard, a popular radio host, the former president of the winter Bonhomme Carnaval festival, the owner of a pharmacy chain, the owner of an upscale patisserie on Cartier Street, and a flea market proprietor. Yet the prosecutor described the number of prominent men implicated in Operation Scorpion as “the tip of the iceberg.”

Patrons of these trafficked women can find themselves in unexpected situations. One social worker heard that some of the women, having escaped the pimps and traffickers, had gone to job interviews only to discover that their potential bosses were former “clients.”

Older psychological studies on the patrons of purchased sex tended to characterize them as having social or physical inadequacies that drove them to seek out the women. More recent research has revealed that purchasers of sex acts generally share no special distinguishing features, instead displaying characteristics that transcend all categories of income, education, and social standing.

In Canada and the United States, studies of men arrested for attempting to purchase sex found that 60 to 72 percent of participants had some post-secondary education, and most were gainfully employed. From 1996 to 2008, over seven thousand men in Toronto who were caught attempting to purchase sex were sent to the John School at Streetlight Support Services. Officials at the school noted that the attendees represented all ages and walks of life, and most were married and employed. A 2005 study found that nearly 50 percent of sex act purchasers were fathers; whether the majority of these men were satisfied with their sexual relationships with their partners is undetermined—the research points to conflicted feelings among the respondents.

Some commonalities appear to exist among purchasers of sex acts. For example, the average age of a man who purchases sex acts for the first time is between twenty-four and twenty-seven. Additionally, in one study, the men who reported a history of purchasing sex acts averaged forty-two paid encounters.

Casual and habitual users of paid sex may differ significantly. One international study describes habitual users as “deeply troubled” men who relate to women only in a sexualized way. They “suffer from heavy sexual dependency problems and whose excessive involvement in prostitution and pornography results in a number of difficulties including financial, occupational, relationship, as well as personal [They] project their own psychological problems on the
women by using more or less excessive violence to humiliate and degrade them.”

Many studies list and explain the wide variety of motivations that prompt men to purchase sex, yet a common attribute informs them all: A
sense of power
arises when the sex act purchaser can seek out a woman or girl, enter into a “business transaction” with her that's designed exclusively to satisfy his urges and fantasies, and walk away with no strings attached. For some men, the motivation may include a lack of interest in establishing relationships with women, an inability to do so, or the craving for sex acts that they're unable to enjoy with their partners.

For the majority of purchasers, sexual behaviour becomes a transaction like any other, devoid of intimacy. The desire always to be in control and to have a variety of anonymous partners, without consequences or responsibility, has even been dubbed “McSex.” “It's like going to McDonald's,” one john suggested. “It's satisfying, it's greasy, and then you get the hell out of there.”

To a small minority of men, sex for purchase replaces intimacy that's unavailable elsewhere. “Some of them fall in love,” explains one man associated with Toronto's John School. “Some of them come back and only look for Susie, week after week, or month after month, whatever it may be, whatever their cycle is, or day after day, who knows. But they're looking for her, and they want her to leave the pimp, they want her to come and be with him, be his girlfriend. Some of them fall in love with these girls.”

In contrast, some purchasers of sex acts seek a more sadistic hold over their victims. Driven by a desire for physical control, a man of this kind will incline to “forcing sex acts that were not agreed on, for longer than the allotted time, or holding the woman against her will; verbally, physically and sexually abusing the woman; and, enjoying power and control, believing that they own the woman and can do whatever they want to her while she is with them.”

The sense of power extends to verbal abuse. “[H]e tells you that you are a dirty whore, a nasty skank, that fucking and sucking are
really all you're good for,” says Terri-Lynn, a member of the Aboriginal Women's Action Network in Vancouver. “You are nothing more than a sexualized ... collection of body parts to him. This is the so-called work of prostitution. It demeans, humiliates, and devastates women who are used in this way.”

Responding to “market demand”—why traffickers recruit younger and younger women

The demand for younger girls and women is causing traffickers to recruit them, in many cases, when they are under eighteen. Why do men insist on paying for sex acts with minors in violation of the law and society's values?

Adolescents and children are easier for men to dominate, less able to defend themselves physically, and more susceptible to manipulation by their traffickers, including enforced silence. Another factor is pop culture, advertising, and the entertainment media generally, all of which tend to project a hypersexualized vision of young girls.

The availability of child sexual abuse imagery and videos on the internet contributes significantly to men seeking to purchase sex or sexually abuse underage boys and girls. Some law enforcement officials and counsellors who assist the victims of sex trafficking believe that people who wouldn't otherwise physically act out or assault a child, or seek victims in underground markets, do so through the internet because the risk of getting caught seems lower to them. According to multiple studies, habitual purchasers of sex acts view pornography significantly more often than first-time purchasers.

Gambling with their lives

Purchasers of sex acts often think of their crime as “victimless” and of themselves as invincible. They're wrong on both counts. In addition to harming the victims they visit, men who pay for sex acts gamble with their own careers, finances, family life, intimate relationships, reputation, health, and even their lives. These men can be subject
to criminal prosecution and, in some provinces, police seize and impound vehicles used in street-level prostitution.

Serious health risks are always present. Purchasers may demand to engage in sex acts without the use of condoms, and some will pay extra for this even though STDs are on the rise. Studies in the United States have shown a rate of HIV infection of prostituted persons ranging from 2.5 percent in Los Angeles County to 28 percent in New York City. A recent study found that 26 percent of prostituted females in Vancouver were infected with HIV, a rate that has been increasing over the last decade.

As johns attending programs so often recount, the cumulative impact on their status in the community, career opportunities, family relationships, and financial security can be life altering. Here's one tale from a participant in a recent session at a Toronto John School:

At the height of my addiction I was spending tens of thousands of dollars on sex, drugs, and gambling every year. There was a lot of shame … porn movies, strip bars, pimps, and drug dealers. The addiction cost me my business, my wife, my children and my freedom.

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DOING THE DIRTY WORK: FORCED LABOUR