The story does not go into any of the details of how these women were trafficked or coerced into sex work. The article does state that, fwiw, 12 of the 13 women were already in Canada when they connected with this organization with varying immigration statuses. Beyond that, though, it is not clear what the police are alleging took place. I would imagine that those details will come out eventually but for now it’s kinda hard to judge.
It is interesting to me that of those charged, 4 of the accused are women vs 1 man. It seems like in a lot of these human trafficking situations there are women very actively involved in recruiting younger women for these jobs: just like Ghislaine Maxwell…just like the operation Andrew Tate was running in Romania. These older women seem to play some sorta den mother’s role in gaining the trust of the women they are using.
Generally, I err on the side of believing women in these situations. Whether one believes the cops or not is a different question. Remember when the owner of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft, got arrested at an Asian rub & tub in Miami? When the story came out the cops were proclaiming that they had busted a major human trafficking organization…but all of the charges were eventually dropped by the local prosecutors and nothing more came of it (I believe Kraft got off with a fine and nothing else).
So…I’ll wait for the facts on this to come out before making judgment one way or the other. I suspect that in this instance it will probably turn out that the cops did the right thing but we’ll see.