Human trafficking survivor broke ‘invisible chains’
Now shares her story to raise awareness, help those at risk
KITCHENER — For eight years, Caroline Pugh-Roberts was called a lot of names. None of them her given one.
The London woman was trafficked in and out of motels along the Highway 401 corridor.
While working in strip joints, she was known as Angie, or most often Savannah.
Her pimp, who feigned being her boyfriend by luring her and grooming her with gifts and love, called her bitch, slut and whore.
The last two years she was with him, she tried numerous times to run away. But he always found her.
“He’s following me because he loves me,” she initially thought.
But “he’s following me because he loves the money,” she said Monday.
Pugh-Roberts spoke at a conference on human trafficking at the Waterloo Region Museum in Kitchener. The event was organized by Waterloo Regional Crime Stoppers and the Waterloo Regional Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Treatment Centre.
Pugh-Roberts is a human trafficking survivor. She now tells her story to students, police officers and social service workers.
Her goal is to educate others about the “invisible chains” that surround so many of the young girls who are exploited and coerced into sexual services.
Pugh-Roberts said she met the man who trafficked her when she was at a low point in her life.
She was 35 and her husband had died in a tsunami when the couple were in Thailand. She had also lost her brother and two friends around the same time.
“I was a mess emotionally,” she said.
She was introduced by a friend and within six months she was living with him. Like many “Romeo” pimps, he gained her trust and love.
Soon she was working in strip joints and then working in motels, having sex with numerous men a day.
When she protested, he beat her, one time breaking all her toes so she wouldn’t take off.
Often she couldn’t wash and was forced to sleep on the floor. Then he forced a crack pipe on her and she became addicted.
People often ask ‘why didn’t she leave’ Pugh-Roberts told the group.
“But why don’t people ask,
‘why doesn’t he stop?’” she said.
Pugh-Roberts said the men who purchased sex from her, whom she calls “purchasers of flesh,” were at times just as scary.
Once she was chased in a parking lot by a john.
“When he (her pimp) walked through the door, I was happy to see him. Better the devil you know, than the devil you don’t,” she said.
She was finally able to get away when a domestic violence agency gave her shelter for four months.
She’s been free from her pimp for seven years. She doesn’t know what happened to him.
Today, Pugh-Roberts works with other victims and helping young women become survivors. One day a week, she runs a dropin centre where women come to socialize and integrate themselves into the “square” world.
She speaks at the john school in London and tells the men her story. Each time, there is always one man who comes forward and apologizes, saying he didn’t know
about human trafficking.
But the majority of the johns are only sorry because they got caught, Pugh-Roberts said.
Pugh-Roberts said more needs to be done to help young women who are being exploited.
More than half of the women who are trafficked are Indigenous.
“Someone has got to care to do something,” she said.