The parents of a Laval girl targeted by pimps are calling on the Trudeau government to go forward with stricter anti-pimping laws.
“Every week in the newspapers and on social media, we see girls that are running away and putting themselves in danger with street gangs,” said Eric Hauptman, who says his daughter, a repeated runaway from a Laval youth home, was lured online with the promise of lavish gifts and economic comfort.
“They’re crooks, they’re ruining our children’s lives," he continued. "They’re killing their souls, they’re beating them up, they’re raping them and making them do prostitution and making a lot of money from that.”
Saying they don't want what happened to their daughter to happen to any other young girl, Hauptman and mother Josée Chaput are calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to act on his promise during the 2015 election campaign to bring the anti-pimping bill C-452 into law.
Proposed by former Bloc Quebecois MP for Ahuntsic Maria Mourani, the bill looked to crack down on pimping by creating consecutive sentences for offenses relating to procuring and trafficing in prostitution.
It was passed unanimously by the House of Commons in 2013 but has not been voted on in the Senate.
Trudeau promised to act quickly to bring the bill into effect, but over a year after his election campaign promise, many of the victims of the pimps luring young men and women into sex work—and their families—are still waiting for action.
“They put this law on a shelf and forgot about it,” said Chaput, "but we will never forget what happened to us."
—with files from CTV Montreal