Traffic: An ex-pimp's regrets echo through the National Assembly

Traffic: An ex-pimp’s regrets echo through the National Assembly

It’s summer 2018 and a youth center worker with whom director Catherine Proulx and I (producer Karine Dubois) stayed in touch after doing a project together tells us that, as part of a research project, they’ve started recording interviews with ex-pimps who are willing to explain the behind-the-scenes of their industry.

A disconcerting testimony

One of them agrees to meet with us to decide whether to make his interview public. He welcomes us to his home and takes us a little by surprise when, with his daughter on his lap, he explains that the solution, in his opinion, would be to invest in sex education courses in schools. He tells us that, for him, it could have made a difference.

In his interview, he says that:

“Montreal likes it young, very young.

That’s the sentence that inspired us to create Trafic, a documentary investigation into the sexual exploitation of young girls in the form of a podcast and web series.

“They don’t need me. I’m the one who makes them think they need me. I don’t care about them. I just want to take advantage of them. The guys, when you turn your back, they say “little slut”, “whore”, “she just stuffed herself with fifty guys and gave me all that money”, “she doesn’t respect herself”. She’s forgotten what a woman’s worth. So you take advantage of that. Not every woman is going to accept that, but if she does, you’ve just hit the jackpot.”

-Testimony of an ex-pimp

Basically, the project aims to show reality from three points of view: the girl, the pimp and the customer.

But the further we got into our research, the more difficult it became to find the clients for whom the exploitation exists.

This will determine the angle of the podcast: Traffic: in search of the customer.

Impact production: the project’s political impact

In view of the podcast’s great success when it was released in February 2019, Télé-Québec asked us to produce a TV adaptation of the project, to be broadcast in November 2019. In our promotional interviews, we emphasize the message the ex-pimp shared with us: the importance of sex education.

The film’s release coincides with the Quebec government holding a parliamentary commission on the sexual exploitation of young people. Much to our surprise, we were invited to present the findings of our documentary to the commission’s deputies.

Producer Karine Dubois and director Catherine Proulx found themselves at the National Assembly the week before the documentary was due to be broadcast on TV, which ensured maximum media coverage.

In December 2020, barely a year and a half after we first spoke to him, we wrote to our source to tell him that the Commission’s report had been tabled and that 3 recommendations concerned sex education.

Recommendation no. 10

The Commission recommends that the Ministry of Education include appropriate content specific to the prevention and risks of sexual exploitation of minors in primary and secondary sexuality education courses. The Commission recommends that the following themes be addressed in sexuality education courses: consent, respect, personal fulfillment, self-esteem, healthy interpersonal relationships, sexual exploitation, recruitment methods, safe use of social media and information technologies.

Recommendation no. 11

The Commission recommends that sexuality education courses be given by teachers trained for this purpose, and supported by sexologists or other qualified professionals.

Recommendation no. 12

The Commission recommends that the Québec government conduct a vast awareness-raising campaign for children and their parents, to inform them of the consequences of risky use of technologies, applications and social networks, and to equip them to recognize situations at risk of sexual exploitation in the virtual world.