Sudbury man accused of human trafficking

A Sudbury man will be back in bail court Friday after being charged June 17 with several criminal offences, including human trafficking.

Douglas Bright, 45, was charged by Greater Sudbury Police officers who were participating in a province-wide initiative called Operation Northern Spotlight held June 17 and 18.

The initiative brought 18 police services together in a blitz to arrest people suspected of taking part in the sex trade and with forcing others to do so against their will.

Sudbury police executed search warrants here and in Brampton before charging Bright with procuring a prostitute, administering a noxious substance, trafficking in persons, materially benefiting from trafficking in persons and knowingly advertising an offer to provide sexual services for consideration.

Greater Sudbury Police Staff Sgt. Jordan Buchanan said officers released the name of the accused before he made a second appearance in bail court because they are concerned there may be other victims.

“As a result of this attention, we’re hoping more victims will come forward. Obviously, we expect more than just one person (of) trafficking and one victim in Sudbury. There are probably more and certainly across the province,” said Buchanan.

The service is urging anyone who may have been a victim of similar crimes to report them to Sudbury police.

In the third phase of Operation Northern Spotlight, members of police services arranged to meet with people suspected of being involved in the sex trade. Police charged three people with 54 offences. Police were able to ensure the safety of five females who had been working in the sex trade as minors or against their will, including three 15-year-olds, a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old.

Buchanan said there is a publication ban on the name of the victim in the Sudbury charges because of the nature of the offences, but that person is not a minor.

The offences of which Bright is accused are old crimes with new names, after Canada’s prostitution laws were revamped last December, with the law coming down on the buyers of sexual services and not the people who provide them.

The Supreme Court ruled prostitutes aren’t committing offences, but are victims, said Buchanan. “They’re being trafficked … if you want to term it slavery, trafficking. They’re being victimized and used to facilitate these offences surrounding them, and a lot of them are new since December.”

The charge of procuring a prostitute is essentially convincing someone to perform sexual services for money, said Buchanan, and the penalties if convicted are stiff.

The law has also been strengthened so soliciting is now a more serious offence. “It will cause fingerprinting and photographing whereas before, the solicitation was a summary conviction offence,” said the staff sergeant. “It was just a court date and that was it. Now, they could face serious jail time.”

The laws have also been changed to differentiate between soliciting an adult and a minor. The record-taking and fingerprinting helps people keep better track of perpetrators, said Buchanan.

The administering a noxious substance charge against Bright may be related to pills a woman was given that had an effect on her, said the staff sergeant.

The charge once known as living off the avails of prostitution is now called materially benefiting from trafficking persons.

Another change is that people can be charged for knowingly advertising an offer to provide sexual services. Under the old laws, police had to catch people in a public place, but now they can be charged for posting ads on the Internet or in newspapers.

Buchanan said Greater Sudbury Police officers have been trained to educate people who are victims of human trafficking, who are often afraid to come forward because it might endanger them.

“These are difficult charges to lay,” said Buchanan. “Let’s face it, we don’t usually get a lot of co-operation, it’s difficult to find witnesses and have the victims come forward.

“You can see … we had to write warrants in two different cities on this one case alone, in the gathering of our evidence.”

Buchanan said Greater Sudbury Police is concerned that younger people may have been involved in trafficking in Sudbury.

He said the changes to prostitution laws, especially differentiating between victims who are adults and those who are children, strengthen his service’s powers of enforcement.

These are not the first charges Bright has faced relating to the sex trade.

In July 2005, he was sentenced to 31/2 years in prison for living off the avails of prostitution and for assaulting the woman who was working for him.

Superior Court Justice Michael Meehan said upon sentencing that Bright appreciated the money the woman brought in initially, but it soon became “required, then demanded and eventually she was operating on the street.”

Bright told the judge then many of his problems stemmed from his addiction to crack cocaine, which began when he was 21.

At that time, Bright had a criminal record of 35 convictions for everything from weapons charges to assaults and breaching court orders. He told the judge he wanted to change his life, but said, “it takes time to change.”

In July 2009, Bright was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend of eight months, leaving her with a gash on her forehead above her eye.

Bright told Ontario Court Justice Malcolm McLeod that, since his release from prison in the fall of 2008, he had tried to turn his life around and had started a concert promotion business.

He was bringing a concert to Sudbury that month and sought to be freed from jail to ensure the show went on.

The judge agreed to a joint submission from Bright’s lawyer and the Crown that had him do a 90-day jail term, which he served before and after the concert. He was released for four days to help stage it.

In March 2003, Bright pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five months in jail for breach of probation. In January 1999, he was convicted of defrauding a Sudbury bank of more than $5,000 and was ordered to pay $2,950 in restitution within 22 months. He failed to fulfil that condition of his probation.

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