We Stand on Guard for Thee

The Star today reports on a sex slave ring bust in Toronto. I found it very interesting to compare the tone of today's article with the tone of the Calgary Sun's article on a similar story in December. The Star's story opens, "The women are young and beautiful, mostly from Eastern European countries, police say. . . . They travel here based on Internet promises of modelling jobs and a better life." The Sun, however, opens its article, "Cops busted an alleged trick pad last night -- across the street from a school -- where suspected illegal immigrants may have been working as sex slaves. " The Star goes on, ""They are controlled. They're very vulnerable," Ervick told reporters. "They are kept isolated from each other."" Although the Sun reports that police believe the women to be victims, the referenced quotations present a different bias in rhetoric, "The first goal is to determine the "status" of the women found in the home -- whether they are landed immigrants, illegally in Canada and how they ended up allegedly selling their bodies in a Calgary home, Renke said. If women are kept as sex slaves they are not selling their bodies! The captors, the pimps, they are the ones selling the women's bodies and profiting from rape. In Calgary, the seven women found in the "alleged" bawdy house along with a 45 year old man, have been charged with being found in a common bawdy house [CBC].

I cannot find any news reports following up on the story in Calgary. I was sad that there wasn't a greater sense of compassion in the reports of these women. The article claimed ignorance on a lot of the facts that have not yet been revealed in the media and perhaps never will...