Female victims of human trafficking who find the strength to escape will now be able to sleep safer in Barrie.
The Women and Children’s Shelter of Barrie has announced it will now set aside two of its beds specifically for victims of human trafficking. As a part of this initiative, the shelter is also taking over the human trafficking crisis line for Barrie.
“It’s an unfortunate thing that we need it, but we’re really happy that we’re able to respond to the need in this community,” said Teresa MacLennan, executive director of the shelter.
According to MacLennan, the shelter has seen an uptick in the number of women reaching out as victims of human trafficking.
“There certainly has been an increase. Part of that can be (attributed to the idea that) we know what it is now. We have a name for it,” she said. “(In the past) it always got intermingled with sex work. They are different. There’s a lot more attention on it now. We’ve always known because we’ve always supported those women.”
MacLennan says the shelter is part of a committee called Project Safe Horizon in collaboration with the Barrie police, Youth Haven and the Barrie Native Friendship Centre that recognize the growing problem of human trafficking in the area.
“There hadn’t been any dedicated beds in Barrie. The only ones we’d had were in Midland. The problem is, some women don’t want to go all the way up to Midland... so instead they were staying in those trafficked situations,” said MacLennan.
“We can’t ignore it. We had to do something about it,” she added.
While Barrie is a large community in terms of population, MacLennan says that sometimes it can have a smaller community’s mindset.
“We continue to have the uphill battle of trying to convince the community that violence against women happens. If it’s never impacted your life, you don’t think that it’s happening. Our numbers show that it clearly is, because we’re always over capacity,” she said. “The same thing applies to human trafficking.
“Our community is wonderful, but our community needs to realize that the things they hear about... it is happening here in our own backyard,” said MacLennan.
MacLennan said that Barrie is a gateway for human traffickers, with access to both the north and the south through Highway 400.
“We’ve just seen it with the labour human trafficking that happened. Nobody expected that was happening in Barrie,” she said.
The shelter is partially funded for 27 beds, however they usually house 35 women and children at any given time.
“We have to fund-raise. We rely so heavily on donations. We have to make up the funds to be able to support those women and kids,” said MacLennan. “In terms of dollars and cents, there are huge costs for operating a shelter.”
MacLennan said that while 10 years ago, visitors would stay for a month to six weeks, the lack of affordable housing in Barrie means most visitors stay now for about three months and longer if the women and children are immigrants.
“They have to go through a process to get papers and have status to even be able to get housing,” she said.
The shelter currently operates over two separate buildings. One building is the emergency shelter, and the other building is more transitional, containing group and individual counselling services, court support and transitional housing services.
The goal, said MacLennan, is to eventually get both under one roof.
“Right now we have our Standing Together campaign. We’re renovating the basement of our shelter so we can bring the outreach services back into the shelter,” said MacLennan.
The cost for the basement renovation is $350,000. So far, the campaign has raised $200,000.
“We want to create a warm hand off of service, so having everything in one place will really help with that,” she said.
The shelter houses roughly 300 women and children a year. The crisis line receives over 1,300 calls per year, while the Court Support Program serves about 200 women a year.
“We’ve had to turn hundreds of women away for shelter space every year,” said MacLennan.
In honour of International Women’s Day on Friday, shelter staff will be attending a flag raising at 9:30 a.m. at the Barrie City Hall courtyard.
At 4:30 p.m., a rally and march will kick off starting in the City Hall Rotunda and travel down Mulcaster Street to Dunlop Street, with a portion of Dunlop Street closed off. Barrie Coun. Natalie Harris will be speaking at the rally.
If you’re interested in donating to the shelter’s Standing Together campaign, email [email protected].
For more information about the Women and Children’s Shelter of Barrie, click here.
