凯沙·布德罗（Kyesha Boudreau）的童年有一段时间在差不多12个寄养家庭之间辗转，这给她留下了痛苦的感觉：各个家庭曾把她放在显微镜下仔细打量，最终却决定不选择她。
Kyesha Boudreau spent part of her childhood shuffling through roughly 12 foster homes, leaving her with a painful sense that families had put her under a microscope and decided not to choose her.
她在新斯科舍省安纳波利斯谷（Annapolis Valley）的家中接受最近的一次采访时说：“我觉得自己被挑剩下了。”
“I feel like I got picked over,” she said in a recent interview at her home in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley.
她坚信，这种痛苦注定让她在青少年时期住在集体宿舍时，成为遭受性剥削的目标。
She firmly believes that pain set her up to be a target of sexual exploitation later as a teenager living in group homes.
从事政府照料青少年工作的人士长期以来一直明白，这些儿童特别容易成为人口贩运的目标。
People who work with youth in government care have long understood these children are particularly vulnerable to human traffickers.
远至2025年12月的法院判决书显示，有成年男子在新斯科舍省集体宿舍周围买卖女童的性服务，其中一些女孩年仅14岁。根据参与其中几起案件的一位资深皇家检察官的说法，性掠夺者通过在宿舍附近潜伏或在社交媒体上物色目标来寻找受害者。许多幸存者现在面临着“毁灭性的长期影响”。现年28岁的布德罗表示，在她的亲身经历过去十年后，这依然是儿童福利系统中的一个重大问题，这让她感到深深的不安。
Court decisions as recent as December 2025 describe men buying and selling sex with girls who lived in Nova Scotia group homes, some as young as 14. According to a senior Crown prosecutor who worked on some of the cases, sexual predators found victims by lurking near the homes or scoping them out on social media. Many survivors now face “devastating long-lasting impacts.”Boudreau, 28, said it's deeply upsetting a decade after her own experience that it continues to be a major issue in the child welfare system.
她认为，集体宿舍里的儿童是人口贩运者“最容易下手的目标”，因为当工作人员无法满足他们的情感需求时，这些青少年就会转向任何能提供“哪怕是一点点爱、关怀和关注”的人。新斯科舍省集体宿舍的孩子是如何沦为人口贩运受害者的“任何想把你拉下水的人——我见过这种情况发生过很多次，甚至在我自己的经历中——他们会走到你面前，提供任何他们知道你想要的东西，”她说。
She believes children in group homes are the “easiest targets” for traffickers because when staff can't meet their emotional needs, youth turn to anyone offering “the slightest bit of love, affection, attention.”How kids in Nova Scotia's group homes become trafficked“All someone has to do that wants to pimp you out — I've seen it happen so many times and even in my own experience — they will come up to you, they'll offer you anything they know you want,” she said.
这就是为什么布德罗认为，她对被选择的渴望让她变得脆弱，最终因完全错误的原因被人选中。
That’s why Boudreau thinks her longing to be chosen left her vulnerable to be picked for all the wrong reasons.
“对于那些生活在集体抚养机构中的孩子来说，他们会把收到礼物视为最幸福的事情——因为他们从来都没有被别人‘选中’过（即从未被别人特别关注或重视过），”她说，“这真的很令人难过。”
“A kid in care, they're going to see that as the best part because when have you ever been chosen? You're in a group home. You're obviously not chosen,” she said. “That's the sad thing.”Gifts and social media Human or sexual trafficking relies on coercion, meaning the trafficker uses threats or manipulation to force someone into providing sexual or other services.
根据加拿大统计局2024年的数据，新斯科舍省的人口贩卖案件发生率最高，每10万人中就有4.5起被警方记录在案的贩卖案件。
Statistics Canada data from 2024 shows Nova Scotia had the highest rate of human trafficking of any province, at 4.5 police-reported incidents per 100,000 people.
在新斯科舍省，曾审理过十几起人口贩卖案件的资深检察官凯蒂·洛维特（Katie Lovett）指出：犯罪者通常会寻找那些在日常生活中存在某种需求的人作为目标。这些需求可能是食物、住所、酒精或毒品，也可能是情感上的支持（比如一个可以依靠的成年人）。
Senior Crown attorney Katie Lovett, who has prosecuted more than a dozen human trafficking cases in Nova Scotia, said perpetrators look for targets lacking something in their everyday lives. Those needs might be food, shelter, alcohol or drugs — or emotional support, such as a trusted adult to lean on.
“他们会利用这些需求来建立信任，然后逐步操控并剥削这些人，”洛维特说。
“They will use that need to build trust with that person and eventually manipulate and exploit them,” Lovett said.
她发现一些人口贩卖者经常在集体抚养机构附近的加油站或便利店出没；他们会主动提出为受害者购买香烟等物品，以此为进一步接触或赠送礼物创造机会。这种行为可能会持续数月之久。
She’s known traffickers to hang around gas stations or convenience stores near group homes. That gives them a chance to offer to buy the target something like a pack of cigarettes, opening the door for further contact or gifts. This can continue for months, Lovett said.
“最终，他们会要求受害者：‘这一个月我为你花了500加元，你得把钱还给我。’”此外，人口贩卖者还会利用社交媒体来接触青少年。洛维特表示，通过在网上与青少年建立友谊，他们可以查看这些青少年的好友列表，从而找到同样生活在集体抚养机构中的其他受害者。
“Eventually they will stop and they will tell the person, I've bought you $500 worth of items in the past month, you need to pay me back,” she said. Traffickers also use social media to approach teens and build trust. By befriending a youth online, Lovett said, traffickers can check their friend list to identify others living in the same group home.
像Snapchat这样的社交平台上，如果青少年开启了位置共享功能，人口贩卖者就能实时追踪他们的位置。
Location-sharing features on platforms like Snapchat create additional risks. If a youth has their location turned on, traffickers can track them on a map in real time.
洛维特还提到过一些案例：有些青少年甚至主动将自己的社交媒体账号交给了犯罪者。
Lovett said she’s also known of cases where teens have handed over access to their social media accounts.
“虽然受害者能够获得帮助的时间可能并不长，但这段时间足以让他们建立起一些有用的联系，以便日后能够寻求帮助，”她说。
“It might not be a long time period [of access], but for enough time for them to go on and try to make connections that they can use later on,” she said.
阿什莉·蒂勒（Ashley Tiller）试图消除一个常见的误解：人们常常认为人口贩卖是指陌生人从街上绑架受害者并将其强行塞进车里。
Subtle coercion Ashley Tiller wants to dispel the myth that human trafficking involves a stranger snatching a victim off the street and forcing them into a vehicle.
“那种被夸大渲染的情节其实并不符合实际情况，”蒂勒说道。她在哈利法克斯的基督教女青年会（YWCA Halifax）负责管理多个针对性别暴力问题的援助项目。她补充说：“人口贩卖的过程往往非常隐蔽、非常微妙。”该组织为人口贩卖的受害者提供同伴支持服务以及安全庇护所。
“That sensationalized version is not how it commonly occurs,” said Tiller, who manages several gender-based violence support programs at the YWCA Halifax. “It's a lot quieter. It's a lot more subtle.”The YWCA operates a peer support program and safe house for human trafficking survivors. Trafficking can happen in the community where the victim lives, she said, and most cases involve women and girls who may take a long time to recognize the warning signs.
蒂勒指出，人口贩卖可能发生在受害者所在的社区内，而且大多数受害者都是女性和女孩；她们往往需要很长时间才能察觉到危险的迹象。
Tiller said that’s because the trafficker can often be a friend or romantic partner who excels at making the target feel loved and cared for.
她解释说，贩子往往就是受害者的朋友或恋人，他们擅长让受害者感到被爱、被关心：“也许贩子会用‘我们两个人对抗整个世界’这样的说法来骗取受害者的信任。”
“Maybe it's the two of them against the world together,” she said. Tiller said the relationship slowly starts to shift, perhaps with the trafficker pushing different sexual experiences until the target agrees.
她进一步解释道，这种关系会逐渐发生变化——贩子会逐渐引导受害者尝试一些新的性行为，直到受害者同意为止。
“Step by step, trying to push boundaries in a new way to make things that previously were outside of somebody's comfort zone on the table,” she said.
“他们会观察受害者好几天，”蒂勒说，“有些贩子甚至会亲自与受害者接触。”
‘They’ll watch you for a few days’Some traffickers set up situations where they can meet youth in person.
凯莎·布德罗（Kyesha Boudreau）回忆道：“有一次，有人在我们乘坐公交车时一直在监视我们。我们完全不知道那个人是谁。后来我们发现他每天都会出现在我们的集体住所前……工作人员警告我们那个男人很危险，但我们根本不相信他们的话。”
“They'll watch you for a few days. I literally had someone watch me and my friends on the bus,” Kyesha Boudreau remembers. “All of a sudden we kept seeing him pop up every day in front of our group home. We didn't know who he was.”She said staff warned the girls that the man was dangerous.
“我们以为他们只是在吓唬我们，”布德罗说，“但事实证明他们的警告是正确的。”
“We didn't believe them,” Boudreau said. “We're like, oh, you're just trying to scare us.”But the warnings proved true.
“他真的会邀请我们去他的公寓玩。他会给我们大麻、给我们酒，然后还会跟我们一起坐公交车回家，确保我们安全到家。”她知道自己的一些朋友曾遭到该男子的性剥削。“她们回来后会告诉我，‘是的，也许我不该留下来，’”她说。
“He would literally invite us to his apartment to hang out. He'd give us weed, he'd give us liquor, and then he'd take the bus home with us to make sure we got home.”She knew that some of her friends were sexually exploited by the man. “They would come home and tell me, 'yeah, maybe I shouldn't have stayed,'” she said.
“我们会向集体宿舍的工作人员报告。他们什么都不做，因为在他们眼里，那是你自找的。我们已经提醒过你了，你却还是去和这个人厮混。”新斯科舍省机会与社会发展部儿童与家庭福利部门执行主任吉尔·巴克豪斯（Jill Barkhouse）表示，工作人员会对每一起性剥削和人口贩运的举报采取行动。
“We would report it to the group home staff. They wouldn't do nothing about it because in their eyes, you did that to yourself. We told you about it and you still went and hung out with this person.”Jill Barkhouse, executive director of the child and family well-being division at Nova Scotia's Department of Opportunities and Social Development, said staff act on every report of sexual exploitation and trafficking.
“我们非常重视这些关切，并会通过实际行动来处理，”她表示，尽管出于对个人隐私的尊重，有时这些行动不会被公开或广为人知。
“We take those concerns seriously and we tend to those with actions,” she said, though she said out of respect for people’s privacy sometimes the actions aren’t shared or widely known.
巴克豪斯表示，该部门正致力于开展公众意识宣传活动、为社会工作者提供培训，并与社区中打击性剥削的组织进行合作。
Barkhouse said the department is working on public awareness campaigns and training for social workers, and working with groups in the community that fight against sexual exploitation.
她表示，随着剥削行为向网络转移，保护儿童的工作看起来“与过去大不相同”，需要相当多的技能和关注。
She said as exploitation moves online, protecting children looks “very different than it did some time ago” and requires considerable skill and attention.
治愈与选择蒂勒强调，基督教女青年会（YWCA）的康复项目允许幸存者主导他们自己的治愈过程。YWCA的项目是自愿的，允许人们自行申请同伴支持或避难所。蒂勒知道，当人们准备好谈论他们的经历时，信任正在建立。
Healing and choice Tiller emphasized that recovery programs at the YWCA allow survivors to lead their own healing process. YWCA programs are voluntary, allowing people to self-refer to peer support or the safe house. Tiller knows trust is being built when people are ready to talk about their experience.
“因此，当人们开始感到更自在、愿意敞开心扉并进行这些对话时，这始终是一个巨大的信号，”她说。
“So when people start feeling a little bit more comfortable to open up and have those conversations, that's always a massive sign,” she said.
对布德罗（Boudreau）来说，进行这些对话的时机就是现在。她说，当她在19岁脱离看护系统时，危险并没有过去。
For Boudreau, the time to have those conversations is now. She said the danger didn’t pass when she aged out of the care system at 19.
她陷入了一段发展迅速的恋情中，随后这段关系发生了令人不安的转变。“我相信了，因为长期以来我都没有被选中，”她说。
She got caught up in a relationship with a man that moved quickly, before taking a troubling turn. “I believed it because for so long I wasn't chosen,” she said.
布德罗表示，她逐渐感到自己被迫去做一些自己不想做的事。她甚至发现，自己的私密照片被发布到了网上。事情发展到她不得不离开的地步。在朋友的帮助下，她找到了新的住处，并开始重建自尊。“我花了很长时间才重新学会爱自己，”她说。
Boudreau said she slowly began to feel she was being pushed to do things she didn't want to do. She even discovered intimate photos of herself had been posted online. It got to a point where she had to get out. With the help of friends, she found a new place to live and started to rebuild her self-respect. “It took a long time for me to love myself again,” she said.
如今，她希望分享自己的故事，帮助那些在省级福利机构中长大的人。
Now, she wants to share her story to help others who grew up in provincial care.
“我想让人们看到，我们并不是被剩下的，”她说。“我们不是那种你可以随意捡起来、不想要了就扔掉的人。”
“I want to help people see that we're not leftovers,” she said. “We're not just someone you can just pick up and throw away when you don't want them anymore.”
加拿大人口贩运热线：1-833-900-1010 – 全加拿大可用，全天候24小时服务 更多头条新闻
Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline: 1-833-900-1010 – Available across Canada, 24/7 MORE TOP STORIES