A multi-week trial began this week in Cayuga where four Caledonia residents are facing charges of trafficking and controlling a young woman while benefiting from her sex work.
Crown lawyer Susan Orlando, from Ontario’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Team, outlined the case she expects to present against Daniel Campbell, 36, Joshua Hillock, 32, Dragisa Lucic, 30, and Crystal-Anne Marier, 36, all who have pleaded not guilty of multiple charges and all who are said to be from Caledonia.
Orlando said that, on the day the victim in the case turned 18, her boyfriend’s drug dealer took her to lunch and introduced her to several friends.
“They all discussed how they could work together,” said Orlando, indicating work was allocated for taking photos and arranging bookings, but it wasn’t apparent at the time they were talking about the sex trade. (The victim) thought they were talking about modeling.”
She said the 18-year-old was drawn into a romantic relationship with Campbell, despite their age difference, without knowing he was in a relationship with Marier.
At an upscale Cambridge hotel in September 2019, the victim was given crack cocaine and lingerie by Campbell, said Orlando, while Lucic took photos of her. The photos were made into online ads for sexual services.
After being left alone in the hotel for the night, the woman was told that men would arrive and she should “treat them like she would a boyfriend,” said Orlando.
She said cash was paid upfront, the victim was unable to leave the room without permission and was seeing eight to 10 clients a day, seven days a week unless she was menstruating.
Aside from some tips, Orlando said the young woman turned all the money over to the group after she was told it was being saved to buy a house for them all to share and in order to take a trip one day to Paris.
Court was told Hillock was to be the primary driver for the victim, transporting her to multiple hotels in various cities around Southern Ontario.
After several weeks of this, Campbell, who had professed love to the victim and who had been giving her crack cocaine and methamphetamine each day, began to withhold the drugs, court was told. When the victim tried to access Campbell’s drugs, he struck her and threatened to pistol-whip her with one of the guns she had seen in the house.
Orlando said Campbell made the victim provide her telephone passwords and he installed an app on her phone that would let him lock her out if she misbehaved. He also set up a secret camera in at least one hotel room without the victim’s knowledge.
She said the video of that kind of session will be presented as evidence in the trial.
When the victim complained that her “insides were killing her” from work, that Campbell was involved with Marier, and that the group referred to her as “the dog” in text messages, she moved away from the accused group, court was told.
Orlando said Campbell drew the victim back in early 2020, telling her things would be different.
She said Campbell dropped the young woman off at a motel in Guelph and new ads were posted online but, that night, she called police, who came and removed her from the motel.
On Wednesday, the trial began hearing from police officers who participated in a search warrant at a home in Caledonia, a large new house filled with new furniture, large exercise equipment, cellphones, electronic memory devices, drugs and several air-soft guns and ammunition . One gun was later qualified as an illegal weapon.
Carly Creor, 27, was also charged with human trafficking in the case but her charges have been severed from the rest of the group.
The trial continues Thursday.
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