Vancouver police made a "disturbing" discovery during a raid of an apartment brothel one week ago.
Inside a suite at 909 Burrard St. investigators found a 17-year-old girl working as a prostitute along with two women, age 33 and 34.
"It's disturbing to us that there are juveniles and youths procured into these types of situations," said Vancouver police spokesperson Const. Lindsey Houghton. "And the type of situation being prostitution is especially disturbing."
The teenager, a home-stay student from China, is under Ministry of Children and Family Development care and could be deported.
Canada Border Services Agency is investigating if the other females, from Hong Kong and Taiwan, entered Canada legally.
Police received an anonymous tip in January that underage girls were working at the location and began an investigation, which eventually identified Xiao Jin Zhao, 44, as the alleged "keeper" of the women. Investigators believe Zhao recruited women through the Internet.
Zhao, who had no prior contact with police, is charged with keeping a common bawdy house, living on the avails of prostitution and procuring a person to be a prostitute.
Investigators believe there are no apparent links to gangs, organized crime or human trafficking rings.
Const. Houghton said similar operations could be found across every neighbourhood in the city.
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Sketch
- Reporter
- Dharm Makwana currently serves as a web editor at The Province, British Columbia's best read daily newspaper. For more than four years he wrote on issues affecting the Lower Mainland for the province's third largest daily newspaper Vancouver 24 hours. Before arriving in Vancouver in January 2007, Dharm won the John Lott Scholarship for outstanding journalism at Centennial College. Since then Dharm has developed an interest in municipal and provincial politics, crime and policing and social issues including immigration, prostitution and trafficking. He is currently working on a series of stories involving Vancouver's sex workers.
Wisdom
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-Bill Murray
-Bill Murray