Trisha Baptie is a settler living on the traditional homelands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations and a survivor of prostitution. Her sexual exploitation began when she was placed into foster care around the age of 13. Her 15-year journey in the sex industry would continue past her 18th birthday, when some would argue that she was now a “consenting adult” as if the previous years had no impact on her “choices''. She would exit in 2001 and, in 2007, her life took a drastic turn when the single mom became a citizen journalist who covered the trial of Canada’s most prolific serial killer who haunted the streets on which she was exploited and took the lives of some of her friends.

To start her impressive C.V., in 2008, Trisha won British Columbia’s Courage to Come Back Award for bringing to light many of the issues involved in the sex industry, some of which she faced along with some of the missing and murdered women and reported on.

In that same year, Trisha founded EVE (formerly Exploited Voices now Educating) which is an independent group made up of survivors that operates under a feminist model which maintains that prostitution is a form of male violence and the demand for paid sex should be analyzed while acknowledging prostitution is borne out of poverty, sexism, racism, colonialism, mental illness, addiction, the pornified culture in which we live, as well as other factors. 

As a representative for EVE, and alongside many other groups, Trisha testified and provided written submissions to Senate and Justice committees to support Bill-C36 that became Canada’s new prostitution laws called Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA). Over the years, EVE has partnered with other equality-seeking groups to form The Women’s Equality Coalition, which has intervened in Supreme Court cases whose decisions would affect the lives of women and girls.

You can find Trisha passionately discussing all these topics on a wide variety of platforms. She has done a TEDx talk and was featured in the National Film Board of Canada’s documentary, Buying Sex. She works with various levels of government around understanding and implementing PCEPA and on peripheral issues related to the sex trade. She is committed to public education and has spoken in a variety of settings including universities, high schools, faith based groups, NGO’s, and feminist groups. She has also been a part of several prostitution awareness campaigns; one being Buying Sex is NOT A Sport in the lead up to Vancouver hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics. She has been featured in a myriad of news stories, interviews, and short documentaries. She is a skilled keynote speaker at conferences and has helped with content for several books. Trisha was most recently an inaugural member of the International Survivors of Trafficking Advisory Council (ISTAC) which has 21 survivors from around the world and whose purpose is to assist the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) under the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in combating trafficking in human beings. While doing all of this, her heart is always working with women to reclaim and rebuild their lives as they leave or are already out of prostitution.

When she has a free moment, Trisha enjoys tea, sloths, orangutans, a good summer road trip, and will do anything to avoid the snow.

🔗 Her X/Twitter account