Strategies
Ongoing Support
2

A Clearer path.

“I’m leaving school. I’m on my way to the bridge. I’m going to kill myself.”

Amir was just 11 when he called a national support line, desperate to stop sexually explicit images of him from being circulated among friends and family.

The Toronto Police’s Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) Unit was investigating the man Amir had met online, but there wasn’t enough evidence to stop him. The humiliating images kept appearing. Each new image deepened Amir’s shame and humiliation.

Amir’s many visits to the hospital made it clear to VST’s Case Worker (embedded in the ICE Unit) that his feelings of shame often exceeded his ability to cope. 

When Amir left his elementary school and began walking toward the bridge, VST’s Case Worker found a map and identified a place to meet and talk.

The Case Worker was able to stop Amir from ending his life that day. Then the other shoe dropped.

What Amir hadn’t yet shared with his Worker, the police, or his mother was that his father was sexually assaulting him.

The man ICE was investigating had images of the assault and shared these images with Amir’s mother. That’s how she discovered her husband was sexually assaulting their adolescent son. 

When these images appeared, it felt as if their lives were falling apart right before their eyes.

VST’s Case Worker was there as Amir and his family walked those tentative steps through devastating upheaval and shame. They helped Amir’s mother:

  • Connect to culturally relevant, trauma-informed counselling services and an Arabic interpreter so she could communicate in her mother tongue and understand what her son was experiencing.
  • Connect to housing services so she and her son could exit the site of so much trauma.
  • Identify accessible legal services to secure a legal separation. 

Amir’s story illustrates how reporting child exploitation to the police is the start of a long, painful, usually non-linear journey involving many people.

VST Case Workers help make the path forward visible, navigable and possible for victims, their families and all those impacted by trauma and crime.