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The list of 104 men caught in the York Regional Police underage prostitution sting includes many who one might refer to as "family men."
’Family men’ caught in child prostitution sting JEREMY GRIMALDI jgrimaldi@yrmg.com What are the backgrounds of the York Region men trying to hire girls as young as 13 for sex? The short answer is, they come from all walks of life. However, when one burrows
into the list of 104 men caught in the York Regional Police underage prostitution sting, it can be said that many are what one might refer to as "family men." "Almost all of these men were first offenders," said Susan Orlando, the Ministry of the Attorney General’s provincial co-ordinator
for the human-trafficking team. "Otherwise they had stable jobs and families and are not the type of people who usually you would see in the criminal justice system." The police agreed that these men did not fit the typical criminal profile.
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"Unfortunately, there was a lot of married men," said Det. Sgt. Thai Truong, who oversaw the four-year investigation dubbed Project Raphael. The operation is simple: men looking for a prostitute contact an
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l See MEN, page 2
NEWS
Home for mentally ill raises concerns in community KIM ZARZOUR kzarzour@yrmg.com York Region Community and Health Services is investigating The Newmarket Residence after tenants were reported wandering in apparent distress near Davis Drive and Warden Avenue. The investigation follows an incident Sunday evening when a driver said she nearly hit an elderly man walking on the highway. "He had no clue, he was just walking out onto the road. He was going to be smoked for sure," said Robynn Sniderman. Shaken, she helped move the man away from the busy road. "He was wearing pajamas. His entire backside, all the way down to his feet, was covered in dried feces." Speaking in broken English, the man told her he was hungry and was going to the market. When she entered the tree-bor-
Steve Somerville/Metroland
Jen Copeland manages the Esso/Country Style at Woodbine and Davis Drive. She has encountered residents that have wandered away from the nearby Newmarket Residence many times. dered property, she was surrounded by other residents begging her to bring them home.
In a nearby wooded area she saw a man, wet, muddy and looking dazed.
"I felt like I’d entered the zombie apocalypse. He kept falling down. Two other men were trying to pull him out and his hands were bleeding." She walked into the unlocked building and searched until she found an employee. "I said, ’I just pulled one of your residents off the road; he could have been killed. And there’s another one in the woods.’ "But she just laughed.I was appalled to see so many low-functioning residents with very high needs and zero supervision." Owner-operator Icilda Tate said there is supervision, "to a certain extent". Four staff were on duty at 5:30 pm., she said. The East Gwillimbury facility is listed online as an 82-bed community residence with 24-hour support and supervision for vulnerable adults with physical or cognitive impairments. Residents are free to come and
go as they please, Tate said. "They sign themselves out. And sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they just go.It’s not a lockdown facility." Many walk to the gas station or 404 plaza a few kilometres west on Davis Drive, she said, and some have been hit by cars. The two-lane highway has no sidewalks, just gravel shoulders. "They go missing, too.The police know this facility very well. We call them very often." YRP Const. Andy Pattenden confirmed, "we are aware of it and we attend regularly". Pattenden said most calls from the residence relate to "missing" reports - there were seven in 2016 and two so far in 2017 - but many more calls come from concerned citizens regarding people walking on Davis or trespassing in nearby stores. l See TENANTS, page 6
COMMUNITY
Local boy battles Batten disease TERESA LATCHFORD tlatchford@yrmg.com
Mike Barrett/Metroland
Neil Brochu, 11, is living with Batten disease. He, with the support of his dad, Mike, mom, Leah, and their beagle, Billie will travel to an Ohio hospital to have a shunt surgically inserted into his brain to receive an enzyme treatment.
When he was five years old, Newmarket’s Neil Brochu began experiencing seizures. His mother, Leah, and father, Mike, were told he had epilepsy, a diagnosis they accepted and managed with medication. That was until he suffered a seizure that was 16 minutes in length. "I began to notice things like he suddenly couldn’t ride a bike and he was tripping while walking," Leah said. "His teachers began to notice he wasn’t remembering lessons taught the day before and we thought there could be brain damage from the seizure." Neil was then sent to a neurologist for testing and blood was taken from both parents and sent
to Germany for genetic testing. Leah will never forget the day the doctor told her Neil, her only child, had Batten disease. "It didn’t register because I had never heard of it," she recalled. "We were told he had one in a million chance of getting it." Neil has the CLN2 strain, where children develop normally for the first few years of life and then at two years, development tends to slow down. Epilepsy is the first sign followed by unsteadiness on their feet, frequent falls and the gradual loss of skills such as walking, playing and speech. Vision begins to deteriorate until lost and most are completely dependent on their family and care givers for all their daily needs by the age of six. Neil, who is now 11, is still mo-
bile with the use of a walker and still able to attend school when well enough. "We didn’t have a lot of hope when we first learned what the disease was," she said. "But we began to hear about a treatment trial there was light." BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. has developed an enzyme-replacement therapy that has shown promising results in patients involved in the trial at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio. The FDA is reviewing the treatment April 27 and if approved, Neil will be headed to the United States. Neil and his family would have to stay in Ohio for six to eight months initially to have a port l See SUPPORT, page 2
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