In an interview for the series “Sensitive Cord” on Radio-Canada, Clémentine confided in her traumatic experience of sugar dating.
Money, gifts, travel, etc. The sugar baby phenomenon (“sugar babies” in French) attracts many young women in search of a comfortable financial situation. But behind all these gifts earned in exchange for sex, or not, lie dangers. What Clémentine, 19 at the time, experienced with a friend. The young Quebec woman confided in all transparency to Marie-Ève Tremblay, host of the series Sensitive rope, on the sexual exploitation of which she was the victim.
Amazed by the articles recounting the success stories of sugar babies Clémentine launched herself via the Seeking Arrangement website (“in search of an arrangement” in French.). This site boasts of being number 1 with 8 million sugar babies for 2 million sugar daddies. The platform connects sugar babies and rich men who want to know them. “You feel like somebody, until it gets out of hand, Clémentine told Radio-Canada. I was in a pimping and then prostitution ring for about a year. ” For her investigation, Marie-Ève Tremblay registered on the site and revealed that even if she checked the “platonic” box in the type of relationship, “the men who write to him do not necessarily take it into account” and sex always comes up in conversations. A fact that Clémentine also affirms.
Find out more: Sugar baby: On TikTok, young women share tips on how to get money from rich and old men
Rape and escort agency
Initially, Clémentine accompanied influential men to social events. She makes a lot of money and spends it on clothes and other pleasures. Except that the young woman quickly becomes disillusioned. “You, my bitch, are you going to have a bad quarter of an hour”, launches a sugar daddy predator at Clémentine. Then one day she is raped. “She doesn’t tell anyone about the rape she suffered. Even less denounces it to the police. She fears that she will not be believed, but she is also ashamed. She feels partly responsible, because she is is voluntarily registered on the site. It is she who took the risk “, tells the site of Radio-Canada. Traumatized, Clémentine does not stop and minimizes the crime. She continues to see other men. A sugar daddy offers to protect her, but she is actually recruited by an escort agency. The clients terrify her, threaten her to submit to all their violent demands. “I was asked to put knives in my vagina”, Clémentine testifies to Marie-Ève Tremblay. When I got there, I was afraid of being found, of being killed. ‘I’m going to rape your mother’, it came up often. ‘I’m going to kill your family.’
It is thanks to the intervention of her parents and the police that Clémentine is exfiltrated from the network and “taken care of by the agents who comfort her”.
“Several pimps may think of hiding behind the anonymity of these sites to try to recruit young girls. […] The majority of our files start this way “, explains Sylvain Dumouchel, commander of the Sexual Exploitation Section at the Police Department of the City of Montreal (SPVM) in the report.
For the past year, Clémentine has been followed by a psychologist and a sex therapist to return to a more or less normal life.