Cheryl Perera

Cheryl is creating the social and structural conditions for sexually exploited children and children-peers to design, develop and deliver self-empowerment programs, policies, and educational curriculum. By betting on young people to disrupt the structures of online and offline sexual exploitation of children, she builds resilience amongst children to protect their rights – and for adults to follow their lead.

Cheryl Perera is empowering children and youth to take action against the sexual exploitation of children (SEC) through preventative education, survivor empowerment, advocacy and mobilization for institutional reform and policy change. Her new idea shakes up traditional ‘child protection’ efforts by centering young people and encouraging them to take their place as changemakers on issues that involve them directly. Instead of the standard “doom and gloom” approach that focuses on the vulnerability of children in the fight against SEC, she uses the problem as an opportunity to nurture children’s rights and to support youth with transforming themselves and the world they are in.

Cheryl’s new idea decreases the number of vulnerable children that are accessible to predators. It is built on three core pillars: prevention education, capacity building, and advocacy partnerships. OneChild’s educational programming consists of motivational speaking and workshop tours – for and by youth – that sweep across high schools and elementary schools in Ontario — Canada’s largest province where there are the highest instances of SEC. OneChild’s programs are set to launch soon in other provinces as well. These activities close the knowledge gap and inspire students to take action. From there, motivated youth are engaged to receive changemaker training, where they obtain factsheets and toolkits for both in-person and digital action campaigns to run at their schools or other events. Those who choose to deepen their changemaker skillsets join the “Youth Advisory Squad”. These children receive bi-weekly mentorship and coaching in awareness-raising, public speaking, advocacy, and fundraising in their communities. Through this process young people transform their own lives with new leadership skills, confidence and capacities for resilience and self-protection of themselves and their peers. This is key as often the children most vulnerable to traffickers and child sex offenders suffer from mental health problems such as low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety.

Cheryl’s peer-to-peer approach builds capacity for children to be “buddies” with one another and to protect each other. Her new idea leverages the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which claims that all children are granted the right to be protected from all forms of sexual exploitation and to have a say in matters that affect them. She celebrates young people as social and political actors with expertise, creativity, intelligence, and tech savviness to determine solutions and guide other stakeholders in implementing solutions in solidarity. Her approach is grassroots, catalyzing non-formal child protection actors (such as peers, parents, and relevant industry allies) to act alongside formal actors (police, law makers, and social workers) in unique children-government and children-private sector collaborations. Cheryl’s aim is that the public’s knowledge on identifying and interfering with SEC is mainstreamed and that children, especially victims and survivors, are regularly incorporated in the development of legislation, policies, and programs to fight it. Thanks in part to OneChild’s resilient advocacy campaigns, the government of Ontario announced in 2022 its new Keeping Students Safe Policy. This policy, which is a first of its kind in the education sector in Canada, aims to ensure that all 72 school boards in the province create anti-sex trafficking protocols to keep learners safe.

Sexual exploitation of children (SEC) includes the sale and sex trafficking of children, online child sexual exploitation, and the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism. Children in all countries are at risk of trafficking and prostitution, as well as online dangers such as grooming, sextortion, and proliferation of child sexual abuse videos and images. These forms often overlap and can impact all children. However, certain groups of children are more at risk; Statistics Canada (2016) highlights that First Nation, Inuit, and Métis women and girls, youth in care, runaway and homeless youth, persons with disabilities, refugees and migrants, and LGBTQ2 persons are most vulnerable.

The scale of the problem is difficult to determine because of its clandestine nature and the fact that victims are often too frightened to report. The Canadian Centre for Child Protection’s tip platforms counted 2.4 million Canadians reporting to being sexually victimized as a child in a 2018 report. From police reported human trafficking in 2018, Statistics Canada highlights that most victims were women and girls (97%), and predominantly trafficked for sexual exploitation purposes. Half (45%) of these victims were between the ages of 18 and 24 and 28% were under the age of 18.

In terms of the perpetrators, Statistics Canada (2018) has identified that four in five (81%) people accused of human trafficking from 2009-2018 have been men. They also recorded 35% of Canadian sex traffickers or pimps were between 18-24 years old and 31% were 25 to 34 years old. Since 2009, two-thirds (68%) of police-reported human trafficking cases occured in Ontario. Perpetrators span racial, ethnic, and socio-economic demographics. The perpetrators may be pedophiles or perpetrators completely unknown to the victim, though most demand for SEC comes from individuals that children know and trust—they identify and leverage their victims’ vulnerabilities to create dependency. Expanding access to the Internet, mobile technology, and cheap travel make these crimes easier to commit; never has it been easier for perpetrators to contact children, share images and videos of their abuse, hide their profits, and carry out these criminal acts anonymously. SEC occurs at schools, parties, coffee shops, and shopping malls. Social media platforms have become hunting grounds, where someone often plays the role of a “Romeo” pimp to lure victims. Juvenile recruiters are often given the job of bringing in more minors.

The impact of SEC cannot be overstated. This crime is not only a violation of children’s human rights but poses lifetime trauma that continues to outpace laws and policies, the justice system, and child protection services. In the case of online sexual exploitation, a child can potentially be re-victimized millions of times, every time an image or video is watched, sent, or received. The crime compromises the physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being of the child, and can become generational, if left untreated.

Historically, this problem has largely been tackled through the prosecution of perpetrators and the protection of survivors. This includes disrupting criminal networks, holding criminals accountable, and securing justice for survivors through amendments to the legal system. The protection of children who have become victims of SEC largely includes palliative services for survivors. This stops survivors from becoming future abusers as well. While these interventions are critical, the lack of robust prevention tactics weakens the fight against SEC. In the past, there have been isolated prevention efforts, such as government and NGO awareness campaigns, but they have failed to reach the demographic most impacted – the children. On the occasion that they do reach children, they are often based on the normative framework of “protection”, which views children as helpless and needing supervision and assistance from adults. Children are only really given the option to "snitch" to the police or other adults about what they see amongst friends. These tactics fail to appreciate that children are the experts of their own experience and can be empowered to protect themselves and their peers.

It is during a trip to Sri Lanka in 2002 when she was 17 that Cheryl was exposed to the prevalence of child sex exploitation. When she returned home to Toronto, she started to share what she had learned with as many peers as possible. Traveling to many schools, she found that there were many motivated teenagers that were eager to help and make a difference to prevent SEC in Canada and beyond. This was a passion and an energy that Cheryl felt was worth tapping into. Through OneChild, Cheryl decreases the number of vulnerable children available to perpetrators through strategies that educate youths around prevention, capacity building, and advocacy partnerships with public and private entities.

OneChild’s primary access point for youth is through motivational speeches at school assemblies and classroom-based workshops. They engage young people through child and youth-friendly educational sessions, action-planning workshops, activist training, toolkits, action campaigns, and youth events and conferences. This is where young people learn how to look out for each other and themselves to eliminate the supply of potential SEC victims. OneChild covers themes such as recruitment tactics, vulnerable demographics, the scale and scope of the problem and its physical and digital dimensions. They also cover root contributors to child exploitation, such as mental health, gender inequity, social constructs, and media representation. Their intervention includes topics of well-being, healthy relationships, and finding self-worth as well as toxic masculinity and the objectification of women. OneChild’s action-planning workshops are tailored to explore the issue of SEC in great depth, while leveraging youth talents to develop collective plans to raise awareness on this issue to their peers and adults. OneChild partners with ARISE (Advocacy and Reclaiming Individuals involved in the Sex trade through Empowerment) Ministry to provide trauma counsellors at every intervention, as well as the Ontario Provincial Police. Determined to provide youth with the information they need to protect themselves and others, Cheryl is leaving no stone unturned. During one of OneChild’s school interventions, she invited a former sex trafficker to share his insights on which safeguard mechanisms were effective against SEC based on insider knowledge.

As of 2022, their prevention education has reached over 37,000 youth in 230 schools. Cheryl designed these speeches and workshops to be easy to deliver in front of young people, with the potential to have long lasting impact. Her 2021 survey data indicates that following their presentations, 89.9% of students claim that they now know how to spot a victim of SEC, 88.3% of students say that they now recognize the warning signs of SEC, and 55.8% of students feel prepared to take action against this issue.

While building broad awareness amongst youth through school outreach programs, OneChild nurtures their Youth Advisory Squad. This includes a group of extra passionate young people who demonstrate a need and desire to be an agent of change on the topic. These young people undergo a variety of different training opportunities with OneChild every two weeks so they can serve as speakers and ambassadors for the organization, as well as youth consultants for companies. They are equipped to close the knowledge gap with other stakeholders such as parents, teachers, social workers, corporations, and policymakers. OneChild facilitates opportunities for young people to participate in policy dialogues to call for more effective child protection policies. One of their first advocacy partnerships was with Air Canada Airlines in 2005. OneChild youth developed an inflight awareness campaign to address the issue of SEC in travel and tourism. This campaign reached over 22 million people and Air Canada later implemented compulsory training for flight crew members and Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s in-flight security officers to support trafficking survivors during their flight home after rescue. Not only did this campaign influence other airlines to join in, but it enabled a larger campaign aimed at ending sex trafficking in the travel and tourism industry through the involvement of airports, travel agencies, governments, consulates, and embassies. In 2021, Cheryl launched a campaign with Canadian known survivor, Tímea Nagy, to rally tween brands such as Garage Clothing, in a new pledge to stop using sexualized images as part of their marketing strategies for young people. In 2022, OneChild established a partnership with Meta to create a new tool that would allow youth to permanently remove inappropriate photos of themselves on Meta social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. With the ever-growing pace of social media, this partnership is setting the precedent for new software development to uphold cyber safety for kids.

Altogether, as of 2022, OneChild’s work has impacted over 106,000 at-risk children, child survivors, parents, teachers, social workers, NGO workers, and law enforcement staff through prevention education, advocacy, and survivor empowerment. What is notable is that much of OneChild’s impact between 2005 and 2018 was solely produced through the efforts of young volunteers. In 2018, OneChild hit a point of inflection when it successfully fundraised to start paying staff salaries and to bring on Cheryl full-time. In 2022, OneChild continued this growth and secured key funding partnerships with the Ontario government, the federal government, Meta, and religious groups.

Through relationship building with different members of parliament, OneChild is fostering the conditions for child-adult partnerships. With the ear of politicians, Cheryl is creating space and support for OneChild’s movement of young people to petition for and request formal meetings with MPs to share their recommendations to fight SEC. In 2021, she locked in a partnership with the Peel Region of Greater Toronto’s Strategy around human trafficking. Peel region has the highest rate of human trafficking in the Greater Toronto Area and where 70% of victims identified by the police are under the age of 25. OneChild’s programming was deployed to fulfil their prevention pillar. In 2023, with the support of other community organizations, Peel police launched Canada’s first anti-human trafficking program for its force and 2,200 officers will soon receive formal training to support survivors.

OneChild and their Youth Advisory Squad are seeking more value-aligned corporate and government sponsorships to scale their in-school program to other underserved parts of Ontario (where two-thirds of the cases exist in Canada), and other provinces in Canada. They are targeting the provincial Ministries of Education, Ministries of Children, Community and Social Services, and Anti-Trafficking Coordination Offices to demonstrate how OneChild’s ‘Break the Chains’ school programing and youth-led partnerships prevents child sex trafficking and advances provincial curriculum objectives. Crucial progress was made in 2022 with the new Keeping Students Safe Policy, a policy that OneChild has been advocating for 10 years. A first of its kind in Canada, this policy will ensure that every school board in Ontario has a plan in place to protect students from sexual exploitation and empower school communities to play a key role in fighting sex trafficking. As of 2022, OneChild had formal partnerships with 14 school boards in Ontario, including the Toronto District Board which is the largest in Canada and third largest in North America serving nearly 600 schools.

Internationally, OneChild is planning to join ECPAT, a worldwide network of over 100 organizations working to end SEC so that they can share knowledge and resources for prevention as well as build their growing movement of young people and adult allies. With men and boys representing key levers of change, Cheryl has also initiated discussions with White Ribbon – the world’s largest movement of men and boys working to end violence against women and girls. Since perpetrators of SEC are mostly men, changing the way boys see themselves and treat girls is an important lever for system change. Together, these strategies are putting Cheryl on track to her end goal, which is to build young people’s capacity to protect themselves and their peers in the fight against SEC—and to be advocates for the change they wish to see.

In 2001, at age 16, Cheryl learned about the child sex trade, while researching for a high school project. She recalls being filled with anger that children her age and younger were being exploited in such a heinous way, and she resolved to stop it. Realizing that her native country, Sri Lanka was considered a “pedophile’s paradise” with 40,000 sexually exploited children, she decided at 17 to organize a solo, 3.5-month, fact-finding mission to Sri Lanka. She wanted to consult child victims, social workers, NGO workers, law enforcement, and government officials to get an insider’s look into the child sex trade.

When she arrived in Sri Lanka, she managed to partner with the National Child Protection Authority and convinced them to let her play the main role of the “decoy” – a sexually exploited teen in an undercover sting operation. The operation was successful and ended in the apprehension of a 40-year-old Canadian perpetrator and father of two. During her stay, Cheryl brought her experiences from meeting various stakeholders, as well as going undercover, to a meeting with the Advisor to the President of Sri Lanka on Social Infrastructure. At the conclusion of this meeting, the President offered Cheryl a placement at the Presidential Secretariat to serve as the President of Sri Lanka’s Nominee on Child Protection and was asked to assist them to build a children's parliament as well.

Upon her return home to Toronto, she wanted to share with other children what she had seen, heard, and experienced. Cheryl traveled from school to school, presenting to thousands of students and was met with motivated youth who were devastated to learn that their peers were being exploited and wanted to be a part of the solution. Looking to engage these students, Cheryl reached out to established NGOs explaining that she was a teenager with an army of teenagers eager to help. However, Cheryl’s emails were met largely unanswered. She grew frustrated with witnessing what felt like a waste of youth passion, intelligence, expertise, creativity, and talent on this critical issue.

In 2005 and at 19 years old, Cheryl founded OneChild with a group of friends and family members as an organization empowering a youth-led movement against the SEC, through education, advocacy, and empowerment. Her commitment was solidified in her early years, when she partnered with PREDA Foundation in the Philippines to construct a rehabilitation centre for rescued girls and with Action Pour Les Enfants to build a prevention education and training centre for law enforcement in Cambodia. Cheryl is a member of the Canadian Coalition of the Rights of a Child and is committed to using OneChild to empower young people to protect their rights. She was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 2018 for her work in harnessing the power of youth to combat SEC.