A Rosedale couple's agency obtained a $1.5 million federal grant to rescue women from prostitution in Toronto. A Star investigation reveals the agency's taxpayer-funded project appears to be a sham - no prostitutes, no programs.

Unbeknownst to a group of 26 Toronto women, their innocent attendance last year at a "leadership and empowerment" event at a cafe led to their names being connected to a federal project with the stated mission to transition sex workers to a new life. The women all work in marketing, public relations, consulting and government.

"I was so angry to learn that my name was put forward as a prostitute," said one woman, part of the group identified by francophone non-profit La Passerelle I.D.E. to be in danger. She holds a senior marketing job in Toronto.

La Passerelle is the Toronto-based francophone agency that is in hot water over misusing thousands of dollars of sports and concert tickets. It is run by executive director Leonie Tchatat and her husband, Guy Taffo, the agency's accountant.

"I was furious," said another woman interviewed by the Star. She works in fundraising. "I am not a prostitute, it is unbelievable to me that this has happened."

The lawyer for La Passerelle, Peter Downard, said the anti-prostitution program is real and the program his clients are running will help young, immigrant francophone women escape from "informal prostitution," which he describes as entering into several intimate relationships "based on economic dependence."

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Women who unwittingly had their names included in the La Passerelle project rejected this description of the program by the Rosedale couple's lawyer. None of this was discussed at the cafe, they said, and none of it applies to them.

"That makes me even angrier," said another woman, who works in public relations. "None of us are prostitutes, not formal or informal."

The federal funding came from Public Safety Canada's Crime Prevention Action Fund and to date, $400,000 of the $1.5 million has been paid out to La Passerelle, which has not explained how the money was spent. Unlike other agencies in Canada that received a share of $20 million in funding, La Passerelle has no counsellors, no shelters, and as far as the Star can tell, no history in dealing with sex workers. Instead, La Passerelle's stated mission is to help francophone immigrants obtain employment, typically at bilingual call centres. Tchatat and Taffo are originally from Cameroon, where French and English are the official languages.

According to Public Safety Canada, it approved a grant request from La Passerelle in March 2017 to "develop and implement a transitioning and exiting program responsive to the needs of sex workers in this community." It was part of a major federal initiative to help sex workers, particularly between the ages of 12 and 17.

At some point - it is unclear when - La Passerelle told the government it was using the grant money to help women escape what it called "informal prostitution," which is different from the original description of the program on the government's website.

Downard, lawyer for Tchatat and Taffo, explained what La Passerelle is doing. He said it is serving "at risk, young, immigrant and racialized women" who are "marginalized and vulnerable persons." Downard (Tchatat and Taffo refused to answer questions) defined "informal prostitution" as a situation that "does not refer to the sale of sexual services per se, but rather the entering into of intimate relationships, and possibly simultaneous relationships, based on economic dependence."

The Star has interviewed six of the 26 women and also checked the work histories of all 26, and interviewed La Passerelle insiders who put the names of the women forward for a dinner meeting at Tchatat's suggestion. The Star is not making public the identities of the 26 women because it would be unfair to publicly connect them to a story about prostitution when they were innocent bystanders in this situation. The insiders are not being named because they fear economic retribution from Tchatat, who has strong connections in the francophone community.

La Passerelle has been awarded more than $5 million in federal, provincial and municipal government grants for various programs over the past three years, and thousands of dollars from several charities. The Star is investigating all of its programs.

La Passerelle has been banned from receiving more sports and concert tickets targeted to needy children after the Star revealed that thousands of dollars of concert and sports tickets - Toronto Raptors, Toronto FC, Blue Jays and concerts including Justin Timberlake and Taylor Swift - had been used by adults affiliated with the non-profit, including friends, Tchatat and Taffo, and their family. Tchatat and Taffo live in Rosedale, lease a Muskoka cottage for six months of the year, and have property in Cameroon.

This story is about La Passerelle's anti-prostitution project and how it came to be.

Every year in Canada, thousands of organizations apply for government grants to operate programs. Tchatat and her agency have become adept at the application process and in preparing reports for the ministries and departments that advance the money. Tchatat has a consultant she pays $1,000 a day to prepare reports on some of the La Passerelle projects. The consultant told the Star Friday that she did not work on the anti-prostitution project, but has worked on other projects.

With prostitution and human trafficking a major problem across Canada, the previous Conservative government's crime prevention initiative announced a multimillion dollar program called "Measures to Support Exiting Prostitution" in 2012. Groups across Canada were invited to apply, with the funding call ending in January 2015 and the focus on youth aged 12-17. Numerous groups were selected, typically groups that dealt with issues of prostitution. For example, a grant went to the Elizabeth Fry Society, a well-known group that provides transitional residence and community support for women who are, have been or are at risk of being in conflict with law.

A grant of $1,500,474 from this program was awarded to La Passerelle in March 2017 and a description on Public Safety Canada's website clearly states that it is to "develop and implement a transitioning and exiting program responsive to the needs of sex workers in this community."

Insiders at La Passerelle say that executive director Tchatat directed people to create a program she called "Sans Visage." In English, that means "Without a Face." Insiders say Tchatat did not want to use the word "prostitution" or make any references to the sex trade. Promotional material for the program makes no reference to prostitution, formal or informal.

At some point in 2017, the concept of the program changed from what the federal government was funding. Insiders say that La Passerelle, which has no experience dealing with sex workers (La Passerelle's stated mission is to help francophone immigrants get jobs), had no access to the sex trade. "Leonie could not find any prostitutes to save," said one insider at La Passerelle.

A Sans Visage dinner meeting was organized for May 17, 2018. Two women who worked at La Passerelle were asked to bring some of their friends to dinner at Marche Movenpick at Yonge and Wellington Sts. in downtown Toronto. The Star has interviewed those two women.

Between them, two La Passerelle staff came up with 26 of their friends. "Leonie told us this was an empowerment session for women. They were to get business training."

At the restaurant, each of the 26 women were handed a plastic dining card and told there was a limit to what they could spend.

"Leonie told us they could each spend $20 at Marche, maybe up to $25," said one organizer.

At their tables (or at a later coffee meeting) each of the 26 women were asked to fill out a form with their name, age, contact information, their work and educational experience, and "personal objectives." There is no reference in the form to any kind of prostitution.

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The women ate, chatted, and had two additional meetings, all in 2018. According to La Passerelle insiders, that is the full extent of the Sans Visage program. One of the women tasked with organizing Sans Visage said "I would say a maximum of $5,000 was spent on this program. Where the other money went, who knows?"

When the two women who Tchatat used to recruit their friends for Sans Visage learned about the program's true purpose, they say they felt sick.

"I feel terrible about this," said one of the women. "We put our friends in this without knowing. None of our friends are prostitutes."

By January of this year, word was spreading at La Passerelle's office suite at Yonge and Carlton Sts. that Sans Visage was actually supposed to be targeting prostitution, something that was not generally known prior to this.

That information made its way to a few of the 26 women, who became angry.

"I am just shaking," said one woman. "I went to the meeting because I had just moved to Toronto and I wanted to meet other French-speaking women. For me it was a networking event." She is an employment counsellor.

Two reports sent to the federal government last year by La Passerelle describe how the project is well underway with "implementation of a prevention program." The report also says Sans Visage is "establishing partnership agreements for program delivery and services." No specifics are provided in the government reports.

According to an insider who helped prepare the reports, "they are fake. The information in them is fake."

The Star has spoken to the Public Safety Canada department about Sans Visage. An official said that the government was provided (the official did not say when) with a description of the program, which the official passed on to the Star.

"Informal prostitution is a major social tragedy and an affront to the dignity of young girls/women in economic distress and marginalized by society. Informal prostitution can be practiced in different ways. First of all, young girls/women who practice informal prostitution do not define themselves as prostitutes because they do not solicit on the street. Moreover, their relationship with their partners is not always based on an exchange of money for sex. On the other hand, it is young girls/women who have relationships with one or more partners who could meet their multiple basic needs that they themselves are unable to meet, for example: buying clothes, food, paying rent, collecting money to help their families left behind in their country of origin, paying for a telephone, school supplies."

The federal official said La Passerelle is using a "broad spectrum in order to identify its participants."

One of the stipulations of the federal funding is that the agency that receives the grant hire an "independent assessor" to make sure the money is spent correctly. The assessor chosen by Tchatat for Sans Visage is a woman who has worked with Tchatat at La Passerelle's office in Paris, France. Asked about this by the Star, lawyer Downard said "there is nothing secret" about the selection of this individual as "independent assessor for Sans Visage" and he said the assessor is not involved in the day-to-day operations of La Passerelle or Sans Visage.

As to the future of the program funding, the federal official said any breach of the rules of the program could lead to action, including suspension of funding or termination of the funding.

The women who attended the Sans Visage dinner, and whose names are now associated with the anti-prostitution project, are concerned that their names are now on a list in Ottawa, describing them as prostitutes.

"I am shocked," said another woman, who works in public relations at a Toronto firm. "All I did was fill out a form with my information at dinner. Now I find out that I am somehow part of a prostitution project."

Lawyer Downard told the Star that none of the 26 women's names have been sent to the federal government. "La Passerelle provides statistical reports to the Government of Canada on the project but in fact has not disclosed to the funding agency the names of the women the project has served," Downard said in a letter to the Star. The federal official confirmed that they do not have names of people involved.

In the course of the Star's interviews about Sans Visage, some of the women said that in addition to attending the dinner meeting at Marche, they had been given tickets to Raptors events and concerts, including the Justin Timberlake concert in 2018. Insiders say the tickets came from Kids Up Front, which gave thousands of dollars of tickets to La Passerelle, to be used for children from low-income families, and has now stopped supplying it with tickets.

Kevin Donovan can be reached at 416-312-3503 or kdonovan@thestar.ca

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