Crown wants 13-year sentence for B.C. woman guilty of violent human sex trafficking

CAUTION: The following paragraphs contain graphic content some readers may find disturbing.

The videos played in court included a man being pistol-whipped by Stephens, a female victim being whipped by a curtain rod and another showing a man being sexually assaulted with the barrel of a gun.

Another video showed a man being forced to insert his tongue and genitals into a desk fan, and another depicting a topless female victim crawling along a floor and forced to eat dog food.

Another clip played for the court showed Stephens and her accomplice Michael Giroux terrorizing a woman in a bathtub, with Giroux stomping on her head and pouring a liquid over her.

An agreed statement of facts said the substance poured on the woman was bleach.

Giroux pleaded guilty to four charges in Surrey provincial court last year, including unlawful confinement, assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm.

The court also heard that Stephens and Giroux poured hot sauce into a trafficking victim’s eyes.

Rose read out the agreed statement of facts at the hearing, outlining Stephens’ violent, drug-fuelled abuse of sex workers, including a 13-year-old girl.

Stephens pleaded guilty in January last year to multiple charges, including assault causing bodily harm, unlawful confinement, sexual assault with a weapon and several other offences related to sex trafficking of a person under 18.

Police in Langley, B.C., started investigating the case in February 2023, beginning with a phone number that was linked to a 13-year-old girl who had been trafficked in Alberta and Kelowna, B.C.

The statement says services from the girl had been advertised on LeoList, an online escort platform.

It says photographs on the website led police to a Langley hotel where the victims lived and worked, and officers later discovered the videos on a phone.

The document says Stephens boasted about having a Snapchat account with “500 clients,” a list she said she refused to sell to other “pimps.”

Rose told the court that the case came together “very quickly,” moving to file “numerous” applications for search warrants after the call came in March 2023 from one of Stephens’ badly beaten victims.

The court heard that a pre-sentence report on Stephens showed that she has “minimized” her role in the offences, denied being the “mastermind” behind the trafficking operation and was using methamphetamine on a daily basis.

The sentencing hearing is scheduled for three days this week.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 8, 2026.

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press

Crown wants 13-year sentence for B.C. woman guilty of violent human sex trafficking

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