After being lured into the sex trade, Maddison Fraser was beaten, tortured and sexually assaulted.
Her mother, Jennifer Holleman, said despite what some people might think, this could have happened to anyone.
Holleman spoke to a crowd of people on Thursday as the keynote speaker during the Lighting of the Tree of Hope ceremony at London's Victoria Park. The ceremony is part of the London Abused Women’s Centre's Shine the Light on Woman Abuse campaign.
In an interview with BlackburnNews.com, Holleman said her 19-year-old daughter left her home in Nova Scotia with a friend who had also been involved in a life of human trafficking. Holleman did not know this at the time but learned shortly thereafter.
"I'm not 100 per cent sure how she managed to get involved and I don't know if I will ever know," she said. "With the things that I found out, I don't think I'd want to know the rest."
Two years later, in July of 2015, Maddison was killed when the car she was in crashed in Edmonton. The car was being driven by an impaired man, who was believed to have been a john.
"It's very heartbreaking when you have to know that your child endured the things that she did. And I think she was trying to get herself away from that lifestyle before she died, and I only say that because of the things I found on her phone," said Holleman.
She said the phone was the sole possession of her daughter's that survived the crash, and it was unlocked.
"I had access to absolutely everything on her phone," she said. "I could see the men who were messaging her, I could see the conversation she was having with the man who was driving the car the night she was killed, so I knew that the man who was driving the vehicle was actually a john. I know that for a fact."
However, the most heartwrenching thing Holleman found on her daughter's phone was an audio recording that detailed how she had been severely beaten and tortured by multiple men. The incident put Maddison in the hospital for four days.
"[They] took her out to a range road in Alberta and they set her hair on fire, they burnt her with cigarettes, they burnt her with lighters. In her voice message, she didn't say she was sexually assaulted, but I did end up getting the medical records from the Grand Praire hospital that she was sexually assaulted multiple times," said Holleman. "And then they beat her. They stole everything that she had that was worth any money and they dumped her out in front of the hotel she was staying at."
Finding out what had become of her daughter following her death, Holleman said her anger and frustration consumed her.
"I was furious and I still am furious," she said. "It was killing everything in me and around me... Anything I sat on, whether it be laying in bed or sitting on the couch or the chair, I just wanted it to swallow me whole and never spit me out. It was horrible, you feel like a failure as a parent."
But Maddison wasn't raised in foster care or in a broken home. She went on vacations and liked to ski. Maddison was a normal girl who was very athletic, and she even followed in her mother's footsteps by boxing competitively.
In 2008, Maddison, at 15 years old, won her first of two national boxing championships.
"She went out there and she knocked the [crap] out of this girl and they blew the whistle, and [Maddison] flew five feet off the ground, jumped up in the air and ran back to the corner," said Holleman. "It was probably one of the most amazing days I've ever had with her, and I will never forget it... she was amazing."
Holleman said she wants everyone to know that what happened to Maddison can happen anytime, anywhere, to anyone, regardless of social or economic status.
"You have to be aware and I think awareness is the key. And that's why I decided to share her story because I just felt it was important for people to know that it happens," she said. "You're not exempt just because you live in a big beautiful house in a beautiful subdivision or whatever the case may be."
On Thursday, Holleman said she was overwhelmed when she was approached by the London Abused Women’s Centre to speak at the tree lighting ceremony.
"I was very humbled that they chose Maddison to honour," she said. "They wanted, I think, to remember her for who she was as a person."
Shine the Light, a London-born initiative aimed at casting a spotlight on the issue of men’s violence against women, sees dozens of buildings and monuments throughout the city and country bathed in purple light for the month of November. Last year it went international, with groups in Australia and Sweden adopting it. The colour purple is a symbol of courage, survival, and honour.
The Shine the Light campaign was launched on October 19 and is in its ninth year.