Court document sheds light on B.C. human trafficker’s violent encounters with victims

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This article was published 18/04/2025 (343 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NEW WESTMINSTER – Court documents in the case of a violent B.C. human sex trafficker say police found graphic videos of beatings and sexual assaults on her phone. 

Jennifer Stephens pleaded guilty in January 2025 to 17 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.

An “admissions of fact” document entered into B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster, provided to The Canadian Press, says police in Langley started investigating human trafficking in February 2023, beginning with a phone number. 

The document says the phone number was linked to a 13-year-old girl who had been trafficked in B.C. and Alberta, whose services had been advertised on LeoList, an online escort platform. 

It says photographs on the website led them to begin surveilling a Langley hotel where Stephens’ victims lived and worked, and police later discovered videos on Stephens’ phone depicting her and her associates doling out violent beatings and at least one sexual assault. 

The document says Stephens boasted about having a Snapchat account with “500 clients” that she used by posting victims’ pictures, and detailed how she took a portion of victims’ earnings and had refused to sell the client list to other “pimps.” 

Langley RCMP announced in December 2023 that Stephens had been charged with more than a dozen offences stemming from a 911 call from a Langley gas station on the morning of March 7, 2023. 

Police said at the time that a gas station attendant called after an “injured, distressed adult female” came in asking for help, and the woman directed police to the nearby hotel where officers arrested Stephens and two associates.

Surrey RCMP received a call from out of province that same day reporting videos posted on Stephens’ Snapchat account that depicted a violent beating of one of her victims, who later told police that she’d been assaulted for several hours in the hotel room. 

The court document says police also found the 13-year-old victim in the hotel room, but “at the time they did not know her identity and she spat at an officer and refused to identify herself.” 

The document also outlines how Stephens tried to “re-establish” her sex trafficking operation a week after her arrest, complaining to an associate over text messages that police had “got” her and were trying to “harass a pimp.” 

 Stephens was charged with assault, but failed to appear in court that July, and she was arrested on a Canada-wide warrant on Dec. 7, 2023. 

She pleaded guilty to 17 charges in January 2025, and is set to be sentenced in B.C. Supreme Court later this year. 

Stephens’ defence lawyer Dale Melville did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 18, 2025.