Warning: This story contains disturbing content. B.C.’s Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner has ordered an investigation into a former high-ranking Vancouver police officer for allegations of discreditable conduct, CTV News has learned. The investigation was launched after a complaint from a former sex trafficking survivor. In an exclusive interview with CTV News, the survivor explained how she was lured into a seedy world that she alleges led to an encounter with Jim Fisher, a former detective with the Vancouver Police Department. The woman, who we are only identifying as “Yulia,” said she found a job at a Vancouver club as an exotic dancer in 2008, while financially struggling as a university student. “I had no drug problem, right, so if I made $400 a night off of dancing, just dancing for people, that was really good,” she said. But Yulia said she was soon lured and coerced by a so-called “boyfriend,” who quickly became her trafficker. “If I didn’t give him $1,000 a day… I’d get beaten. Well, he never had to beat me because I was so terrified,” she recalled. It was during this period that Yulia got a booking request that led to an experience she has never forgotten. “It was like a direct trafficker reference site. If you came from this site, it was like saying…a trafficker gave me your info directly. This is not coming off Craigslist,” she explained. In emails she shared with CTV News, a man named Steve asks if she’s interested in a “very tasteful but erotic” photoshoot with another woman. “The first thing he said in the line of the email was… ‘This is not a request for sexual services,’” Yulia said. In another email, Steve lays out the scenario for the photoshoot, but again writes, “This does not lead to sex of course…” But Yulia said the emails were a lie. “When I got there, it wasn’t a photoshoot at all. There was a bed set up in the front entry as soon as I opened the door… a mattress on the floor with sex toys laying on it,” she said. “I was instructed by the man to perform sex acts on the woman.” Feeling afraid and trapped, Yulia said she complied. “He was obviously in charge, and I had no transportation. I had a trafficker on the other end waiting for my money or else I got beat and I dissociated at that point,” she said. Yulia said even when the other woman stopped the interaction, Steve continued to take pictures of Yulia. When it was over, she said Steve drove her back to Vancouver As they were going over the Oak Street Bridge, Yulia said, Steve identified himself as a detective and claimed to be with the RCMP. Yulia said he told her others in law enforcement “have a sex and swingers club,” and “they all do this.” “I’m terrified on that bridge. Like I say, my brain broke, he broke my brain on that bridge and I’ve never been the same. Because what he was telling me, was that all of the police will exploit you and harm you the same way I just did to you. That’s the message I got. You can go nowhere for help,” she said. Yulia said that Steve knew she was being trafficked, but instead of helping her, he encouraged her to continue in her line of work. She said that summer, she saw the same car he drove following her, and a man inside photographing her. “It’s an unmistakable camera, would pop out and start taking pictures of me,” she said. Yulia eventually fled Canada and still lives outside the country. But in September of 2024, she said she summoned the courage to file a complaint with the VPD about her trafficker. And through a series of events, she also found herself talking about the encounter with Steve and eventually looking up stories online involving misconduct against sex workers by police. She said that was when she first saw a photo of disgraced former Vancouver police officer Jim Fisher. She said it’s the same man who she knew as Steve. “The picture of him…he’s like unmistakable,” she said. Fisher, who worked with sex trafficking victims, pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation and breach of trust in 2018. The victims were a teen girl and a young woman who were witnesses in the case. “They’re kids, and it made me mad that those girls had to go through that,” an emotional Yulia told CTV News. CTV News reached out to Fisher’s lawyer for comment, but did not receive a response. Fisher has not been criminally charged in connection with the allegations. Meanwhile, the investigation into Yulia’s complaint to the OPCC must be completed by a professional standards investigator with the VPD within six months. As for Yulia, she said breaking her silence is helping free her from her past. “I honestly don’t think I can survive if I stay silent any longer. The silence has a cost,” she said.
