TMU launches Canada’s first master’s degree in combating child sex trafficking and online child sexual exploitation

Toronto Metropolitan University is launching Canada’s first Master of Health Sciences (MHSc) in Combating Child Sex Trafficking and Online Child Sexual Exploitation. Developed by the Faculty of Community Services, it begins in Fall 2027, and applications open on December 1, 2026. 

The program meets an urgent need for education that equips professionals to combat child sex trafficking (CST) and online child sexual exploitation (OCSE) as a children’s rights issue and a global public health crisis.  

The new degree grew from the ongoing work of Associate Dean Jennifer Martin, who has been at the research forefront in this area for over 15 years. She emphasizes that achieving the needed impact requires not only specialized knowledge, but also a deliberate focus on supporting the frontline professionals who carry out this demanding work.

“Foundational to the program is a consistent focus on the health and wellbeing of professionals and practitioners working in these critical areas, “says Martin. “In order to have longevity in these careers, development of health and wellness strategies must be prioritized while training in this field.”

Traditional educational approaches inadequate

“In our 21st century world, AI, social media, loneliness and disorientation are incredibly prevalent in the lives of children and youth,” says Kiaras Gharabaghi, interim program director and widely recognized authority on issues of child welfare and child protection. “Child sex trafficking and online exploitation demonstrate clearly how far more complex their world has become.”

Governments and large institutions are investing in programs, services and specialized units, but they face significant challenges due to the transnational, multisectoral nature of the crimes and their intersecting impacts. Notably, ad-hoc responses, siloed rather than systemic approaches, and interventions often uninformed by trauma care and survivor voices.

According to Gharabaghi, universities have streamed students into entirely different directions to learn about technology, social work, journalism, or law — all fields that regularly interface with  sexual crimes against children. But this very approach has created an opening for children and youth to be exploited.

“There’s currently no workforce equipped to respond to CST and OCSE across all these different sectors,” he says. “If we’re to undo the enormous fragmentation that we’re now witnessing in these responses, we need professionals who are trained in transdisciplinary ways to engage effectively in interprofessional practices. This new degree is designed to enable precisely that.”

Education fully integrates academic and professional spheres

The new graduate degree was developed in collaboration with highly experienced anti-CST/OCSE leaders from the Government of Canada, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, survivor-led organizations, child welfare and child and youth mental health organizations, and others within a highly specialized network of the field, as well as in consultation with members of Indigenous and Black communities.

By design, the program’s delivery integrates knowledge and experience from community, professional, lived experience and academic spheres.

“This degree directly integrates front-line innovations across technology, clinical practice, policy, law and survivor leadership," Martin says, "ensuring that our approaches are continuously informed by multi-sector evidence.”

Students graduate prepared to join a uniquely equipped workforce, with the skills to develop prevention, detection, intervention and policy approaches that are evidence-based, cutting-edge in practice, and informed by trauma care, survivor voices and the specialized needs of populations most impacted by the crimes.

Gharabaghi notes that approximately 50% of all victims of child sexual exploitation in Canada are Indigenous.

“We cannot respond meaningfully to these horrific crimes without engaging Indigenous ways of knowing and being, as well as technology, law, a commitment to survivor-driven interventions, and even a focus on how we narrate this complex issue in journalism, or use financial institutions to track offenders,” says Gharabaghi. “Now is the time for a graduate degree that engages decolonizing methods and ways of knowing and that helps students learn at the intersection of the full complexity of our world.”

“These forms of exploitation reflect deep-rooted social inequities and the realities of today’s political economy,” says Annette Bailey, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Internationalization. “We have a collective responsibility to protect children and build a more equitable future. We’re doing this now by making these issues central to graduate education.”