A Canadian couple facing pimping charges in the Ottawa area are likely to have harsher charges of human trafficking added to their case, prosecutors said.

Laura Emerson, 28, faces 13 charges related to three 17-year-old girls who claimed they were held captive in an apartment and forced to use drugs and work as prostitutes for between five months and a year in Gatineau, Quebec, across the Ottawa River from the capital.

The charges include kidnapping, forcible confinement and procuring and living off the avails of prostitution, the Ottawa Citizen said. Her 33-year-old boyfriend also faces charges of sexual assault and being unlawfully at large.

In 2005, Canada amended its Criminal Code to make the recruitment, transporting, transferring, receipt, holding, concealment or harboring of a person for exploitive reasons an indictable offense with a possible sentence of life in prison, the report said.

At their first court appearance Thursday, defense lawyers asked for time to review evidence linked to the human trafficking charges, the Citizen said.

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