Sat, December 23, 2006
By CP
Edmonton Sun
OTTAWA — Prostitutes in Canada increasingly fear they’ll meet a violent end but they’re turning to each other, not the police, for protection.
Crimes against sex workers have become so prevalent, they are now “normalized,” says Wendy Babcock, spokesperson for Sex Professionals of Canada.
“It’s happening across the country,” agrees Lauren Casey, co-ordinator of a sex worker advocacy group, Canadian National Coalition of Experiential Women.
“The horrific things that are going on are targeted across the (sex worker) population. It’s almost like a hate crime.”
Casey says the recent “Ipswich Ripper” slayings of prostitutes in England have left some Canadian sex workers “absolutely horrified.”
But it’s not as though they don’t have plenty of gruesome examples closer to home of the potential dangers they face.
The trial of Robert Pickton, the alleged serial killer of 26 prostitutes in Vancouver, begins next month. The recent murder of a sex worker in Gatineau, Que., remains unsolved.
A 2006 Statistics Canada report found prostitutes are extremely vulnerable to violence which “often goes unnoticed.” From 1991 to 2004, the report said 171 female prostitutes were murdered and 45% of those homicides were unsolved.
A House of Commons sub-committee concluded earlier this month that the number of reported homicides among sex workers is “almost certainly lower than the real figures.”
Anecdotally, sex worker advocacy groups say violent crimes against prostitutes are on the rise.
“You can’t even really rely on the statistics (but) what’s happened over the years is that we know that there’s an increase in violence,” says Jeanne Rokosh, chair of the Halifax-based Stepping Stone program.
“We know that because this is what the men and women tell us, who we work with on a daily basis.”
The Toronto-based Sex Professionals of Canada runs a hot line for prostitutes to report assaults.
Executive director Valerie Scott says the hot line has been getting three to four calls a week for the past 18 months.
“But that’s not even an accurate reflection of incidents occurring every half hour,” Scott adds.
Yet while Scott’s switchboard is lighting up, a eerie silence envelopes similar “bad date” hot lines set up by the police in Toronto and Ottawa.
After launching a hot line in November, Ottawa police have yet to receive one call. Toronto police received 50 to 60 reports of violence against prostitutes in the last 18 months.
“That’s been the trend. Women have been hesitant to call,” says Det. Sgt. Mike Hamel of Toronto’s special victims unit.
Toronto’s hotline allows prostitutes to leave anonymous tips but that very anonymity makes it difficult to catch the perpetrators, Hamel adds.
Advocacy groups say sex workers are generally afraid to report violent incidents to the police.
“There isn’t a real history of reporting these sorts of things in our profession because everyone’s afraid that if they report a bad date to police, they themselves will be investigated,” says Scott.
Instead, prostitutes are trying to help each other stay out of harm’s way.
“If I go on a date, someone else has the phone number, address, everything,” says Babcock.
Scott’s group posts reports about bad tricks online and also circulates the information to shelters, drop-in centres and among street outreach workers.
Support groups in Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton, Victoria and Halifax publish “bad trick” lists.
This year’s list for Victoria’s Prostitutes Empowerment, Education and Resource Society includes incidents of strangulation, rape and assaults with a cleaver and a hammer.
But no amount of mutual support is likely to erase the fear that has become a constant in many prostitutes’ lives.
“Women are always afraid,” says former sex worker Tori Soso at a recent Ottawa commemoration for victims of violence in the sex trade.
“Some of them wonder if they will be the next one.”