Pickton Part Three

Yup - it's still on my mind. Woke up this morning thinking about it. What originally started bothering me about this issue was the fact that the families of the women are yelling about the way in which the police handled the case. I've heard that some of the families are, in fact, suing the Vancouver police, the RCMP and Pickton himself.

A woman doesn't become a drug addict and prostitute as a conscious life-style choice. You don't wake up one morning and think, "Gee, I think I'll take all kinds of mind and perception altering drugs until my head is melted and my body is wrecked, and in order to support this lifestyle, I'll sell my body on the street."

It's not a career choice. You don't see brothels recruiting at career days in high school, with the blessing of the administration, and slide presentations of what the houses are like, and what the long term benefits are, and how good the pension plan is. Moreover, street walkers, which all of the missing 70 are, are the lowest rung of the prostitution pecking order. If you do make a decision to sell your sexual favours for pay, then you aim high - what used to be called "courtesan" or call girl. Not someone walking the streets.

According to the people I've spoken to over the years, who work with these women, they end up here because it's the best of a really horrific set of choices. Either they hook to support their habit, or the establish the habit to blur the effects of the hooking. In either case, they end up on the downtown eastside of cities because their experiences to date convinces them they deserve to be nowhere else. Which usually means that the family was involved.

Don't get me wrong - I don't doubt that there are families out there who are loving and concerned, and are frantic to find out what happened to their daughter or mother or sister - and who weren't involved in the abuse that convinced these women they weren't good for anything else. But I beg leave to doubt that's true of all 70 women, and of all of the downtown eastside women. So . . .

Why are they stepping forward now? Why are they suing the city, the RCMP and Pickton himself? One mother reported that her daughter phoned and said she was quitting the life, she was getting on a bus the next day, and coming home. Her belongings arrived, she didn't. But she wasn't reported missing for over two years. Why? Her mother obviously believed her, from the media reports, so why did she wait two years to report her missing?

Most of the families blame either the women themselves (she was always wild, she always had troubles, she was never what you'd call a quiet, good girl types of comments) or their companions (she hung around with gangs, she got hooked up with drug users). Um, honestly - you don't just fall in with those types of people - you're attracted to them for reasons. If a young woman is hanging around with gang members, it's because she believes that she isn't any better than them. If she's hanging around with the dopers, it's because there's something about doing dope that attracts her. If she's wild and crazy, there's probably a reason for it - I know a lot of wild and crazy young women, and few of them are what I'd call at risk. Their wild & crazy is essentially healthy and they believe they deserve a decent life and decent treatment. The ones who are at risk inevitably have some abuse in their background, and don't believe they deserve anything good, and the two or three who have escaped drug abuse or more abuse or a downtown eastside life have family who either stopped the abuse and got the girl help, or found out about it and got her help.

So I ask again, and I don't have an answer for this - it just bothers me that in almost every case I've read about these women, the families are disclaiming any responsibility for the women's ending up where they ended up, and now they say they loved the girls, they cared about them - they give the impression of a loving, warm close family who's been hit by a lightening bolt. I don't buy it, I'm sorry. Lightning bolts do happen, but not this often! Especially when the families seem to want to profit over the way in which the case was handled, and by their daughters, mothers, sisters death. That is very disquieting.