P.A.C.E. Society - Research on Violence Against Women in Vancouver

Prostitution Alternatives Counselling Education
P.O. box 73537

1014 Robson St.

Vancouver, B.C

V6E 1A7
Tel: (604) 872-7651 Cel: (604)786-5437 fax: (604) 872-7508

Toll free: 1-866-872-8751

Email: pacekids@vcn.bc.ca

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
IN VANCOUVER'S
STREET LEVEL SEX TRADE
AND THE POLICE RESPONSE
Developed and written
for PACE Society:

Leonard Cler-Cunningham

in conjunction with

Christine Christensen - B.A.

Funded by:
Ministry Of Status For Women
With Assistance from BC Ministry of the Attoney General
and BC Ministry of Women's Equality

^{Disclamer:

The views expressed are those of the authors.}

For copies of the full 116 page report
please contact us.pacekids@vcn.bc.ca

FORWARD

PACE Society, since its inception, has driven the movement toward systemic change in social attitudes, treatment, and the condition with which women and children who are trapped in cycles of sexual exchange are forced to live. The ability to involve our client-base has lead to success in governance, service provision, research and social empowerment.

The former sex workers that founded PACE Society were committing to eliminating the conditions of rape, mutilation, assault, and death. All those who have taken up this challenge are also faced with political unpopularity, frustration, ridicule, and the realities that the general lack of resources and community support afford them.

We hope that abolitionists will draw from the findings in this report and realize that the war on sex buyers has only added to the disempowerment of sex workers through victimization. Enforcement methodology is extinct, and has solved the problem. In actuality, ‘shame the johns’ campaigns have been harmful to our population by shifting the focus away from violence and issues of economic security for women.

We hope that this research will give a clearer picture of the rates of violence faced by the sellers of sex, and highlight the lack of coordinated efforts to reduce these numbers.

We hope that the voices of sex workers will not be silenced but included in the agendas of women’s equality groups that are directed towards egalitarianism.

We hope for the inclusion of all genders in this plight; we do not believe we must exclude men to include women and the transgendered.

On behalf of PACE Society we would like to honor the over 200 sex workers that were able to give input into this research. Additionally we would like to thank Paige Latin, our founder, for her vision and personal sacrifice, Leonard Cler-Cunningham for his efforts in bringing this project to fruition, and the staff, Board of Directors and volunteers at PACE Society who dedicate their time to the fulfillment of our mandate that calls for “harm reduction and the abolition of conditions that lead to prostitution”. We would also like to thank Status of Women for their contribution and support of this project.

Raven R. Bowen
Projects Coordinator

EXCUTIVE SUMMARY

The reality for a woman offering sex for sale on the streets of Vancouver is that she can be murdered and there’s little chance that anyone will be prosecuted. She can be raped knowing that the police will likely not protect her. She can be chased from neighborhood to neighborhood as the purveyor of disease, destroyer of families, or a brainwashed victim to be rescued from the ravages of patriarchy. Endless reports have found that the non-profit agencies that should be helping her are often too busy squabbling amongst themselves rather than coordinating their efforts.

Residents feeling under siege, a rate of rape and assault that would shame third world nations, an expanding list of murdered and missing women, and an international embarrassment of infectious disease transmission rates are the consequences of misguided laws and ill thought out social policies.

Four years ago the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver was declared a medical health disaster with the highest reported HIV/HEPC infection rates in the Western world and the subsequent $3 million spent on HIV prevention services is accepted as having had little or no impact.

Over 4700 injection drug users (IDUs) are estimated to live in the area and, until a recent drop, overdose deaths outstripped all other North American cities. Research in Vancouver indicates that 80% of female IDUs report being active in the sex trade, and this population accounts for one the highest percentage increases of new HIV infections in Canada.

A report released last month by British Columbia Centre for Excellence in H1V/AIDs established that Vancouver is the only city in the developed world where the HIV infection rate among female injection drug users far outstrips that of men - a consequence ascribed to our street level sex trade conditions.

The law in Canada was created in 1984, and it’s important to remember that while prostitution is legal in Canada, the bawdy house portion makes it against the law to buy or sell sex in off-street settings and the communicating section does the same for the buying or selling of sex in public.

It is our opinion that this system of quasi-criminalization bears a direct responsibility for the violent conditions suffered by women in Vancouver’s street level sex trade.

A Vancouver newspaper has identified that since 1989 at least 35 sex workers have been slain. If one included information from Vice Unit files and RCMP (Canadian police agencies) data the number increases to 60 murdered sex workers since January 1982-- the majority of their murders remain unsolved (Lowman and Fraser).

In 1994 Paige Latin brought together former sex workers and their allies committed to doing something about the lack of relevant services and founded Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education (PACE) Society. With a mandatory minimum representation of 1/3 former or current sex workers on their board of directors, PACE presciently recognized the limitations of agencies relying on top-down programs developed by ‘experts’ opting to embrace innovative bottom-up peer-based programs.

Within 7 years, and no support from the City, PACE began to garner recognition. An independent evaluation of the Ministry of Children and Families’ Vancouver Action Plan on Sexually Exploited Youth called for immediate expansion of their outreach and advocacy program targeting youth in the survival sex trade.

In a national report on the sex trade their innovative method for working with resident groups and neighborhood police was recognized as model for dealing with the impact of sex workers on residential neighborhoods. The Mount Pleasant community, a residential neighborhood in which they are based, appreciated their contribution enough to give them the service agency of the year award (1998).

In Vancouver violence against street-level sex trade workers has long been accepted as pervasive. We wanted to gain a better understanding of the conditions under which this violence occurs. Who is it committing these violent acts? What is being done about the violence? Why is this level of violence allowed to continue? How was this allowed to happen?

We were looking for a new model of doing research that could respond to the issue of violence - one that was propelled by the needs of the women and not the researchers desire to collect data.

We chose to investigate rates of eight different violent acts, based upon Canadian Criminal Code definitions, and three (for the purposes of this paper) non-violent categories — harassment, robbery, and refusal to wear a condom. In an attempt to gauge the gulf between acts of violence suffered and acts of violence reported we also explored police response from the point of view of the women.

Our sample size was 183 and data collection took place over two years making the information collected fairly reflective of conditions.

Our youngest contributor was 15 and the oldest was 51. In an industry where youth is a commodity it’s not surprising that over half were 24 and under. The average age was 25.9 years old.

Almost a third of our sample has been working in the sex trade for less than 2 years. 13.8% started in the sex trade before they were even teenagers and a full 70% of our sample began before they were old enough to drink legally. The average age of entry into the sex trade was 16.98. There is an immense overrepresentation of Aboriginal women in the street level sex trade (31.1%). According to the 1996 Census data from Statistics Canada, Aboriginals (North American Indian, Metis, Inuit) constitute only 1.7% of Greater Vancouver’s population.

Almost three quarters of the women had left their parent’s or guardian’s home permanently at age 16 or younger. 62.4% don’t have a high school diploma and 10.2% had only a public school education. We found that 58.1% identified themselves as working to supply a drug habit. When asked if they had to give money to somebody to be able to work either on or off-street, the majority of women, over 80% of women on the street and over 70% of the women off-street, replied ‘no’. 89% reported that someone has refused to wear a condom within the past year.

Ultimately the goal was not to simply study the violence, but to use the information to hasten its end. Throughout this project former and current sex workers used the information to identify, develop and implement a variety of pro-active initiatives

On Monday April 26th 1999, over 35 youth from Vancouver who were, or had been, involved in the survival sex trade came together at the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood House. The focus group identified missing necessary services and’ called for immediate and easy to implement changes in the policy and practices of welfare, the police, and the Ministry of Children and Families’ Adolescent Services Unit.
Towards A Common Ground, is an opinion survey that was completed by over 500 Vancouver residents and business owners that attempted to discover what they agreed should be done in response to the sex trade: who should be allowed, where can it happen, what is acceptable, and what cannot be allowed to happen.
The PACE Health Network (PHN) is a two year peer driven demonstration project for women whose involvement in the sex trade is primarily to finance their injection drug habit (SWIDU). The PHN is an attempt to:

Identify and develop messages and strategies for HIV/AIDS/HEPC/STD prevention,
Staff and operate a SWIDU based needle distribution,
Develop and deliver prevention education/resource materials,
Have weekly board meetings & monthly general membership meetings,
Increase condom usage by SWIDUs, their partners and clients and
Assist with the development and implementation of improved reporting/tracking of HIV/AIDS/STDs in order to improve the potential effectiveness of treatments.

A Sex Trade Liaison Officer policy proposal presented to the Mayor and the Vancouver Police Board that might help lower the rape and assault rate of Street level sex workers by having an officer dedicated to this job.

This research looks at the saddeningly tragic complicity in creating an environment that has unwittingly encouraged this situation. A city that has continually demonstrated its refusal to discuss any substantive response to this issue, the pernicious influence of a small but vocal feminist minority that has suffused the entire debate on the sex trade and a law that even the Department of Justice has deemed “ineffective in terms of the reduction of Street prostitution and the aggravation experienced by members of the community”.

Leonard Cler-Cunningham, April 30/2001

The following shows a small sample of the data on violence that we collected.

This information is also available as a one page formatted table in a PDF file. Click here to download.

The free Adobe Acrobat Reader software is required to open a PDF file. Click Here (Will open in a new window).

                                                             Pct responding
                                                                  that this
      All percentages are expressed as a                        happened to
       valid pct(missing responses removed)                      them while
                                                             working on the
                                                                     street

      Been harassed                                                   83.1%
      Been robbed                                                     53.7%
      Been physically threatened                                      70.5%
      Been threatened with a weapon                                   44.5%
      Been physically assaulted                                       51.2%
      Been assaulted with a weapon                                    30.3%
      Been forced to have sex against their will                      45.8%
      Been forced to have sex against a weapon their will 
      with a involved                                                 40.7%
      Been kidnapped/confined                                         41.9%
      Been a victim of someone trying to kill them                    33.1%

                                                              Pct responding
                                                                 that it has
      All percentages are expressed as a                       happened more
       valid pct(missing responses removed)                 than once in the
                                                                   past year


      Been harassed                                                    85.1%
      Been robbed                                                      53.2%
      Been physically threatened                                       73.2%
      Been threatened with a weapon                                    60.3%
      Been physically assaulted                                        47.3%
      Been assaulted with a weapon                                     47.6%
      Been forced to have sex against their will                       56.7%
      Been forced to have sex against a weapon their will 
      with a involved                                                  38.8%
      Been kidnapped/confined                                          30.9%
      Been a victim of someone trying to kill them                     35.9%

                                                            Pct responding
                                                             that this has
      All percentages are expressed as a                       happened to
       valid pct(missing responses removed)                    them within
                                                              the past six
                                                                    months

      Been harassed                                                  73.2%
      Been robbed                                                    69.2%
      Been physically threatened                                     68.4%
      Been threatened with a weapon                                  66.1%
      Been physically assaulted                                      72.7%
      Been assaulted with a weapon                                   74.4%
      Been forced to have sex against their will                     68.2%
      Been forced to have sex against a weapon their will 
      with a involved                                                68.1%
      Been kidnapped/confined                                        72.0%
      Been a victim of someone trying to kill them                   59.5%

                                                                    Pct of
                                                              Dates/tricks
      All percentages are expressed as a                       reported as
       valid pct(missing responses removed)                          being
                                                               responsible
                                                            for these acts

      Been harassed                                                  96.4%
      Been robbed                                                   49.25%
      Been physically threatened                                     48.1%
      Been threatened with a weapon                                  35.4%
      Been physically assaulted                                      57.5%
      Been assaulted with a weapon                                   49.3%
      Been forced to have sex against their will                     BLANK
      Been forced to have sex against a weapon their will 
      with a involved                                                72.4%
      Been kidnapped/confined                                        67.8%
      Been a victim of someone trying to kill them                   63.8%

                                                               Pct that did
                                                             not report ANY
      All percentages are expressed as a                             of the
       valid pct(missing responses removed)                    instances to
                                                               the bad date
                                                                      sheet

      Been harassed                                                   54.7%
      Been robbed                                                     56.8%
      Been physically threatened                                      63.4%
      Been threatened with a weapon                                   59.5%
      Been physically assaulted                                       58.0%
      Been assaulted with a weapon                                    68.4%
      Been forced to have sex against their will                      60.5%
      Been forced to have sex against a weapon their will 
      with a involved                                                 63.8%
      Been kidnapped/confined                                         65.7%
      Been a victim of someone trying to kill them                    56.9%

                                                              Pct that did
                                                            not report ANY
      All percentages are expressed as a                            of the
       valid pct(missing responses removed)                   incidents to
                                                                the police


      Been harassed                                                  68.3%
      Been robbed                                                    74.7%
      Been physically threatened                                     77.9%
      Been threatened with a weapon                                  72.2%
      Been physically assaulted                                      75.6%
      Been assaulted with a weapon                                   77.6%
      Been forced to have sex against their will                     77.8%
      Been forced to have sex against a weapon their will 
      with a involved                                                72.1%
      Been kidnapped/confined                                        64.8%
      Been a victim of someone trying to kill them                   59.6%

                                                              Pct reporting
                                                            that no charges
      All percentages are expressed as a                     were ever laid
       valid pct(missing responses removed)                   in ANY of the
                                                                  instances


      Been harassed                                                   83.8%
      Been robbed                                                     89.8%
      Been physically threatened                                      90.1%
      Been threatened with a weapon                                   85.9%
      Been physically assaulted                                       91.6%
      Been assaulted with a weapon                                    89.8%
      Been forced to have sex against their will                      88.6%
      Been forced to have sex against a weapon their will 
      with a involved                                                 85.9%
      Been kidnapped/confined                                         82.8%
      Been a victim of someone trying to kill them                    78.9%

                                                              Pct reporting
                                                            that nobody was
      All percentages are expressed as a                     ever convicted
       valid pct(missing responses removed)                  in  ANY of the
                                                                  instances


      Been harassed                                                   93.8%
      Been robbed                                                     93.1%
      Been physically threatened                                      93.5%
      Been threatened with a weapon                                   88.4%
      Been physically assaulted                                       92.9%
      Been assaulted with a weapon                                    91.3%
      Been forced to have sex against their will                      94.3%
      Been forced to have sex against a weapon their will 
      with a involved                                                 86.2%
      Been kidnapped/confined                                         87.1%
      Been a victim of someone trying to kill them                    88.9%

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