B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal today released 1,400-page report, entitled "Forsaken"
BY LORI CULBERT, VANCOUVER SUN DECEMBER 17, 2012
Women hug as Commissioner Wally Oppal delivers the final report of the Missing Women Inquiry in Vancouver, Monday, Dec.17, 2012.
Photograph by: THE CANADIAN PRESS, Jonathan Hayward
Karin Joesbury wipes away tears when asked whether the 1,448-page report into Vancouver’s missing women case could make a difference in the future for vulnerable women like her daughter Andrea.
“I hoped it would change things. I hope that it does, I really do,” said Joesbury, whose daughter is one of the six women serial killer Robert (Willy) Pickton has been convicted of murdering.
“But I feel like we spent a lot of money, maybe wasted money.”
The report released Monday comes more than two years after an $8-million inquiry was struck to examine the missing women case, and more than a decade since Pickton’s arrest.
Former attorney general Wally Oppal, head of the inquiry, put 65 recommendations in his voluminous report, many of them calls for changes that have been discussed publicly over the years.
Oppal hopes that listing the recommendations together in the hefty document will prompt policy-makers to act.
He also believes the climate is right in B.C. to make some of the changes, such as bringing in regionalized policing and improving the treatment of vulnerable women.
Oppal, a former B.C. Appeal Court justice, said his review of the investigation evidence led him to the conclusion “that there was systemic bias by the police in the missing women investigation.”
“They did not receive equal treatment from police. As a group they were dismissed.”
Some relatives of the missing women, who felt ignored by police, let down by the justice system, and left out of Oppal’s inquiry, aren’t convinced vulnerable women will be safer as a result of the report.
“I think today has been a total sham, just like the whole inquiry has been,” said Angel Wolfe, 19, whose mother Brenda was another of Pickton’s victims. “We need to have the RCMP and VPD be accountable for the jobs they did.
“Nothing Wally Oppal or the police can say to me will bring my mom back.”
But Sandra Gagnon, who recalls not always being treated well by police when her sister Janet Henry disappeared, was buoyed by the report.
“I’m really glad that he took it seriously, that he spoke well of the families and what the families have been through,” said Gagnon, who at one point during the press conference hushed other victims’ relatives because she wanted to hear Oppal.
“I could tell that he’s really sincere and I’m glad something came of the inquiry, even though people say there isn’t going to be money for everything (all the recommendations).”
And Ernie Crey, whose sister Dawn vanished from the Downtown Eastside, said in an interview that Oppal’s report “exceeded his expectations” because it was an encyclopedic recount of how police “fell short of the mark” while investigating and how some officers failed to treat families with dignity and respect.
“I couldn’t find a single recommendation that I would have an exception to,” said Crey, whose sister’s DNA was found on Pickton’s farm. “For me, it was a good day — more than I had expected.”
The inquiry heard from 85 witnesses over 93 days and collected 150,000 pages of evidence, as it examined why it took so long for the Vancouver police and RCMP to identify Pickton as a serial killer, despite warnings he was preying on sex workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
The provincial government has already addressed several of Oppal’s wide-ranging recommendations, including appointing former lieutenant-governor Steven Point as a “champion” to implement the findings.
But Point faces a significant task, as some of the recommendations have been discussed without being acted on for years. These include regionalized policing and bus service along B.C.’s isolated Highway 16, where many women have disappeared.
Others, such as increased sensitivity training and changes in how missing person cases are investigated, will require buy-in from police,
Still others will cost money, such as a 24-hour drop-in centre in the Downtown Eastside and a compensation fund for the children of the missing women. That recommendation appealed to Cynthia Cardinal, whose sister Georgina Papin was one of Pickton’s victims.
“Georgina’s kids — she’s got seven of them, they don’t have any support — except from us,” said Cardinal, who was devastated by the police response in her sister’s case, and isn’t confident things will change.
Oppal wrote the VPD had an obligation to warn women in the Downtown Eastside about the danger they were in, “and utterly failed to do so.”
The police investigations were also “wholly inadequate” when following up tips, were “plagued by unacceptable delays,” and failed to properly use techniques such as surveillance, undercover operations, search warrants and forensic evidence, the report said.
It concluded the VPD showed a lack of urgency in responding to the mounting numbers of missing women, partly because police failed to “get to know” the victims and believed inaccurate information, such as that they would “turn up” one day.
Since Clifford Olson’s killing spree decades ago, there have been multiple calls for a regional force in the Lower Mainland, which is policed by a patchwork quilt of municipal agencies and RCMP detachments. Pickton’s victims disappeared from the VPD’s territory, but he did his killing at his home in Port Coquitlam, which is policed by the RCMP.
Oppal’s report said there was a “general systemic failure” by the two agencies to deal with those cross-jurisdictional issues. This fragmentation of policing led to “serious communications failures,” a breakdown in evidence sharing, and a lack of funding because of the low priority given to the case, the report said.
As well, he said, the case lacked any leadership by any police agency.“No senior management at the VPD, RCMP E Division Major Crime Section, Coquitlam RCMP, or Provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit took on this leadership role and asserted ongoing responsibility for the case.”
There was a “wholly unacceptable delay,” Oppal added, in finally forming a joint-forces task force in 2001; by then an estimated 60 women had disappeared from the Downtown Eastside over about 20 years.
Deputy RCMP Commissioner Craig Callens said in a statement that he welcomed Oppal’s report, but would need time to review the recommendations.
Vancouver police would not comment Monday.
Minister of Justice Shirley Bond argued police agencies are more integrated today, but said the call for regional policing “will be treated seriously and given the attention it deserves.”
Oppal said not all the mistakes in the case belong to police, noting there were other systemic issues that led to the victims ending up on the street, including poverty, racism, drug addiction and a lack of affordable housing.
“Even though Pickton is in jail, the violence against women in the Downtown Eastside and other areas of this province continues. It is time to stop the violence,” Oppal said.
Families in the audience broke out in applause, and one woman yelled, “Amen!”
However, Oppal was regularly interrupted by family members yelling “hogwash” and “sham,” as the majority appeared to have given up hope that the report would speak for them.
The inquiry itself was divisive. Victims’ families, women’s groups and aboriginal leaders said it focused too narrowly on policing and didn’t call witnesses to speak about systemic issues that put the victims on the streets. When the terms of reference were not expanded and the province denied funding for lawyers for the advocacy groups, many organizations boycotted the inquiry.
Two lawyers were appointed to broadly represent the interests of aboriginals and people living in the impoverished Downtown Eastside. Critics said this was not fair, as more than two dozen lawyers represented police and government.
In an interview with The Sun, Oppal listed the “blatant errors” made in the case, including:
Society — including most police officers, politicians and citizens — initially dismissing the poor, marginalized victims as “nobodies.” Vancouver police took poor reports when families phoned to say loved ones were missing, and acted without urgency. In March 1997, a Downtown Eastside sex worker escaped from Pickton’s farm after being violently stabbed. Pickton was charged with attempted murder (the charges were later stayed) and a concerned RCMP officer attached a warning to his name on the police computer system. Even though the victim told police Pickton bragged about bringing women to his home, Pickton was not a priority suspect that year when many sex trade workers disappeared. There was “an unseemly fight” between former VPD Det. Kim Rossmo, who wanted to warn the public in 1998 that a serial killer may be preying on vulnerable women, and then-Insp. Fred Biddlecombe, who vetoed the idea, arguing there was no evidence to support it. “Public safety was compromised by not warning the public,” Oppal said. The Vancouver police missing person unit was understaffed, and families said an administrative assistant there was indifferent and rude. Between 1998 and 1999, four informants had pointed fingers at Pickton, but Vancouver police did little with the information. The informants included Bill Hiscox, whose friend Lisa Yelds had seen women’s clothing on the farm and thought Pickton was killing women, and Lynn Ellingsen, who said she saw a woman being butchered in the slaughterhouse. (Police have said the witnesses were problematic, as they were drug users and changed their stories.) RCMP Const. Ruth Yurkiw phoned Pickton’s farm in 1999, but his brother Dave asked her to call back in the “rainy season” when they weren’t as busy and she agreed. Project Evenhanded, the joint RCMP-VPD task force, thought at first it was investigating only historic murders, even though women continued to disappear. It also spent too much time looking for a connection between three murdered sex-trade workers found near Mission and the Downtown Eastside cases. lculbert@vancouversun.com
Forsaken Report
Missing People Net – 1999 - 2012
