Moralizing no safety net for prostitutes

By ANDREW HANON

Edmonton Sun

Last Updated: 16th November 2009, 1:22am

Amber O'Hara doesn't mind having prostitutes working the sidewalk outside her apartment building.

"Sex trade workers should have the right to choose where he and she wants to work," the wheelchair-bound great- grandmother said. "It's not prostitution that's killing the women. It's the violence."

O'Hara, who was in Edmonton recently, lives in a seedy Toronto neighborhood she describes as "Crack Central," the Dundas and Sherbourne area.

It's a district in transition. There's lots of poverty, but it's slowly being gentrified and the well-to-do newcomers are pressuring local police to run the prostitutes out.

"Some of the people are outright hateful," she said.

O'Hara doesn't think that will solve anything, other than to push the prostitutes into back alleys, poorly lit industrial areas and other spots that put them at risk.

"It's so different than it was when I worked," the 58-year-old said. "They're so desperate now. It's so much more dangerous and they're so afraid they're going to get busted. There's a different energy out there on the streets than when I was there."

O'Hara, an activist who runs the website missingnativewomen.org, used to call for decriminalization of the sex trade. Nowadays, she's calling for it to be outright legalized.

"It's the only way to ensure their safety," she argues. "They shouldn't be forced to work in an unsafe environment."

The website lists hundreds of women who've gone missing across the country. The Alberta page alone has 70 names.

O'Hara, who has her master's degree in social work, quit the sex trade in 1983 after working the streets across Canada and in some U.S. cities.

"I had other jobs," she said, listing a few off. "I was a waitress. I did medical transcription. I was in social work. But I had mouths to feed so I'd do this too. It's how I put myself through university."

She admits to forming a drug habit when she was young, but has been clean and sober for 27 years.

In 1990 she was diagnosed with HIV, which has since developed into full-blown AIDS.

O'Hara knows from getting tested regularly when she contracted the virus that it was the result of a rape.

She says she was attacked while helping bring supplies to the Mohawk protesters at Oka, Quebec.

But despite it all, O'Hara continues to work on behalf of disadvantaged women, especially those in the sex trade. There's no bitterness over the cards life has dealt her.

"I'm at the end stage of my life," she says evenly, without a trace of sentimentality.

She's perfectly happy to co-exist with street prostitution.

"People were complaining about needles and condoms on the sidewalks," she said.

"They didn't have anywhere to put them. I went out and gave them garbage bags and asked them to please use them and they were perfectly happy to."

She takes them soup and offers condoms if they need it.

O'Hara has often opened her home to prostitutes seeking shelter from the cold or trying to get away from a bad date or vindictive pimp.

Sometimes they come to her looking for a way out of the life but see no way out because they're mired in drug addiction. O'Hara helps them get into detox and rehab.

"They're people, like you or me," she says simply. "If I was healthy, I'd go back to it again."

You probably don't agree with O'Hara. But how can you not admire her compassion?

ANDREW.HANON@SUNMEDIA.CA

Bright Lights: Katrin Pacey

Lawyer, Pivot Legal Society

When was the last time you met a member of the legal profession who claimed to be an activist first and a lawyer second? If that sounds a bit odd, it’s because you’ve never met Katrina Pacey.

Pacey, 35, is a staff member with the Pivot Legal Society, a nonprofit legal-advocacy organization that tackles social-justice issues plaguing Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It’s not a glamorous gig, but it’s rewarding for her. In some ways, she’s a walking contradiction. Pacey is a self-described feminist who fights for sex workers’ rights. She said she comes from a privileged background, yet she spends her working days dealing with some of the most vulnerable women in the city.

She said she was intrigued when Vancouver East NDP MP Libby Davies brought a motion forward in Parliament in 2002 to review prostitution laws after so many women went missing from the Downtown Eastside. Pacey said the sex-trade workers were saying: “We need something different; we need to have safety in our lives.”

“I thought, ‘How do I get these women’s voices and stories to Parliament?’ ” she recalled.

As a student, Pacey knew that the corporate environment of law school would challenge her ideals as a human-rights activist, but she said she wanted to gain the tools and knowledge to use the legal system to advance the interests of marginalized people. After receiving her undergrad degree in political science and earning a master’s degree in women’s studies from UBC, she attended law school and began working with Pivot in her first term.

“I feel like it [Pivot] was a huge part of my education and kept me from deviating from being focused on human-rights issues,” she said, sitting in a modest boardroom at Pivot’s office on East Hastings Street. “I feel like it kept me grounded and real.”

Pacey’s work involves advocating for changes to Canada’s prostitution laws, but she admits that she didn’t always have such conviction about the subject. She had seen how it had divided the feminist community. “I really didn’t want to go there by any personal inclination,” she said, “but when I realized that’s what the demand was—and that it was the most pressing issue for them [women of the DTES]—I felt like I didn’t have a choice.”

When she became involved with sex workers’ rights, she expected a backlash from the feminist legal community. Ultimately, she hopes that her objective will become clear to even her fiercest critics. “What I’m really about is creating a safe and dignified working condition for people involved in sex work, and honouring those people who say this is their choice,” she said emphatically.

Despite some people’s objection to Pacey’s endeavours, her contribution to the field and, specifically, her work with sex workers is undeniable. In a phone interview with the Georgia Straight, Pacey’s long-time coworker and Pivot Legal Society executive director, John Richardson, sang her praises: “She’s definitely someone you want fighting in your corner.”

It’s hard to believe that Pacey graduated from law school only five years ago. Already she has been awarded the YWCA Women of Distinction Award; she routinely speaks about human-rights issues at universities and local colleges; and she is one of the partners at Pivot’s most recent venture as a law firm—Pivot Legal Society LLP.

The firm, an idea developed by Pacey and Richardson, came to fruition in 2006 and has been growing ever since. “I’m really passionate about this because it can help strengthen Pivot as a nonprofit while giving access to affordable legal services to those people who need it most,” she said.

Not surprisingly, even her venture in creating a business model for Pivot leads her down a people-before-profit path. It’s an often thankless cause she has taken upon herself, but it’s never been about her.

Victoria cuts off funds to service that protects sex-trade workers

BY REBECCA TEBRAKE, VANCOUVER SUN JUNE 3, 2009

VANCOUVER — An advocate for Vancouver sex-trade workers says they will soon be at greater risk because the B.C. government has cut off funding for a van that cruises the streets at night, watching out for the women.

Losing the van means a greater risk of violence and less access to harm-reduction supplies, first aid, and bad-date reports in the overnight hours when sex workers are most active, said Kate Gibson, executive director of the WISH Drop-in Centre.

The van, which supplies the only overnight services to sex workers, is stocked with condoms, first-aid supplies, a needle exchange, coffee, fruit juice, water, referrals to support services, and posters showing missing women and dangerous johns.

It stops along the most popular strolls or at specific locations requested by sex workers. Each night, 40 to 50 women show up for supplies, support or companionship over a cup of coffee. The van’s last run will be on June 12.

The province, citing financial pressure, has not renewed the $250,000 needed to keep the van for the summer.

The solicitor-general’s ministry said the project’s funding request is under review.

“The provincial government, like other jurisdictions around the world, is facing challenging and unprecedented economic times, requiring some difficult decisions,” the ministry said in a statement Wednesday to The Vancouver Sun.

Laurel Irons, who has staffed the van since 2004, said sex workers “are already very upset, concerned and feel just really left out in the cold, wondering why such an important service to them is being taken away.”

Irons said she has intervened at times when sex workers were stalked, pepper-sprayed and assaulted.

“I don’t know what a lot of women are going to do without having somewhere to turn in those desperate moments,” she said.

Kate Shannon, a research scientist at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, said services that keep sex work above-ground are essential for ensuring women’s health.

“We need to scale up mobile services to sex workers. The closure of the mobile access-point van is a huge step backwards,” Shannon said.

The City of Vancouver is considering how it can help restore funding, Coun. Kerry Jang said.

rtebrake@vancouversun.com

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