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.

CUE Center NATIONAL ROUND TABLE CONFERENCE FOR MISSING PERSONS

NATIONAL ROUND TABLE CONFERENCE FOR MISSING PERSONS - Coming March 2010

Who Should attended? Families of the missing, advocates, law officers, coroners, forensic specialist, search personnel (all types), non profit missing person organizations, government agencies, private investigations and more.

National Round Table Conference Goals: * Sharing a trained and professional view for solving cold case and search there of; missing persons * Understanding the resources available to be deployed when needed, what their capabilities are and how to obtain them. * Exploring the relevant positive and negative experiences of people who have experienced a missing loved one. * Creating new approaches to missing persons cases, and effectively deploying available resources; building communication and support * Developing a high-level view of the modifications needed to our current resources and organizational community over the next five years.

'Information detective' tries to restore names to the missing

KnoxNews.COM

Ky. 'Tent Girl' started man's quest to help families find peace

By Jim Balloch
Posted July 19, 2009 at midnight

LIVINGSTON, Tenn. - One Halloween night many years ago, a man named Riddle told a 17-year-old boy a chilling, true tale of murder and mystery.

As the boy grew into a man, the story was the foundation of the mission he chose for his life: to bring light into the dark corners of the criminal justice system, where the dead languish unclaimed in morgues around the country because they have lost their names as well as their lives.

"I feel this is my calling," said Todd Matthews, 39, the father of two boys and husband of a very patient woman.

Today, Matthews is Southeast regional coordinator for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or www.namus.gov . It is a new federal program designed to aid law enforcement - and involve the public - in identifying John or Jane Does and connecting them with some of the nation's estimated 100,000 active missing persons cases.

But for years, Matthews and a few other dedicated private citizens with similar quests labored alone.

His obsession

The roots of Matthews' quest are near Georgetown, Ky. There, on May 17, 1968, well driller Wilbur Riddle uncovered the corpse of a woman wrapped in green tent canvas.

Her right hand was clenched, as if she had tried to claw her way out of the material. She had no identification, and authorities guessed she was about 16 years old.

In newspaper stories, she became known as "The Tent Girl."

Riddle later retired and moved to Livingston, about 20 miles north of Cookeville. On Halloween 1987, Matthews was in the Riddle household for the first time. He was visiting their daughter Lori, whom he later married. That was when he heard of the Tent Girl and how she was buried without a name.

"Everybody loves a mystery, I guess, but that story really grabbed hold of me," he said. "It definitely changed my life forever."

He was driven to find out who she was and, perhaps, who killed her. He relentlessly pursued information about the case, devoting nearly all his spare time to scouring newspaper stories for missing persons cases and talking to law enforcement agencies.

He even spoke with the funeral director who had buried the girl.

"He just got so wrapped up in it, sometimes he forgot he had a family," Lori Riddle said. "We were spending money on gas, on travel, sometimes we had $300 or $400 phone bills at a time when both of us were making an hourly wage."

She says she understands what drives him.

"He has always been a tender-hearted man, very tuned in to emotions and how other people feel," she said. "And he lost a brother and a sister when they were babies, so he knows what it feels like to lose a loved one."

"But at least I know where they are and I can go visit their graves," he said. "These (unidentified) people are all somebody's loved ones who don't get to do that, don't even know where they are."

The Tent Girl identified

In 1992, he acquired his first computer and networked with other private citizens interested in cold cases. He tirelessly searched Web sites devoted to missing person cases and set one up for the Tent Girl.

In the meantime, he had seen an FBI report that a piece of cloth found with Tent Girl was possibly a baby's diaper. He began to suspect she might have been a mother, and perhaps older than originally thought.

Late one night in 1998, he saw a post from Rosemary Westbrook of Benton, Ark., who was trying to locate her missing sister, last seen in Lexington, Ky., around 1967. The description and other details matched the Tent Girl case. He contacted Westbrook, and together they compiled enough facts for an exhumation.

Tests confirmed that the Tent Girl was Westbrook's sister: Barbara Ann Hackman Taylor. Matthews had it right: She was 24, not 16, and she was the mother of a little girl.

Taylor's husband, a carnival worker who had since died of cancer, had told people she ran off with another man.

CBS' "48 Hours" broadcast the Tent Girl story. The Matthewses watched it in their living room.

"I thought it was all over," she said, referring to her husband's quest.

But it was just beginning.

Even before the show ended, Todd got calls from people wanting him to help find a missing loved one.

"I had started this from the standpoint of someone who was dead, and now I was starting to hear from people on the missing side," he said.

Unable to say no, he formed a Web site devoted to missing persons and unidentified remains cases. Later he merged that into The Doe Network, a larger and more technically proficient site that has been credited with putting names to more than 40 previously unidentified bodies.

Everyone deserves a name

Out of the Doe Network arose a related project, Project EDAN, or Everyone Deserves A Name, through which certified forensic facial reconstruction artists donate their time and service to difficult cases.

Matthews' work with Project EDAN took him to Campbell County. In 1997, the body of a murdered woman was found off Interstate 75. Detective Eddie Barton, now retired, had contacted Matthews after learning of the Doe Network. Barton was searching for someone, anyone, who could help with the vexing case.

"We had exhausted all the resources we had," he said. Although it later turned out the woman had once been fingerprinted, those prints had not been sent to the FBI's National Crime Information Center system.

Through the facial reconstruction arranged by Projct EDAN, the woman was eventually identified by fingerprints in another database. Her name was Ada Elena Torres Smith, reported missing in Texas.

Her killer was never found. Barton said he suspects a connection between her murder and that of a black woman, unidentified to this day, who was found in the same area close to where Smith was found.

"It was Todd's group that led to the identification," Barton said.

Many police officers are reluctant to include civilians in their investigative process. But Barton said that once he talked with Matthews, "I knew he wasn't some kook who was trying to dabble in law enforcement. He has put a lot of time and effort into what he does."

Matthews readily states he has no desire to get into law enforcement and does not consider himself an investigator.

So, exactly what is he, then?

After thinking for a few seconds, he says: "Information detective." By that, he said, he means one who gathers and links information to give to law enforcement.

Because of his successes, Matthews was just one of two civilians with a seat on a federal advisory board that eventually led to the creation of NaMus. For now, he has temporarily shifted gears. He is putting much of his time into contacting law enforcement agencies and telling them about NaMus and its cost-free availability as an investigative tool.

But he still finds time to scan his computers, searching for that one scrap of information or lead that can put a real name to a John Doe, which in turn may lead to the solving of a crime.

"I'm so used to it now, it's just an everyday thing for us," Lori Matthews said. "And I am just so proud of him. He is doing something that is really good. It means so much to the families of the missing persons. He will never give it up, and I couldn't ask him to."

Jim Balloch may be reached at 865-342-6315.

NamUs - National Missing and Unidentified Persons System

Project EDAN - Everyone Deserves A Name


TentGirl

External Link:
Sketches express softer side of missing women

Judge's actions left door open for appeal. Pickton Appeal

Lots of people make mistakes at work, but judges are rarely subjected to disciplinary measures no matter what the cost of their errors


By Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun
June 29, 2009

We all make mistakes; we're only human. But we expect more of some people in our society -- judges, for one.

The bar must be set higher for them since the consequences of their decisions have more serious effects on people's lives and the public purse than most others.

And what we especially don't expect is that they will make such glaring errors that a serial killer's conviction could be overturned or that their decision is so off-base that both the Crown and defence appeal.

But that's what B.C. Supreme Court Justice James Williams did. Because of his errors, Robert "Willie" Pickton will get a hearing in the Supreme Court of Canada and a chance for a retrial.

This is a sorry chapter in Canada's biggest mass murder trial -- a grisly, sordid case.

One of three Court of Appeal justices who reviewed the case said Williams' mistake in his charge to the jury was inexcusable. Judge Ian Donald said Williams failed to properly instruct jurors on the law of aiding and abetting a crime and how it might apply in this case.

"This was an error of law," Donald wrote in his dissenting opinion. "The failure to instruct created a miscarriage of justice."

That's not the only mistake Williams made. All three appellate court judges said Williams was wrong to sever six of the 26 cases for trial.

That decision's legacy is that 20 families of murdered women may never get the justice they seek unless the Supreme Court orders a retrial.

Throughout the trial, the judge reportedly did a number of unusual things. After week 23, a story in The Globe and Mail noted Williams' "unusual state-of-the-nation address" to the jury when -- among other things -- he gave them a two-week vacation during the 11 months of hearings.

Another unprecedented decision was to have his law clerk, robed and sitting close by him in court. It apparently didn't help any.

Although this was one of the biggest trials in Canadian history, Williams was a relative rookie with only three years experience on the bench.

He took over the Pickton case a few days into the pre-trial hearings after the other judge suddenly found he had a scheduling conflict.

However, he'd had big-trial experience from the other side. He was a prosecutor in the case of Reena Virk, a Victoria teen who was beaten and killed by two other teens. He was defence lawyer for hockey star Marty McSorley, who was charged with the on-ice assault on former Canucks player Donald Brashear.

Judges are not oracles, as Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada has said. Instead, they are men and women with legal training, appointed and well-paid to sit in judgment until they are 75 years old.

But unlike most people who mess up at work, they are rarely subject to disciplinary measures.

"In fairness, the conduct of a judge should not be measured in the context of a complaint arising out of a single proceeding, but rather against a wider test of performance."

That's what former B.C. Court of Appeal chief justice Allan McEachern said in a speech given while he was chairman of the Canadian Judicial Council.

He noted the difficulties of disciplining judges. Appointed either by the provincial or federal government, they can only be removed by the government.

Still McEachern argued against anything short of removal or anything more severe than review by judicial councils, which are limited (in his words) to expressing disapproval in words that range from "unfortunate," "unwise," "inappropriate," or "in some very few cases, something stronger."

Anything in between -- suspensions or sanctions -- would undermine the authority of the court and judge's independence, he said.

But from the beginning, almost everything about the Pickton case has undermined people's faith in the judicial system.

The victims were women who had no faith in the protection of police or courts. Survival sex workers and drug addicts rarely get a fair hearing from them.

The families can't help but distrust a system so callous that it took years before anyone would even take their reports of missing mothers, daughters and sisters.

That fact that Williams chose to hear only six of 26 cases only further damaged what little trust some had that justice might ever be done.

I'm sure Justice Williams is sorry for his mistake. And maybe I can even accept that public humiliation is as good a punishment as any.

But it's absurd to think that disciplining him-- even removing him from the bench -- would make things worse.

dbramham@vancouversun.com

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