How does society think about murdered, missing women?

THE CANADIAN PRESS

EDMONTON – A University of Alberta PhD student says society has made progress, but has a long way to go when it comes to how we think about missing and murdered women.

Amber Dean is studying the lives and deaths of women involved in prostitution, drugs and other high-risk, vulnerable lifestyles to see ‘‘what they can tell us about the way our society is organized.’’

Dean says she became interested while living in Vancouver and noticed how the way the missing women were described changed over time.

She said at first, there was a lot of talk about how they were involved in prostitution and their addiction to drugs.

But Dean said at the conclusion of the trial of Robert Pickton, there was a lot of emphasis put on the victims and an attempt to tell ‘‘at least some aspect’’ of their stories.

Dean said her thesis also looks at the pictorial representations of the Vancouver women by a group of forensic artists on the website of Project EDAN – which stands for Everyone Deserves a Name.

Organized by Wayne Leng, the site features somewhat idealized portraits of the slain and missing women, including Georgina Papin of the Enoch Cree First Nation near Edmonton.

Pickton, of Port Coquitlam, B.C., was convicted in December of killing Papin and five other women and sentenced to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 25 years.

He faces trial next year on another 20 counts of first-degree murder.
‘‘The artists were upset because the pictures in the missing posters seemed to present the women as more criminal than victim in a way because they look like mug shots,’’ she said.

‘‘So, they’ve attempted to create portraits that, in their words, are gentler and softer.’’