By Sarah Payne The Tri-City News
Aug 08 2007
The heavy equipment is gone. So are the tents, grids, sorters and dozens of police officers, anthropologists and forensic experts sifting through the dirt at the Pickton pig farm in Port Coquitlam.
The buildings have been bulldozed and all that remains is a swath of bare land dotted with mounds of dirt. The landscape has changed dramatically from five years ago, when the property was dotted with a home and various farm buildings, and it will continue to change, says Chilliwack resident Ernie Crey. Investigators found DNA of his sister, Dawn Crey, on the property but Pickton has not been charged in her death.
Crey wants to have a small memorial placed near the property, maybe a cairn, to commemorate the life of Dawn Crey and the 26 women Pickton is charged with killing; his trial for six of those charges is entering its eighth month in New Westminster Supreme Court.
Crey realizes that such a memorial may be contentious, given the ongoing trial, but feels it’s important to offer families a place to go.
“I would like to see something now, but I’m not opposed to the idea that more time be taken,” he said. “Every few months that go by the place changes and at some point down the road no one will know where the site is.
“Local people will know... but the overwhelming majority [of the missing women’s families] I’m guessing haven’t even been there — they may not have had the means to go there, they may not have wanted to go there — but at some point they may want to go back to the site, and reflect on the lives of loved ones they’ve lost.”
Crey isn’t sure where the cairn could go. The city may have a right-of-way on Dominion Road, or it may belong to the commercial property across the street; putting it on the Pickton property itself isn’t a likely option.
Any inscriptions on the cairn could be suitably vague to avoid any legal issues or controversy, he added.
There is a similar monument in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside; Crey said it’s in the name of a woman who went missing from the area in the 1970s but still serves as a place to honour all women who’ve vanished from the city’s troubled streets.
“That monument hasn’t caused any controversy... it’s discreet, and for people to whom the monument really means something they can go there to remember, to honour their memory,” Crey said. He hasn’t discussed the idea for a PoCo memorial with the other women’s families, saying it’s just something he would personally like to see.
Tony Chong, PoCo’s city manager, said it was difficult for him to comment on the idea since nothing has actually been proposed to the city. The potential monument’s size would need to be considered in relation to things like utility alignments and traffic safety concerns, he said.
The Tri-City News
http://www.tricitynews.com
Wednesday, August 8
'Culture' depends on who's defining it
Anglo culture is dominant and taken for granted; minority cultures are automatically 'different'
Yasmin Jiwani
Special to the Sun
Special to the Sun
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Recent media attention focusing on the murders of women from the South Asian-Canadian community in the Lower Mainland has invoked a now-familiar refrain -- "it's the culture."
These culturalist interpretations of the murders, while popular and easily acceptable, are, I contend, both simplistic and dangerous.
For one, the interpretation of culture favoured by proponents of this view tends to dilute the complexity of the issues and presents a static, monolithic view of culture. Cultures are dynamic, as any self-respecting anthropologist will tell you.
Within the South Asian-Canadian community, there are a variety of cultural traditions, religions, languages, and faiths. Those within them also live lives that are markedly different based on their economic background, their interpretations of culture and their histories of migration and settlement.
If we embrace the culturalist argument, we are adhering to a view that cultural groups are static relics isolated from the mainstream. More than this, we are positing that individuals within a particular cultural formation represent the entirety of that culture.
If this were indeed true, we would have to agree that someone like Willy Pickton, an alleged mass murderer, is representative of the dominant Anglo culture. Further, whatever crimes Pickton has been charged with, it follows that such crimes are endemic to and reflective of his whole culture. There are some who would agree with this viewpoint.
That aside, the Anglo culture is a dominant culture -- its norms are often taken for granted and normalized, whereas minority cultures such as South Asian come under heavy scrutiny and their practices are often highlighted as markers of cultural difference, separating these groups from the mainstream.
For instance, each time a woman from an Anglo background is murdered, do we have reporters dwelling on her cultural background? We don't, for example, get lengthy descriptions regaling the cultural facets of the burial, the wedding, or how they met despite or in spite of the fact that all of these practices and actions are undoubtedly culturally grounded.
These descriptions, if they are mentioned, are not culturalized but rather normalized as the dominant ways of doing things. Even which culture is categorized as a "culture" depends on who is doing the defining, the classifying and for what purpose.
To wit, recall the hullabaloo that erupted when journalist Jan Wong wrote the story about the Dawson College murders and sought to explain why Kimveer Gill was so alienated from Quebec's dominant culture and its values.
Wong attributed the actions of Gill and others like him to the culture of exclusion resulting from the imposition of Quebec's language laws (Bill 101). Her argument resulted in a huge outcry not only from the Quebec press and media in general, but also from members of Quebec's and Canada's political elite. Stephen Harper, Jean Charest and other politicians waded into the controversy.
The lesson in this is that if the cultural group you are critiquing is powerful, chances are your critique will be silenced. If however, the cultural group you are slamming or stereotyping is not so powerful, then there is little likelihood of the critique being challenged with the same force and with the same alliances from powerful political elites.
South Asian-Canadian groups have been active in advocating against gendered violence in their communities. Yet, the efforts of these organizations and other service providers who continue to work with minority communities are rarely lauded and supported -- or even known about outside the South Asian community.
Rather, their work tends often to be considered only in light of these aberrant high-profile cases and as one more sign indicating how "violent" these cultures are.
Were the same logic to be applied to the dominant society, the sure presence and strong history of anti-violence activism in British Columbia would necessarily have to be construed as a sign of the widespread prevalence of violence, and thus the violent nature of the dominant culture.
It is easy to point the finger at a highly visible cultural group and claim theirs to be a culture of violence. I would caution that such a perspective fails to account for the above-mentioned factors and proves only how a cultural argument serves to deflect attention away from the larger culture of violence in which we all live. Amplifying a cultural perspective only retrenches this discourse of denial.
Yasmin Jiwani is an associate professor in the department of communication studies at Concordia University in Montreal. She is the author of Discourses of Denial, Mediations of Race, Gender and Violence (UBC Press, 2006).
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
Friday, August 3
Missing teen would be 28 today
By Jules S. Xavier
Record Staff
Aug 03 2007
Aug 03 2007
It was the summer of 1993 when a teenager walked away from her foster home on Royston Road and has not been seen since.
Before 14-year-old Lindsey Jill Nicholls went missing on Aug. 2, the Montreal Canadiens had just won the Stanley Cup facing Wayne Gretzky’s Los Angeles Kings. The Toronto Blue Jays were playing excellent baseball at the Skydome en route to winning the World Series versus the Philadelphia Phillies.
The popular movies that year which the five-foot-three, 112-pound teen might have seen were Schindler’s List, The Piano, Philadephia and Six Degrees of Separation.
“The RCMP investigation regarding the disappearance of Lindsey Nicholls is ongoing,” reports Comox Valley RCMP Cpl. Paul West, who is with the General Investigation Section (GIS).
While the trail might have grown cold, West said the Mountie’s file involving her disappearance remains active for the local GIS.
“In the 14 years that Lindsey has been missing, police have pursued nearly 300 tips in an effort to determine what happened to Lindsey after she left her home on Royston Road,” said West.
“Despite the efforts of police and investigators from the Missing Children’s Society of Canada, what happened to Lindsey remains a mystery.”
Nicholls was just six weeks shy of her 15th birthday when she went missing. She would celebrate her 29th on Sept. 12.
Her mother, Judy Peterson, continues to advocate for the creation of a Missing Person’s index in conjunction with the national DNA databank in an effort to have a DNA registry for missing persons across Canada.
Peterson’s efforts have served to bring a bill before Parliament regarding this registry which has been nicknamed “Lindsey’s Law.” It was introduced in a private member’s bill by Canadian Alliance MP Gary Lunn in the fall of 2003 to establish the special databank.
At that time, B.C. Attorney General Rich Coleman said the databank was long overdue and might have been especially useful in the Vancouver investigation of pig farmer Robert Pickton, who is currently facing 15 murder charges. The Pickton investigation has involved more than 90,000 DNA tests.
West is asking for help from the public related to the disappearance of Nicholls. If you have information, call the Comox Valley RCMP detachment at 338-1321 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
COLD CASE FILES
Prostitution laws face challenge
"The prostitution laws . . . subject sex workers to increased risk of physical and sexual violence, psychological injury, kidnapping and death," says a statement of claim to be filed in B.C. Supreme Court.Photograph by : Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty ImagesThey are unconstitutional, Vancouver lawyers claim
Jonathan Fowlie, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, August 03, 2007
Two Vancouver lawyers will launch a constitutional challenge today of Canada's prostitution laws, arguing they force sex workers into unsafe conditions and infringe a sex worker's right to freedom of expression.
"The prostitution laws . . . subject sex workers to increased risk of physical and sexual violence, psychological injury, kidnapping and death," says a statement of claim to be filed in B.C. Supreme Court."
The prostitution laws deprive sex workers of the ability to lawfully conduct their work safely because they are prevented from taking steps to establish health and safety conditions in their work," it adds.
On Thursday, lawyers Katrina Pacey of Pivot Legal LLP and Joseph Arvay planned to file the statement of claim on behalf of the Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society, a group of mostly aboriginal women, some of whom have experienced physical or sexual violence because of their work in the sex trade.
The statement of claim says the constitutional rights of the group's members are being violated by the prostitution laws.
"The basis of this whole case is that we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that that Charter protects all of us equally," Pacey said in an interview this week. "Regardless of the type of work we are in, or how we live our lives, we should all have equal access to those fundamental protections."
Canadian law does not explicitly prohibit the exchange of sex for money. Instead, there are sections in the Criminal Code that prohibit activities surrounding prostitution, such as: keeping a "bawdy-house;" procuring another person to have illicit sex; and communicating in a public place for the purposes of engaging in prostitution.In today's challenge, Pacey said she is relying on sections of the Charter - including those dealing with equality, freedom of expression and the right to life, liberty and security of the person - to challenge the communication law, the brothel laws and significant portions of the procurement law.
A similar challenge was launched in Ontario earlier this year, and Pacey said though the two involve slightly different arguments it is possible they could be combined if they eventually reach the Supreme Court of Canada.
In an interview Thursday, John Lowman, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University who has been researching violence in prostitution since the 1970s, said he thinks Canada's prostitution laws have forced sex workers into extremely dangerous working situations, and applauded any challenge brought to the courts.
"We treat street prostitutes as disposable women," he said, explaining that sex workers move to dangerous areas of the city, and generally work outside and alone, to avoid arrest.
"Approaching 300 women [across Canada] have died, murdered, since 1985 when the communicating law was enacted," he said. "I say there is a direct correlation between our prohibitionist approach to street prostitution and the slaughter that we've seen."
Vancouver East MP Libby Davies said she, too, feels the prostitution laws need to be contested.
"The status quo is completely unacceptable, in fact it is harmful," said the NDP MP, who was part of a parliamentary committee which, despite her protests, concluded its investigation of prostitution laws in 2006 without recommending decriminalization.
While today's challenge represents a significant legal move, it is not the first time the prostitution laws have been challenged.
In 1990, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the communication law violates the constitutional right to freedom of expression, but refused to strike it down because it found such a violation to be justified.
Despite that, Pacey said she feels the time has come for the court system take another look.
"The evidence has significantly changed," she said.
"Since 1990, we've seen this explosion of missing women," she added. "We have so much more information and understanding about the violence sex workers face and the conditions of their work."
© Vancouver Sun
John Lowman's Prostitution Research Page
http://mypage.uniserve.ca/~lowman/
Pivot Legal Society
http://www.pivotlegal.org/
Libby Davies
http://www.libbydavies.ca/
Wednesday, August 1
Drugs, sex prevail in slum where Vancouver, B.C., farmer allegedly trolled for victims
By Jonathan Martin
Seattle Times staff reporter
Seattle Times staff reporter
VANCOUVER, B.C. — The man who may be the Northwest's most prolific murderer sits each day in a booth of bulletproof glass, staring blankly as a grim cast of ex-friends detail the way he allegedly butchered women.
The trial of Robert "Willie" Pickton, British Columbia's notorious pig farmer, is filled with testimony and evidence so gruesome that news accounts carry a warning label for graphic content.
Five years after his arrest, the trial for six of the 26 murders he's charged with was anticipated to be a grisly sensation. More than 350 journalists from around the world got credentials.
But as the prosecution winds down — six months and 97 witnesses later — it is clear that Vancouver is ready to move on. The courtroom is rarely full. Public-opinion polls show strong interest in the trial in the single digits and dropping. Few news stories now make the front page of Canadian newspapers.
An estimated $100 million (Canadian) has been spent on the Pickton case, the largest investigation in Canadian history. Police dug for bones at Pickton's squalid suburban property for 18 mon
ths after his arrest in early 2002.
ths after his arrest in early 2002. They unearthed remains or DNA traces of dozens of women, all drug-addicted prostitutes, most picked up from Vancouver's Skid Row. The scope of the evidence is so huge that the case was split into two trials; Pickton is to face 20 more murder charges when the first trial wraps up later this year. And police are still investigating the disappearance of dozens of other women.
"It hangs like a dark cloud over the city," said Dr. Evan Wood, a researcher who studies the neighborhood where Pickton is said to have regularly picked up prostitutes. "It's a source of shame and concern among Vancouverites."
The disappearance of so many women in such a small strip briefly shined a spotlight on woes of the neighborhood, called the Downtown Eastside.
But it remains the same wasteland today as it was when Pickton was allegedly trolling there, where underage prostitutes walk the "Kiddie Stroll" and where addicts convulse through drug overdoses on the sidewalk. A United Nations official recently called it one of the world's worst slums in an affluent city.
Fearing that the neighborhood's ills could stain the image of the 2010 Winter Olympics, city and regional leaders have pledged huge increases in public housing to reduce homelessness.
But victims' families see the same civic neglect that allowed loved ones to disappear, one after another, for decades.
"I see my sister all the time down there. I see the same problems. I see the cops cruise by, and I see girls getting into a stranger's car, and I see the cops not doing anything," said Jason Fleury, brother of Mona Wilson, whose murder Pickton is on trial for now. "The only thing that's changed here are the buildings."
Bigger than Green River
In February 2002, days after his arrest, Pickton shared a chuckle with a cellmate, an undercover police officer planted by investigators. Pickton said his crimes were "bigger than the one in the States," referring to Green River killer Gary L. Ridgway, convicted of 48 murders.
Pickton told the cellmate he had killed 49 women.
"I was gonna do one more, make it an even 50," Pickton said during the taped conversation, which prosecutors played for the jury. "I make my own grave by being sloppy."
He is widely described as mentally slow and foul-smelling, with stringy hair and a receding chin. But he was also a sugar daddy for drug-addicted prostitutes, his pockets stuffed with the profits of his family's land sales to housing developers in the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam.
It was on one of the family's remaining parcels — 17 acres that included Pickton's pig slaughterhouse — that police found the remains of women. Three severed heads, hands and feet in buckets. Jawbones buried among pig manure. Packages of meat tainted by human DNA.
Last month, a former friend testified that Pickton had once described how he handcuffed and strangled prostitutes, then butchered the bodies and fed them to his pigs. What was left after the pigs ate went to a rendering plant.
"You wouldn't believe how much blood comes out of them," Pickton said, according to the testimony.
If the allegations are true, the biggest question of the trial is how Pickton got away with it for so long.
The first murder he is charged with occurred in 1995. For seven years before Pickton's 2002 arrest, his brother, Dave, lived on the property. A cast of underworld characters, including women who worked as madams for Pickton, procuring prostitutes on the Downtown Eastside, also were frequent guests.
Stevie Cameron, an investigative journalist and author of the book "The Pickton File," said Pickton's lawyers will likely try to pin blame on his brother or the unsavory friends.
"Pickton was very social. There were tons of people coming and going" from the property, Cameron said. "What I'm waiting for is an effort by the defense to show the other guy did it, but they haven't shown who the other guy is."
"Lack of accountability"
The Pickton property today is dotted with dirt hills the size of mega-mansions, created when archaeologists hired by police sifted the land looking for bones.
If only police had been so diligent in the years before Pickton was caught, said Ernie Crey.
Since 1978, 65 women have been reported missing from the Downtown Eastside, including Dawn Crey, whose DNA was found at the Pickton property in 2004. Ernie Crey, like other victims' family members and civic leaders, criticizes the police's flat-footed response to the disappearances.
"If there'd been a real investigation under way, there might have been many lives saved, including my sister's," said Crey, looking out over the dirt piles.
The Vanco
uver Police Department did an internal investigation on the case but will not release it until both trials are completed to avoid the perception of jury tainting. That means it could be 2008 or later before Vancouver knows if police messed up the biggest serial-murder case in Canadian history, said Mary Lynn Young, a journalism professor at the University of British Columbia. "As an American, you'd be horrified about the lack of accountability in the police," she said. "We don't know how 65 women could go missing over 20 years in a city like Vancouver.
To even get to whether the police are at fault, we need to understand how it could happen."
Larry Campbell, a former Mountie and mayor of Vancouver from 2002 to 2005, said he believes police worked doggedly to find the killer but didn't have much to work with.
"You've got no crime scene, no body, and how many suspects out there?" said Campbell, now a member of the Canadian Senate. "You're starting with nothing. And many times in those cases, people went missing and were [only] reported missing years later."
"Certain kind of denial"
Mona Wilson was wearing Total Spice running shoes and a crucifix around her neck when she was seen hopping into Pickton's vehicle in November 2001, at the Skid-Row intersection of Hastings and Princess. She was reported missing a week later. She was 26.
She was an aboriginal Canadian raised in a series of foster homes, said Fleury, her brother. She lived in the suburbs and tried drug treatment many times, he said, but kept returning to the Downtown Eastside to feed a drug habit. Her drug of choice was codeine; she got 270 prescriptions in the last year of her life alone.
If Wilson's murder, and all the others, was a wake-up call to the neighborhood's squalor, the city's lead
ers were slow to respond. The Downtown Eastside's vital statistics have remained unchanged for years: About half of the 15,000 residents are drug users; about 90 percent of them have hepatitis C; about 30 percent have HIV/AIDS, the same rate as Botswana.
Mayor Sam Sullivan, who is championing an effort to get more public housing, drug treatment and mental heath for a neighborhood lacking in all three, said remaking the Downtown Eastside will be the legacy of the 2010 Olympics.
"In the past, it's been very difficult for Vancouver to get the attention of federal and provincial governments, but I know we have this rare window of opportunity," he said.
But David Eby, a legal-services lawyer in the neighborhood, said the Olympics are already having a negative effect. Apartments are being converted into higher-priced homes so quickly that the homeless population has nearly doubled. Eby's firm, Pivot Legal Society, predicts that homeless people will number about 3,500 by 2010, about one-third more than Seattle's 2,000.
"There is a certain kind of denial for the city, the province and the federal government to do nothing in the face of Pickton and with the world coming here in 2010," said Eby during a tour of the neighborhood.
He gestured toward an alley next to a decrepit apartment, the Roosevelt Hotel, near the Downtown Eastside's core. It is there, according to testimony, that Pickton would pull up to meet prostitutes. They would drive away and never again be seen alive.
On one recent night, prostitutes clustered in the alley, shooting up, waiting for a john.
Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jmartin@seattletimes.com
Writing The Pickton File by Stevie Cameron
Serial Killer Trial at Orato
Vancouver Missing Women
Hazel8500 - Where Have My Sisters Gone?
Flickr - Images of the missing
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