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Finally, justice for forgotten
victims
By RACHEL GIESE
TORONTO SUN
Friday, January 5, 2006
Monday would have marked the start of the two-part trial of Robert Pickton, the
west coast farmer accused of killing 26 women -- most of them prostitutes and
addicts -- from one of Canada's bleakest neighbourhoods, Vancouver's Downtown
Eastside. But due to several pre-trial issues that need to be sorted out, the
start of the trial is postponed until Jan. 22.
For the families of the victims -- and indeed the victims themselves -- it's
another long two weeks of waiting for justice in a case that has dragged on for
nearly two decades.
The first woman to disappear was Rebecca Guno in 1983. Over the next 19 years,
more than 60 others vanished. In 2002, after a months-long investigation, police
finally found DNA evidence of 31 of them on Pickton's farm outside of Vancouver.
The women who disappeared are the kind of people who are easily lost. Some were
alienated from their families. Some moved around a lot as a result of the chaos
of poverty and addiction. Some preferred the anonymity of living on the streets.
Still, when some loved ones did report a sister, daughter or friend missing,
they were told not to worry, told that these kind of women disappear all the
time, told that they'd eventually turn up.
It took years for the Vancouver Police to invest serious staff power into the
missing person files of the city's Downtown Eastside. And, to make matters
worse, for a long time, the police doubted there was a serial killer at work.
Perhaps that assumption had some merit -- a street prostitute's life is a
dangerous one and any john could be a predator -- but it was an assumption that
cost many of the victims their lives.
How many women might have been spared had the police acted more forcefully and
more quickly? And how differently would the police have reacted if it had been
60 middle-class, suburban mothers who had disappeared? Or 60 investment bankers?
It's not just in Vancouver that prostitutes have been targeted and their deaths
or disappearances left unresolved. Just this week in Edmonton, a man was charged
for the second time with the murder of a sex trade worker. But so far he is the
only person to face any charges in a region where 25 prostitutes have been
killed or gone missing in 30 years.
Amidst the shocking headlines and graphic footage it's easy to forget the
humanity of these women -- they have become victims first, people second. In
Ipswich, England, where five prostitutes were killed over a period of 10 days in
December, some media outlets were criticized for their salacious coverage and
demeaning attitude toward the women. Here in Canada, the Vancouver murder
victims were also initially best known for their grim deaths rather than for the
entirety of their lives lived.
Luckily, these women have had strong advocates who have given them a voice. The
Vancouver Sun's Lindsay Kines was the first reporter to cover the
disappearances, which in part helped to push the police into broadening their
investigation. (You can find much of Kines's dogged coverage on
www.missingpeople.net.)
And of course there are the families of the victims who have come forward to
honour and mourn the dead women. Chief among them is Maggie de Vries, whose
sister Sarah disappeared in 1998. Maggie de Vries's moving book, Missing Sarah,
revealed a smart, determined, creative woman, who despite her troubles, was much
loved by her family.
Let's hope for these grieving families that this long overdue trial will finally
bring them some peace.
Have a letter for the editor? E-mail it to
editor@tor.sunpub.com
Copyright © 2006, Canoe Inc. All
rights reserved.
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