Sex Worker Co-operative Is Best Solution

How many women must go missing before the government listens to working girls?

How long have our politicians been asked what they are going to do to make Vancouver streets safer in response to the tragedy of the missing women? We are providing a solution for them on a silver platter.

By Citizen Correspondent Trina Ricketts

Date Posted: 06/08/07

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Editor's note: The City of Vancouver licenses escort agencies and massage parlours, even though everything surrounding the business of selling sex remains illegal. Sex trade workers wanting a business permit must pay $1,000 or more each year in licensing fees.

The woman who sat in my passenger seat was grateful to get out of the cold for a few minutes. Armed with a sandwich and hot chocolate from the trunk of my car and $30 richer, she couldn't stop thanking me for stopping on her stroll tonight. "Now I can go home," she said. "Thank you so much." I asked her to sign the top of the questionnaire to indicate she'd been paid for her consultation.

You don't have to use your real name," I assured her. "We're not recording names anyway. We just need signatures to show that we aren't keeping the money ourselves." I smiled.

"Oh, it doesn't matter," she replied. "The cops, everyone, they all know that I'm out here. I've been arrested too many times to count. This is the only street I can work on that I haven't been red-zoned." A red zone is an area that individual sex workers are banned from. If found even walking through them, they can be arrested. "I can't go to the library anymore. My bank is in one of my red zones. I'm breaking the law if I walk out of my place and cross the road," she chuckles ruefully.

Although I spend the next half hour asking her some very heavy questions about her experiences of violence and trafficking in the sex trade, she is cheerful. That $30 was her ticket home tonight. She wouldn't have to get into any more cars.

"You know that girl found in the bushes outside of the hospital?" she said. "That was my friend. Us working girls are going missing like crazy. It's scary out here."

She tells me stories about having objects thrown at her from cars, as have all the other women I've interviewed. It's quite common in Surrey for residents and young men to throw rocks, beer bottles, pennies, and garbage at the women working the streets.

One of my interview questions is: 'Why do you think people commit violence against sex workers?' The most common answer was that sex workers are disposable. "No one cares about us so they know they can get away with it," this woman answers.

When I get to question number ten in the violence section, I hold my breath.