In the little courthouse in New Westminster, B.C., I was able to catch up with another trial going on in the building, as covered previously by a fellow Orato contributor Jayne Lesard. She wrote about one Cliff Heggs [1], who was charged with sexual assault on a female who lived in a house he ran, called Rapha House in New Westminster. The home was looked up to by the women as a safe house. It was run as is if it were, in fact, a treatment facility.

This Wednesday (Aug 23rd), Heggs was found guilty on the charge of sexual assault. The victim was living in the house because she was trying to clean up her life and start anew with her young daughter. She does have family, but did not reside with them, although she did have contact with them.

The judge stated that JM (the victim) was credible and honest during testimony and had a reasonable emotional reaction throughout the whole thing. The judge had a few comments about Heggs' testimony. He said he found Heggs to have a "precise recall of events, only when it suited him," and the judge said that he did reject his testimony as being untruthful.

Apparently Heggs got off on the wrong foot as soon as he opened his mouth, since he could not even answer how old he was truthfully. He said he was 60 when in fact he is 65. His explanation for this discrepancy was that he thought he was only being asked his general age, not specifically his actual age.

Heggs' sentencing is still about three months away, as he has been ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. I am interested in finding out in the coming months what his sentence will be.

When sentences and public opinion for crimes like this are so varied, it will be interesting to see the results.

We must remember that just because a woman is off the streets does not mean she is no longer vulnerable. For some, being in treatment and away from the streets is an even more vulnerable place - they don't know the rules and do not have the resources they have on the streets to survive.

JM was there for her daughter, trying to change her life around for her child. The scariest thing for a woman in those circumstances is for anyone to threaten to call the Ministry of Child and Families. JM was threatened with this, not for a valid reason, but to try to coerce her into keeping quiet. JM mustered up the courage to go to police, in spite of these threats.

The judge looked very wisely at her situation and the fact that after she paid her room and board to Rapha House, she was left with 50-60 dollars - not a lot when you are thinking of fleeing your current residence with a young child because someone violated you.

JM would never go back to Rapha House after going to the police that night, which took huge amounts of courage - to leave all your belongings and the place you have called home for months with very, very little money in your pockets. Because fellow residents become your support system, to leave it all can be more paralyzing than the thought of staying and ignoring it ever happened.

As I started my own journey of leaving the streets, I found myself paralyzed by the most basic things, like dealing with unknown men, being in a bank line or the grocery store. I would often wave people ahead of me, rather than transact with a stranger.

Landlords terrified me...I was always in fear they would just kick me out, so usually if there was a problem, I would just move. Meeting other people's parents was something I avoided at all cost; I had no idea how to behave around them.

Because I had lived under such shame for decades about who I was and what I had done with my life, I was positive people could see the neon sign on top of my head that said I was a f**k up and would treat me accordingly. I am sure my friends could give you a list of odd behaviors that I have forgotten because now I am no longer impacted so dramatically by them.

Women as well as men going into drug and alcohol treatment can be hugely vulnerable. We need to have solid rules and regulations about who can operate a "treatment" house and hold those people accountable.

In Surrey, B.C., they are realizing the need for such rules; they have an epidemic of poorly run houses there since the the government stopped funding and regulating the treatment houses in 2002. (They are now licensed by the Fraser Health Authority.) The ability to make a quick buck off the backs of the vulnerable has exponentially increased with this switch.

I truly believe there are many who have a huge heart and desire to work with people in recovery and help them attain their highest potential, but unfortunately the damage of the few who are in it for the quick money gets the most attention, for the harm they can do is compounding an already devastating problem.

I am very aware as well that the population of a treatment house can have some seriously bad folks in it - total social pariahs - but I need to believe they, too, can change, for I was once someone who was "never going to change," but with love, it is amazing at how one's life can be impacted.

We must not forget about those who have moved indoors. In Site, the legal place to shoot drugs here in Vancouver, makes a person shooting up less visible; it does not mean they still do not do it.

Brothels are another way to move a problem indoors and have been considered a disaster in Amsterdam [2], whose police force has said, "We are in the mist of modern slavery."

Yet here in Canada, we are hearing a legal challenge to our country's prostitution laws. I, for one, hope the challenges do not allow for it to be legalized, but instead opens the eyes of lawmakers as to how the laws need to be changed to make the act of buying sex ironclad illegal.

All my friends travel to foreign countries and work with the poor and try to improve their lives through medical care, drinking water and sewing machines...

Would we argue that we should legalize prostitution in those countries as a viable way for those women to make money? That we should open some brothels so they can have that choice? Or would we look on them as broken people in dire situations who need practical help to avoid coming to that conclusion for their lives. Whether women are selling ourselves for bread, narcotics or a Gucci purse, I think we need to look at it all in the same light.

Putting the homeless in shelters and drug addicts and alcoholics in treatment houses are all good beginnings, but just because a problem has been moved indoors does not mean the problem has gone away. It does not mean that lives are still not in peril and in need of serious intervention; it only means you no longer have to look at it and get to feel like the problem has been solved.

Putting the problem in the proverbial closet is not inherently bad as long as the walls are glass and the light is on in there. We need the walls to be transparent so the darkness that usually hides things is not hiding further abuses.