VICTORIA'S SAFE HAVEN ON WHEELS

PEERS Staff Provides City's Prostitutes A Few Moments' Respite From
Life On The Streets

Christie hasn't eaten in two days, and eagerly grabs the instant
noodles and coffee offered as she steps into the PEERS motorhome on a
rainy Tuesday night.

The 20-year-old sex trade worker stuffs granola bars into her pink
fur purse, along with condoms and clean needles. New clothes -- now
that takes a little longer.

Her last client told her that her green top didn't match her black
and red flowered skirt. Donated clothes fill a closet at the back of
the motorhome and are soon spread across the seat as Christie
searches for something.

"How's this?" she says, pulling a too-large and thin coat over her camisole.

"Nice, but will it keep you warm enough?" asks Tammy Arnault, one of
two outreach workers in the motorhome that is out on the street every
night, providing a warm and safe refuge for Victoria's sex trade
workers. Arnault gently suggests another sweater underneath to
Christie, who is thin and looks younger than 20.

Christie takes the advice, and socks and underwear too.

She has the jerky motions that sometimes accompany a drug binge. She
is open about being a heroin addict, having started using five years
ago, about the same time she started as a sex trade worker. She had
quit school three years before "when I was 12 or 13" and ran away
from a foster home. She met up with a "bunch of older Latino guys"
who set her up on "dates" for a few years before she took to working
the street full-time.

Now, she doesn't have a regular home and on Tuesday, was unsure where
she would spent the night. Maybe with a guy she knows in Prospect Lake.

"I don't know," she shrugs. But for the moment, she's warm, rifling
through the clothes and chatting with Arnault and Cheri Jacobs,
co-ordinators of the PEERS (Prostitutes Empowerment Education and
Resource Society) outreach program.

When Arnault and Jacobs started about five years ago, there was no
motorhome. They simply walked the different strolls with Arnault's
pitbulls Bailey and Isis, carrying backpacks filled with candies and
condoms to give to the women.

Now, they drive the motorhome -- money was donated last year by two
anonymous Victoria businessmen -- to a couple of different parking
spots each night, all close to the working areas of the sex trade.

The difference in the number of people they can reach and help is dramatic.

As the 23-foot vehicle rolls to a stop at the corner of Government
and Discovery at 9 p.m. each night, it looks more like a traveller
who has taken the wrong turn than an innovative way to help sex trade
workers stay safe. In a typical month about 80 individual women pop
by, some several nights a week. The motorhome is on the street seven
nights a week, from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. and has given out more than
10,000 clean needles in a year.

The motorhome is unmarked, but the workers know it as the place to
get everything from food to a place to nap, chat or use the bathroom
and brush their teeth. Arnault and Jacobs, or one of several other
outreach workers are always there, willing to listen and help.

"These ladies don't judge us, but they're always there to help," said
Ann, a 35-year-old mother of three who works as a sex trade worker in
Victoria and also has a "straight job" working with the elderly in
another city.

Another woman pops in, asking for condoms and a cigarette. In her
puffy down jacket, slim jeans, black boots and backpack, she looks
like a fit soccer mom and says she'll stop by later to talk.

"I've got to earn some money first," she says, heading back to a Rock
Bay corner. It has been a slow night and she's irritated yet resigned
at being hit by eggs earlier in the night, thrown by a carload of
teenage girls. Often, carloads of people, usually kids, toss things:
cups of urine, sometimes bleach or pennies.

It's warm and cosy in the motorhome, with coffee, tea, hot chocolate,
sandwiches, snacks that can be taken along and eaten quickly between
jobs on offer.

The aim of PEERS is to support sex workers, be it in dealing with
addictions, leaving the trade if they so wish and in keeping safe.

Tacked up inside the motorhome are pictures of missing women, notices
of released sex offenders, thank-you notes on scraps of paper, a bad
date list -- a stocky blond man who held a cleaver to one woman's
neck, another man likes to burn fingertips.

It helps that Arnault and Jacobs know what the job is like, both
having worked on the street before.

Arnault said it's a misconception that everyone working in the sex
trade is drug addicted, although there are many who are.

"Some do it to feed a habit, but there are so many different reasons
and backgrounds. Some people have a baby and no other way to feed and
clothe their children. Or it could be all they know. They may have
been abused."

Though Arnault's parents were heroin addicts, she never had an
addiction. She didn't have a lot growing up and it was exciting to
have the money to treat herself well.

But she grew tired of it after 10 years. She went to PEERS and took
one of their programs five years ago. At the time, she thought it was
"boring," but she gradually saw changes in herself. She started to
look people in the eye, instead of looking at the ground.

"The program changed my life and I want to do the same for other
girls. A lot of the clients I work with I know from my previous life
and it shows them, I did it. You can change your life too."

Money raised through the Victoria Idol music competition, which has
its grand finale Saturday night at the Alix Goolden Hall, will go
toward the outreach program, ensuring it continues and possibly
expands to help more people. Ten singers will vie for the top prize
- -- a $3,000 recording gig -- and the thrill of being Victoria's first "Idol."