LOVE FOR DRUG-ADDICTED DAUGHTER DRIVES NON-PROFIT

Children of the Street Society Awarded Vancouver Sun Children's Fund
$500,000 Legacy Grant to Expand and Tour Drug and Alcohol Education Program

In a tight-knit, roller-coaster relationship with an addict, it's not
uncommon to plunge into a period of tense, pregnant silence, when all
communication is lost.

Then comes hope: a bright phase when the addict seems to grasp for
recovery, and the future looks dramatically more promising, until
that loaded dynamic swings back again, reversing to what Diane Sowden
calls a "downslide."

Sowden and her 28-year-old daughter, who was recruited 14 years ago
into drug addiction, and then prostitution, are stuck on this
downslide right now.

"We're at a disconnect," Sowden said Thursday, sitting in the
Coquitlam office of the Children of the Street Society, an
organization she formed to help parents stymied by the obstacles of
getting their kids off drugs and out of the paths of predators, and
mobilize young people to be alert to the dangers of street life.

"She was doing really, really well, and now . . . she's not doing so well.

"When she was able to exit that life, she'd do well and she'd
relapse. Those are the times she'd disconnect again because she felt
she'd let everyone down and she'd be embarrassed."

They may be physically distant, but the dialogue between mother and
daughter continues: as Sowden sat listening Thursday to her young
employees as they recapped their week of work visiting schools and
giving workshops, her daughter's story echoes through everything they say.

This year, Sowden and staff have something to celebrate.

In May, the federal Tackling Violent Crime Act raised the sexual age
of consent from 14 to 16 -- an issue for which the society has
lobbied strenuously since it was founded in 1995.

This week, the Children of the Street Society was awarded with the
Vancouver Sun Children's Fund's first ever one-time legacy grant of $500,000.

The Vancouver Sun Children's Fund, a non-profit charity, has raised
$9.5 million from readers since 1981, disbursing a total of $6
million to 835 B.C. children's charities.

With these resources, Sowden's organization can plan to emphasize
their newly developed drug and alcohol education program, expand it
to schools across the province and fund the travels of their young
educators even more.

By the time Sowden launched the Children of the Street Society, she'd
been through a horrendous trial of her own.

Fourteen years ago, when her daughter was 14, and courted by a much
older pimp, Sowden did what any parent would: She took to the streets
herself, vowing to find her daughter and bring her home to the
structure and rules that would keep her safe.

The young girl's drug experimentation had turned to full-on substance
abuse. She was smoking crack cocaine and she'd already served her
first of many jail terms. At 14, she was left pregnant by her 27-year-old pimp.

When the girl was forced by her pimp to recruit other girls, Sowden
began to circulate her daughter's photograph to schools and many communities.

To her surprise, the legal system worked against her.

Her daughter's name and criminal information couldn't be revealed to
the community, as she was a juvenile offender. But since, at 14,
she'd reached what was then the legal age of sexual consent, she was
allowed to be with the pimp who had recruited her into drugs and
prostitution in the first place.

There was nowhere to turn.

She said today, her adult daughter resents how she was treated, as
social workers and social service providers pitted mother against
daughter and assumed that her involvement in the sex trade was a
choice, rather than a subjugation forced upon her by recruiters,
pimps and a severe drug addiction.

"She told me that at that time that the only thing that would have
helped her is if there was intervention against her will" -- a move
that was prohibited by law.

"Diane Sowden went to government, she went to whoever would listen,
and she was not about to drop it because it became difficult," said
Noreen Waters, a former Vancouver police detective who worked on
child pornography laws and raising the age of sexual consent before
retiring in 2003. Waters worked with Sowden on various committees
over 13 years.

"She wasn't a person who, when the going got rough, was going to back
down, Waters said."

The new sexual age of consent may not make her job easier -- only a
revolutionary education of johns and sexual predators could do that
- -- but it could alter it dramatically.

Sowden said the new legislation gives Children of the Street Society
more fodder for their workshops, as they educate men in their 20s,
men in John Schools, in detention centres and students across the
province that it's illegal to have sex with someone under the age of 16.

"We had so many American predators targeting 14-year-old girls
because it was illegal in their state, but it was free rein for them
in Canada, she said, noting that it's through sites like Craigslist,
internet messaging, Facebook and other networking portals that young
people fall into the hands of sexual predators.

"Now, they can't target the 14- or 15-year-old-kids in Canada, any
more than they would in their own state."

Sowden, who has other children besides the daughter she lost to the
streets, is now raising two of her daughter's five children.

"The fact that I'm raising my two grandchildren, who are struggling
because of the lifestyle of their mother, makes it more passionate
for me to do my work."

It could start with a text message, a lonely plea for companionship
or an invitation to a party.

On Thursday morning the young educators of the Children of the Street
Society met to recap their experiences giving workshops. The room
immediately filled with energy as they discussed how they educate
kids on how not to give too much of themselves away on Facebook and
via webcam. The group brainstormed how to change the scripts of the
monologues they present to late-elementary and secondary students
across the province, as part of the workshop Taking Care of Ourselves
& Taking Care of Others, or TCO2.

Over the last school year, TCO2 ran 406 workshops for 18,500 people
in 28 communities, and in the last year, the society doubled the
number of young people it sends out to schools.

Their monologues depict some of the more typical and realistic ways
young people could be exploited and lured into the sex trade.

Trang Doan, 26, enacts the story of a girl who slips from teenage
experimental party mode to blatant prostitution: "I went from
penthouses to the backs of cars . . . I knew any night could be my last."

Darryl McAskill, 24, tells the story of a boy who quit school, used
meth for the energy to hold down two jobs and ended up on the street,
only to be recruited.

In a monologue practice, Megan Frankham, 26, acts the part of a
tomboyish soccer star lured into the world of "erotic playmates" by a
friend who promoted herself on Craigslist, only to end up a
drug-addicted teen mom.

Frankham's scenario was especially chilling, as it mirrored recent
real life events. In May, police found five girls in the care of the
Ministry for Children and Family Development to be selling sex on the
Craigslist website.

Meetings like this happen every day, but on Thursday, it was news of
the "cold text," an anonymous message, similar to spam that arrives
in a cellphone inbox, that popped out of the conversation.

Just this week, during a workshop at a local school, a student had
piped up and held out his cell phone. He had received a cold text
message that very moment.

"It read, 'Hey, I can't tell you who I am yet, but I'm lonely, and
let's meet up,'" said COS facilitator Meghan Toal. It sounds innocent
enough, but these "cold texts" are used as bait for sexual predators.

Sowden, herself, presents a separate program called It Can Happen to
Anybody, which offers workshops to professional and parent groups,
educators, social services agencies and medical professionals
concerned with the sexual exploitation of children.

Last year, 90 of these workshops attracted 2,352 participants.

In many ways, Diane Sowden became the person she so desperately
needed 14 years ago.

"I wish someone had spoken to my daughter when she was in Grade 6 or
7. There wasn't a lot of knowledge about recruitment in the sex trade
when my daughter was being targeted. No one understood, and I was a
paranoid parent.'"

Today, at least, she and her staff can find comfort in the changes
they've seen since the organization began.

"Only in 1999 was it recognized in law that a sexually exploited
child needed protection and that he or she was not the criminal," she said.

"When I started out the phrase 'sexual exploitation' wasn't even
being used. These children were seen as prostitutes. They were just
bad kids and there was no understanding of how the recruitment happens."

In the last year, the Children of the Street Society trained hotel
employees to recognize and report when rooms are being used for
prostitution and is a leader in the push to educate people about an
expected increase in demand for prostitutes during the 2010 Olympics.

Building on the awareness that it's not a minor's choice to enter the
sex trade, Sowden and her allies will push for legislation that would
allow police officers to take action without the minor having to make
a complaint.

"If a police officer or social worker goes into a trick pad or on the
street and picks up a kid that they know is being sexually abused,
even if that person won't make a statement, they can make
recommendations for the Crown to lay charges," she said.

"That's what we'd like. But we're just not there yet."