SURVIVAL SEX

Despite the Many Dangers, Women Still Work the Streets

Have sex or die. This message is a daily mantra for a set of
middle-aged women down to underage girls in Prince George.

They work the streets, suffering illnesses caused by weather exposure
or drugs or disease. They suffer violence at the hands of men who
attempt to own them at home or in the act of sex.

These women are making no excuses for their desperate grapple with
addiction, but they are demanding help from the public for the
assaults they suffer.

"I've never had a pimp and I never will," said one sex-trade worker,
who is surviving on the streets of Prince George. She is in her early
20s and she will be known in this article as Jane. "I'll support my
own habit, not anyone else's while they sit there and wait for me. I'm
the one doing the job, right?"

Jane said she and a cluster of downtown girls are independents in the
local sex trade. The ones who have direct pimps "aren't allowed to
come downtown, they're barely allowed to talk to us, they aren't
allowed to socialize."

Jane shows classic signs of heavy addiction. She can't sit still
without fidgeting. She makes frequent trips to the bathroom, often
without a word of warning. Her hands and posture are often clenched.
She is easily distracted, moves jerkily and speaks in fits and starts.
She is one of the ones trying hardest to quit the lifestyle, said
Christal Capostinsky, a UNBC student and mother, who runs the New Hope
Society, a downtown drop-in centre for sex workers.

Capostinsky can talk as a peer because it wasn't so long ago that she
was working the streets to survive.

"The work for recovery is constant and it is always a possibility. You
can never count any of these people out. This year there have been
three women I know of who have exited the life. They are doing well,"
said Capostinsky. "They need positive support from the public, a lot
of encouragement, let them know they are worthwhile and
appreciated."

Survival sex is made dangerous by those in the public who consider it
their fate, or something they brought on themselves. Those in the life
said it is not the fault of any little girl that men used them for sex
so violently that now it is the only way they can get by day to day.
Certainly it is not the fault of any girl or woman, no matter what
they do for a living, if a man attacks them.

"They are shoved into this profession on the street and they are met
with homelessness, addiction, violence, people taking out hostilities
on them and using them," said Capostinsky. "We have had a big
challenge reaching out to the younger ones. They are ashamed,
embarrassed, scared, they don't want to admit they are a sex worker,
they don't want a target on their back."

There are a few shelters where a sex-trade worker can spend the night,
said Jane, but the need to make money weakens that option.

"We usually just walk around until we find someone we know, or we stay
over at our date's place. I've done that quite a few times," Jane
said. "Most of them are regulars. I have lots. Mostly when I go to
work it is just my regulars who pick me up or they'll call me. If they
don't call me, that's when I have to meet strangers."

A sex-trade worker recently testified in court that she charged $50 to
perform oral sex, $60 for intercourse, and $80 for both. Jane said she
has been offered as much as $300 to give oral sex, but it was a
special circumstance that seemed too risky so she turned the offer
down.

The money is to counter drug bills, which have been as much as $400 in
only a couple of hours for Jane. The crack she takes is expensive, the
high doesn't last long, and the cravings are intense.

Jane said initially she had never had a bad date, but later the
horrible experiences came out. On one date, a man slipped a drug into
her drink and she woke up in Quesnel, where he drove off and left her.
She hitchhiked back as far as Hixon then called a friend to come pick
her up. While waiting she met another girl also waiting for a ride who
had the same guy do the same thing to her.

Another time, a different man put a pillow over her face and held it
down with his knee, choking her and hitting her, yelling "I'm gonna
kill you!" but police arrived and intervened. She suffered broken
ribs, a separated shoulder and bruises in the attack.

Jane said the street girls do not see the police as
supportive.

Aside from the ever-present fear of arrest, Jane said she is wary of
them all because of the few who are rumoured to be johns. Some stories
among sex-trade workers have particular police officers paying for sex
plus extra money for silence, and others who have forced them to
perform sexual favours in exchange for leniency.

It would be easy to dismiss these as the same urban myths attached to
police in every city, but since the conviction of former Prince George
judge David Ramsay and RCMP disciplinary action attempted against a
former Prince George Mountie (the officer had the hearings stopped on
a legal technicality but senior Mounties are appealing) for similar
allegations, it is impossible to discount.

Jane said all johns are not old men, but may, in fact, be the guys
next door, local professionals, so-called "good" boys.

"Quite a few are young ones," Jane said. "A lot of them are really
rich, too. They make good coin, they drive nice vehicles. I met this
one guy not long ago, he was wearing a suit. He was actually a lawyer.
We were getting high, he had the dope, we did it in the parkade."

Those working to help the street girls stress that these are not
consensual acts of recreational affection. The one being paid is being
exploited by the one doing the buying. The avails of their body are
being taken, not freely given out of love or even common lust. The sex
done by the johns enables the hurt to be continually inflicted upon
Jane and her vulnerable colleagues.

A study by the B.C. Coalition of Experiential Women was compiled into
the March 2006 document entitled From The Curb that examined the
real-life experiences of sex-trade workers all over B.C. and the
Yukon, including Prince George. Capostinsky was a co-author. The
document is a step towards the goal of labour legislation, collective
bargaining and industry standards in a decriminalized sex trade.
Capostinsky points to New Zealand, which took such a step and is
having success.

One of the members of a New Zealand legislative committee that
examined the sex trade and changed laws to decriminalize survival sex
is Karen Ritchie, a longtime sex-trade worker and industry activist.
Ritchie said that safety for women, prevention of child abuse and
consequences for violent men are severely impaired by the current laws
in B.C.

"We (in New Zealand) now have rights that we did not have before,
simple human rights that people take for granted," she said. "We no
longer had to jeopardize our health by hiding what we did from health
workers and others. We didn't have to live under the threat of police
entrapment or corruption.

"As a sex worker in New Zealand, I now have the opportunity to move
and engage with the law in a positive way," Ritchie added. "It seems
obvious to me that legal reform, such as happened in New Zealand in
2003 is the most efficient and effective form of harm minimization in
our industry. Harm reduction approaches should equal human rights."

Some of the highlights of the new laws for the sex trade in New
Zealand include:

- - It is illegal for sex workers or clients to indulge in unprotected
commercial sex.

- - Brothel owners have to comply with the Employment
Act.

- - Anyone under the age of 18 is not allowed to work in the
industry.

From The Curb documents how, in the absence of such protections here,
Jane and her colleagues are allowed to be beaten, tortured, exploited
and harassed not just once in awhile, but several times a day and no
one in society is effectively protecting them. They not only have no
help when someone takes them to a secluded place and breaks their
bones for fun but they are also socially ostracized and forced to hide
from the police.

"These young girls are captives and forced to have sex against their
will," said Capostinsky. "If you are making choices based on your
addiction, you are less likely to make safe choices ... I firmly
believe in decriminalization. It is about reducing violence, disease,
and giving sex-trade workers power over their own lives, and not be on
the run all the time. "

Jane said she hopes to cut down on her drug intake, but that is no
easy task. Sometimes the beating possibly waiting for her in the next
car is less powerful than beating addiction, which comes with a tidal
wave of sickness and pain of its own.

Sometimes the pangs of addiction and trauma last forever. Capostinsky
explained that forever is not as long for sex-trade workers as it is
for most, due to the murder, disease, drug overdoses and physical
complications that come with the profession. "They don't call it
survival sex for nothing," she said.

The New Hope Society drop-in centre is open part time at 1046 Fourth
Ave. and can be reached at 552-0890.

Prince George RCMP have been waging extraordinary campaigns in the
last two years against the sex trade. Undercover operations have
caught dozens of suspects at a time, sometimes targeting the girls on
the street but usually targeting the men who attempt to buy sex.

Senior police officials said the sting operations are in response to
public pressure and the link between survival sex and organized crime.
The girls being purchased for sex, often violent and life-risking sex
acts, are virtually owned by drug dealers, police said.

RCMP drug and prostitution task forces are largely operated in Prince
George by Cpl. Raj Sidhu and Sgt. Tom Bethune. They explained that the
drug dealers are almost all employed by the Renegades and the Crew,
both of whom are affiliates of the Vancouver Hells Angels, who give
orders to get girls hooked on drugs, make sure they become sex-trade
workers and treat them in whatever fashion they deem necessary to
ensure cash flow. If they don't pay, torture them and in some cases
kill them.

"The hardcore prostitutes, I've seen them as young as 14 and as old as
in their 50s," said Sidhu. "I've seen them on crutches, I've seen them
sick as a dog, but they can't miss a day at work; they're out there on
the street no matter what. I remember one girl freshly missing a
tooth, both eyes black and puffed up, she just had a beating from her
boyfriend-pimp and back out on the street she goes," said Bethune.
"What amazes me is people are willing to buy sexual services from
people in that condition."

If they don't go back on the street, the consequences with their
drug-addled spouse, boyfriend or pimp are serious, and with drug debt
collectors it is even more serious.

One street-level health-care worker said the problem for sex-trade
workers is twofold: one is the fear of legal repercussions, the other
is fear of their overlords.

"We have two levels of law enforcement in this town," said the
health-care worker. "We have police and we have organized crime and
both are very real. Organized crime's presence here is major and it
reaches right into every home and business in the city. These girls
are just a tool to them, to use against the community for money and
power."

A $100 I.O.U. means little conflict for most people, but it can be a
death sentence in the addiction world.

"They (sex-trade workers) are terrified. They do whatever they have to
do to pay it off because they are afraid of being hurt or worse," the
health-care worker said. "People are getting badly beaten, tortured,
really. Until recently we had never seen guns in our line of work, but
now we've had a couple of incidents with guns right in our own building."

The health-care worker said all survival sex in Prince George is done
by people addicted to drugs, the majority of them young girls.

"They are traumatized children, often sexually abused very young, they
learned to use drugs at home, parents often got them hooked and
started their children off turning tricks for their own money, and
pretty soon they are into that cycle where it is impossible to sell
enough sex to pay all the money they owe for drugs."

Sidhu said when the RCMP looks at the whole situation, " we see the
sex-trade workers as victims. We know that the reason they do this is
drug addiction, and sometimes there are aggravating factors as well,
like abuse they suffered as children. There are awful underlying
causes that drives them to do whatever for $20, go to the crack shack,
buy dope, and do the dope to forget about it. There's a cycle there."

Police are trying, said Bethune and Sidhu, to be understanding of the
sex-trade workers in particular, but it is still their sworn oath to
uphold the law and protect the public. Political pressure and
directives from the courts, they said, advised them to push the sex
trade out of downtown, but that meant the work got done in nearby
residential areas instead and that is still the status quo. That was
compounded by the location of crack shacks in the same residential
areas, they said, and the girls never like being far away from their
drug source.

Prince George recently became home to a john school, which has worked
in other jurisdictions and seems to be a success here, too. RCMP are
supportive of that program, which works to educate men caught by
police communicating for the purposes of prostitution about the
exploitation of women.

"I don't think we have had a single person go through john school then
we pick them up again," said Sidhu.

For the police to really get the tools to help survival sex victims,
said Bethune, takes political change. Letters have to be written to
politicians and, he said, laws do change when that happens, like the
movement afoot now in Parliament to raise the age of sexual consent
from 14 to 16.

What is for certain, said Bethune, is "we will never solve
prostitution" so the next best thing is to disrupt the most heinous
parts of it, like the connections to organized crime.

"I have two kids and I've gone through it with both of them," said a
Prince George father of a sex-trade worker. "My son saw darkness at
the end of that tunnel so he got out of the drug life. The old phrase
'choose your friends wisely' was something he realized. He quit the
drugs, finished high school with honours, now he is on to further
studies and is doing quite well."

Unfortunately, the same is not so for his daughter. He said she spent
her $25,000 education fund on two years' worth of drugs. Her crack
addiction cost $1,000 a weekend at some points. Her lies started to
get as desperate as her behaviour when the money ran out. Soon she was
turning tricks to pay the drug bills.

"What's scary is you see their personality come back to what you're
used to, but whatever comes out of their mouth is (crap)," he said.
"They will say anything. Everything is a lie to get the next fix."

Dad lets her live at home as much as he can, believing the potential
dangers and unknowns grow to grave proportions if she were left to the
street. But it has cost his own personal life dearly. His
relationships with other people have been greatly strained as he tries
to deal with his daughter's addiction. She even stole his cheques and
wrote them out to herself for hundreds of dollars.

The police eventually showed up, investigating her petty crimes tied
to paying for the drugs. Even dad was a suspect at one point, but
cleared that up and found the RCMP to be helpful allies for his son,
who was also being investigated.

The daughter was still resistant, in spite of the beatings she had
received, "the physical and mental dysfunction" her dad saw, and the
pay phone calls to their house at all hours from men she called
"associates."

Dad acknowledged that, "the people seized by this desperate desire
will do whatever it takes to get that desire filled."

His son has gone out of his way to put distance between himself and
the life he almost slid into, to build a foundation, dad said. Both of
them are still clinging to hope that she will also find a way to
change her life.

In lucid moments she well knows the horrors she is inflicting on
herself and her loved ones, but dad said those moments are fleeting
before the drug sickness comes on again, followed by the short high of
the drug, followed by the crash from the high, and the cycle starts
again. If the drugs are in control, and most of the time they are, she
has no interest in rehabilitation or detoxification or even saying a
civil word, unless there is drug money in it for her, dad said.