KENNEDY BLASTS VANDU FOR CONDONING ADDICTION

Families of Vancouver's missing women are accusing the Vancouver Area
Network of Drug Users of helping their relatives stay addicted to drugs,
says outgoing councillor Lynne Kennedy.

Kennedy made the comment after speaking to several families of the 67 women
missing from the Downtown Eastside to help find ways to keep drug-addicted
women out of the sex trade. Kennedy, who won council approval in March to
undertake the study, filed her report Thursday.

"VANDU has managed to gain a lot of attention recently but I can tell you
for a fact the missing women's group I was working with are not in support
of VANDU," Kennedy said. "They believe VANDU's policies simply kept the
women addicted to drugs. The families were adamant they wanted their family
members to recover, not continue in a drug-addicted way.

"Families were saying if the groups in the area had put some time into
helping their daughters or sisters or aunts, maybe they would still be around."

However, Dean Wilson, president of VANDU-which is funded by the Vancouver
Coastal Health Authority-insists the organization advocates for harm
reduction but does not encourage drug use.

"That's crap. We try to build self-esteem and get people out of it that
way," Wilson said. "We are a bunch of users and ex-users that advocate to
improve the health of users and it's a fallacy we keep people on drugs."

Kennedy's report is also critical of the role played by the police board,
headed by outgoing Mayor Philip Owen, in handling the missing women case.

Kennedy said that, as head of the board, Owen did little to help the
families and initially rejected their demands that a $100,000 reward be
offered for information leading to the arrest of anyone involved in the
disappearances. The same amount had been offered for anyone with
information on a series of garage break-ins on the West Side.

"I'm not sure Philip has ever been responsive to the missing women and I've
always found it mystifying," said Kennedy, who did not run for re-election
in the recent civic election. "I lost my temper in council last March and
said we ought to do something to come up with recommendations to prevent
something like this happening in the future."

Those recommendations include an audit of service providers in the Downtown
Eastside to determine their effectiveness, creating on-demand detox-there's
now a two-month waiting list-and recovery services and introducing
sensitivity training for emergency services and media.

Det. Scott Driemel, former spokesman for the Vancouver Police Department's
Missing Women's Taskforce, resigned from the role recently after it was
revealed he had made jokes about sex trade workers.

Kennedy said families were also disturbed that the only emergency shelters
for people with intellectual disabilities are in the Downtown Eastside,
thereby exposing those people to drug dealers and a ready market for
prostitutes.

Angela Jardine, one of the missing women, had a mental capacity of an
11-year-old and lived in the Downtown Eastside's Portland Hotel Society
when she disappeared in November 1998.

Kennedy said some families of the missing women did not participate in the
report because it was either too painful or they were part of a group that
is considering suing the police department.

"It took the persistence of these women's loved ones to bring to the
public's attention the problem of disappearing women," she wrote in her
report. "It took their determination to get the police to listen to them.
Unfortunately by the time the awareness had sunk in, a horror would surface."

Robert Pickton, a Port Coquitlam pig farmer, has been charged with the
murders of 15 of the missing women.

Owen was not available for comment at the Courier's press time.