BC Coalition of Experiential Communities

Petition: City of Vancouver trying to cancel March for Murdered and Missing Women for Olympics

City of Vancouver trying to change the March for Murdered and Missing Women
to make way for Olympics 

http://www.petitiononline.com/feb14/petition.html 

It has been brought to our attention that the City of Vancouver, Olympic
officials, and the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit are trying to
change the historic Feb 14, 2010, March for Murdered and Missing Women in
order to ensure 'flow of Olympic traffic' down Hastings Street. 

As residents of the DTES and supporters of the Memorial March, we completely
oppose any change in date, time, or route of the Memorial March. This March
has been happening for 18 years to honour our sisters who die each year due
to the violence of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual abuse. It is
something far more significant and sacred than the Olympic Games, which has
already increased poverty, homelessness, and policing in our neighbourhood.
The government is spending billions on a circus, while putting people aside.

We, the women in the Downtown Eastside and our supporters, demand that:
. There be no attempts to change or control our Feb 14th Memorial March .
Not a single person be forcibly removed, evicted, or displaced from their
homes in the Downtown Eastside and any other community due to the Olympics.

FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE – September 24, 2009

Advocates
for sex workers’ and women’s rights are demanding an end to the Salvation
Army “The Truth Isn’t Sexy” campaign.

On
September 25, 2009, the Salvation Army is asking its supporters to
participate in “group prayers” where they will place mannequins in
tattered white dresses stained with fake blood outside strip clubs and
massage parlours.

In
2008, the Salvation Army launched the campaign with a series of shocking
public advertisements depicting women in situations of danger and
violence. The upcoming “weekend of prayer” will take place in cities
around the world and will involve actions targeting sex workers and their
workplaces. In May of this year, the
Salvation Army was forced to apologize for a similar campaign in
Australia. 

“Through
an aggressive misinformation campaign, the Salvation Army is trying to
create an unwarranted panic about human trafficking in Canada,”
says Katrina Pacey, Pivot lawyer and coordinator of the sex work human
rights campaign. “Even one instance of human trafficking is an
unacceptable tragedy but it is harmful and insulting to characterize all
sex workers as trafficking victims.”

Pivot
Legal Society, FIRST and other prominent sex workers’ and women’s
advocacy groups have joined together to speak out against the Salvation
Army and their campaign. Other coalition members include the BC Coalition
of Experiential Communities, Prostitution Alternatives Counselling &
Education (PACE) Society, WISH Drop-In Centre, the Naked Truth,
SWAN and the Sex Professionals of Canada.

“It
is completely unacceptable that the Salvation Army excluded sex workers
from the development of this campaign,” says Esther Shannon of FIRST. “It
is widely accepted that the expertise of sex workers is critical to
effective anti-trafficking campaigns. Failing to collaborate with sex
workers and other key stakeholders does nothing to further the safety and
rights of the women and children that are trafficked into Canada
each year.”

For further information, please follow the following
links to statements and reports on the reality of human trafficking in Canada:

• 
Letter from FIRST to Salvation
Army

•  Fact sheet about
trafficking in Canada (FIRST)

•  Human
Trafficking, Sex Work Safety and the 2010 Games: Assessments and
Recommendations (Front Line Consulting) 

•  Trafficking
in Persons and the 2010 Olympics (Global Alliance Against Traffic in
Women). 

•  Salvation
Army campaign website

Media contacts:

Katrina Pacey (Pivot sex work human rights campaign)  tel. 604 729
7849

Esther Shannon (FIRST) tel. 604 254 9963

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/crime/story/75990.html

KANSAS CITY — A former area woman and the man
she lived with in Blue Springs, Mo., pleaded guilty Thursday in federal
court to the sex trafficking of the woman’s daughter.

Todd Barkau, 37, started training the daughter at age 12 to be a
dominatrix and engage in sado-masochistic sex acts. He pleaded guilty
in U.S. District Court in Kansas City to commercial sex trafficking of
a minor. He will be sentenced to 25 years in prison as part of a plea
agreement with prosecutors.
The girl’s 45-year-old mother pleaded guilty to the same charge. Her plea agreement calls for a 15-year sentence.

The
Star is not naming her to protect the identity of her daughter. The
mother was the first parent in the United States to be charged with the
commercial sex trafficking of their child in a human trafficking case,
prosecutors said at the time charges were filed last year
The couple formerly lived in Blue Springs, a Kansas City suburb.
When
the girl was 12, Barkau began training her to engage in acts of sexual
bondage, domination, sadism and masochism with him and others,
according to prosecutors. When the victim was 14, Barkau set up an
online business, marketing her as Mistress Alisha in both online and
in-person sexual encounters.
The girl’s mother assisted in the business and received financial compensation, prosecutors said.
The victim, who is now 22, attended the plea hearings and told the judge that she approved of the plea agreements.
Barkau and the woman will be sentenced after pre-sentence investigations are completed.

John Coté, Chronicle Staff Writer <mailto:jcote@sfchronicle.com>

The program operated by the San Francisco district attorney’s office
targeting customers of prostitutes has ill-defined goals and no way to
determine its effectiveness, according to a new audit by the city’s budget
analyst.

Despite being touted as a national model that comes at no cost to taxpayers,
the audit said the program didn’t cover its expenses in each of the last
five years, leading to a $270,000 shortfall.

The program has first-time offenders arrested for soliciting a prostitute
pay as much as $1,000 for a one-day class taught by sex-trafficking experts,
former prostitutes and others in exchange for having the misdemeanor charge
dropped. The program was $49,000 in the red last year, the audit said.

District Attorney Kamala Harris’ office disputes that the program is
ineffective and says the 14-year-old First Offender Prostitution Program,
begun eight years before she was elected district attorney, paid for itself
during its first nine years and will do so again.

“There have been a few years in which the revenue generated has not exceeded
expenditures,” said Erica Derryck, a spokeswoman for Harris. “We’re actively
implementing cost controls to prevent this from being an ongoing pattern.”

Those steps include using on-duty police officers rather than paying
overtime for the eight undercover prostitution stings a month that the
program covers, authorities said.

The audit was requested last year by then-Supervisor Jake McGoldrick before
an ultimately unsuccessful ballot measure to decriminalize prostitution in
the city.

Budget Analyst Harvey Rose’s audit said the program is not “sufficiently
comprehensive” to be “effective in reducing recidivism or assisting women to
leave prostitution.”

Harris’ staff disputes that, noting that the program has been replicated in
37 other locations nationwide.

Prosecutors also point to a 2008 report commissioned by the National
Institute of Justice that found men who attended San Francisco’s so-called
“john school” were about 30 percent less likely to reoffend.

But even researchers in that two-year study said the reports’ findings were
unexpected.

“While the program has a sensible curriculum and was generally well executed
… (its) low-intensity and brief intervention, which lacks aftercare, led
us not to expect a statistically significant impact,” the report said.

The budget analyst says the program has no clearly defined goal. Various
documents say the program reduces the demand for prostitution through
education, reduces recidivism and assists women in leaving prostitution,
according to the audit.

But the district attorney’s office doesn’t have the resources to measure
recidivism, including if the person reoffends in another county, and the
nonprofit group that provides social services to prostitutes does not track
the number of women who left the profession, the audit says.

Paul Henderson, chief of administration for the district attorney, said even
if auditors were unsure, the program’s goal was clear: cut reoffending among
solicitors of street prostitution in the city.

“The two-year NIJ study shows that the program has been effective,” he said.

E-mail John Coté at jcote@sfchronicle.com.

Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/19/BAT519OMJL.DTL#i

An Ontario judge was wrong to prohibit two religious groups and a conservative women’s group from supporting the country’s prostitution laws at a coming constitutional challenge, the Ontario Court of Appeal said Tuesday. In a 3-0 ruling, the appeal court said that the groups have a legitimate contribution to make to an issue that has a clear moral dimension. It ruled that Mr. Justice Ted Matlow of the Ontario Superior Court misunderstood the case and used flawed reasoning when he concluded that groups would be out of place making moral arguments during the trial. The groups were the Christian Legal Fellowship, REAL Women of Canada and the Catholic Civil Rights League.

 Full report by Kirk Makin for the Globe & Mail, 22 Sep 2009

: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/…rticle1297813/