Working 118th | APTN Investigates

Edmonton Alberta a vibrant City in the heartland of the Canadian prairies more than 1 million people call Edmonton home with one of the largest urban indigenous populations in the country but as night falls a dark side of the city comes to life in the shadows we don't choose to become awaking girl life put us there and then we do what we can to survive where we [Music] are over the last five decades more than 200 women have gone missing or been murdered in Edmonton a large number were indigenous sex workers there's been situations where our women have been found you know piece by piece um or not found at all and those families struggle with so much ambiguous loss because they have no [Music] closure I still have a deep connection with people out here to show them that no matter how bad life is you can move [Music] [Music] [Music] forward my camera person and I just landed in Edmonton and it's pretty rainy um but we're going to try and make the best of it we have uh several interviews lined up with people who are on the ground uh working in the sex industry and so we're going to hear what they have to say about it Liz calling Bol Taylor has experienced the Dark Side of these streets firsthand originally from the Enoch Cree Nation just outside of Edmonton her life was beset by trauma and family tragedy from an early age I think my mother was working to support as a as a working girl she would I think she was and she got and she got killed that way my older sister same thing she was um she had come with me to the foster home uh my last foster home so she was there from 11 till she was 16 and then she ran away and she never made it to her 17th birthday Mary Bella and Valerie calling B's murders were quietly mentioned in newspaper articles at the time she was uh Beat to Death and found in a apartment building in the outskirts of Chinatown here in Edmonton they found a gentleman um he pled down got 12 years and was out and eight and that was what my sister's life was worth so I'm the only female Survivor of my biological family poverty addiction childhood trauma underlying social issues that according to calling Bol Taylor all played a role leading up to her entering the sex trade there's lots of drugs there's lots of um abuse there's a lot of really bad stuff and I couldn't get a job and I was panicking so one of the girls that was my roommate at in the shelter said come out with me and it's here in the shadows of 118th Street and 97th Avenue that calling Taylor would spend the next 20 years working we don't choose to become a working girl life put us there and then we do what we can to survive where we are Felicia Ricard is a mate social worker in the city of Edmonton doing intake and therapy sessions by day and offering harm reduction supplies by night PR it's a glimmer of safety and understanding for sex workers on the streets working with women has always been a really strong passion of mine um you know to be able to empower another woman and to be able to work with them um is really important to me Ricard developed the street outreach program after seeing a need for support and lack of services in the city the program was designed to help women get off the streets but also used to identify them if anything happens we are collecting you know their name their next of kin who we can contact if something were to happen to them we're also we're also collecting um where their dental records are who their family doctor is and then all identifying information about them we also collect information um about their person personal wear so if they have jewelry that they never take off if they wear undergarments regularly um and that's because unfortunately some people will take trophies um in a homicide situation it's something the RCMP project care unit was tasked with a number of years ago the specialized unit formed in 2002 to investigate the growing number of missing and murdered women in the city but in 2014 the unit dissolved leaving many street level sex workers without supports and details of their last known whereabouts unrecorded there's been situations where our women have been found you know piece by piece um or not found at all and those families struggle with so much ambiguous loss because they have no closure they have no idea where their loved one is right they don't know whether they're in a basement or whether they're in a ditch somewhere an APN investigation reveals 215 women have been murdered or gone missing in Edmonton since 1971 47 were sex workers and more than half were indigenous an ongoing crisis right in our backyard and that's at times I don't think we knew it was that bad like but when you when when they when girls started going missing or they like I remember so come back we wouldn't find them find them beat up like that took away a lot of that it then it got [Music] scary with the rcmp's project Care Unit no longer in operation Outreach workers like Felicia Ricard have taken it upon themselves to patrol the streets she routinely hands out bad date lists which provid sex workers a description of clients appearances vehicles and dangers to watch out for and then when I heard that I now last night this guy I kind of thought so I said they describe the driving bu s I'm lucky7 yeah he's been out a lot I took that picture of him cuz he was circling me while she was reporting to me oh really yeah so keep an eye out his plates on there okay cool thank you yeah of course and if you guys ever have any that you need to report let me know okay you know it's never a fun situation to have to take somebody to the hospital because they've been assaulted or have to fill out a bad date report or call police because they've been assaulted or something has happened to them that means that they're struggling right um many of them have said that every car that they get into they sell a piece of their soul when they get into that car as early as 1987 experts believed a serial killer was responsible for the large number of missing and murdered women it's a theory that persisted throughout the decades the site where the remains of Dolores Brower and now Cory OT and brigh were found in a rural aduk county is within a 5 mile radius of where Katie Valentine was found back in 2003 and where Amber tuero was found in 2012 I can also tell you that one of the investigative theories in relation to these deaths is that we may be dealing with a serial Predator but I've worked in Winnipeg I worked in canora I worked in a lot of places Ottawa Toronto but of all the places the I think this one was just Edington was the scariest really yeah there's a lot of predators here in Edington and a lot of girls went missing here a lot we took care of each other we had to because so many went missing and Bones were f found a few years later when like when the girls that we that were gone they would find they found outside of Edmonton um even though I've been off the street for about 11 years now almost 11 years it'll be 11 years in September I still have a deep connection with people out here to show them that it is a possibility that no matter how bad life is there you can move forward but it's hard incredibly hard but I'll come back I'll be back around and then I can take you to see Felicia and maybe we can do a little bit there to help you get through this okay and I hope to see you very soon okay all right you take [Music] care [Music] Felicia Ricard drives the streets of Edmond in to offer supports for vulnerable women in the city and 118th Avenue is on her nightly route the stretch of road is infamously known as the heart of the city's sex trade it's also the last known whereabouts for several sex workers and Indigenous women who have vanished house like you would have to go to guys's houses get half killed there sometimes or like like right now more places we're hearing about all these this rapist guy they should have more of the people that drive around and watch us but we got you guys you guys are all we got left yeah really we got honestly but they need to try and get us housing cuz we're thing that we don't have that's the main thing that we don't have is housing yeah like housing I would even be [Music] honest Ricard says the creation of the bad date list is part of an ongoing effort to create ways to make sex work safer in the city um I'll never forget the first time that a participant was murdered um those things like you become such a big part of their life and in doing that you form these really important relationships and they become such a big part of your life [Music] right [Music] yeah we'd have you know maybe three or four maybe five to six girls in one area and then the the dates would pull up and point and you'd go um the police would come around and everything would just disappear and then yeah maybe in an hour or two and then You' go back and do it again Liz calling B Taylor has been off the streets and out of the industry for more than 10 years now she agreed to take APN investigates back to one of the neighborhoods she used to work you do learn very quickly what you can or cannot do out here um and if some if a girl test gives you a say this vehicle don't go in it you don't um some of them didn't listen and then we never saw them again but there's a lot of that out here in Edmonton I remember one two when I was out here that would have been the start about 20 years ago that because that was when it was still here I remember four girls going missing in a span of a year and a half of the more than 200 women who have gone missing over the last 40 plus years in the Edmonton area many were found in rural areas on the outskirts of the city and many of the victims were indigenous women I lost so many people out here people I loved people who were family but at the same time so many survived and those are the ones that I still hang out with this very day even though I'm in a different world than they are now but this was home this was home for well over 20 years the sex trade industry has evolved over the years no longer only found on the streets sex work has become more mainstream and accepted I felt just kind of like this this weight on me when I first started dancing I was talking to one of my co-workers and I was like is this supposed to is this supposed to feel bad and she was like no it's a business this is your business this is income this is you working a way of reclaiming power that Rings true for this local sex worker and Advocate known only by their working name cinnamon I felt a lot of anxiety and still do time to time um because of boundaries and not being able to set my own boundaries and just like feeling like I couldn't say no a lot of the time um that also left very very quickly when I realized that it's all up to me and I get to choose everything and that made me feel very powerful they say it's important for the public to know that there are differences between sex work and sex trafficking and that not all sex workers are being exploited for example exle here um there there's a lot of different circumstances to safety when it comes to sex work because working in a studio you have the safety net of people working with you you know so if something has gone wrong um you have the ability to open the door and somebody is here and they are there for you and ready to support you according to cinnamon with the decriminalization of sex work the industry could be better regulated and made safer for workers with decrim as well I as I I think I said it before but just like um we would be able to have our safety nets available to us like a like a bodyguard or a driver or like having a backup phone number so people know where you are for an out call um essentially decriminalization is our safety and our well-being so you can go on the internet and find them a lot easier it's a it's more um Anonymous you don't have to the Johns don't have to drive around um downtown looking for um some of the girls work in the streets it's it's a lot easier now to um remain hidden for the for the Johns staff sergeant Chris Hayes is with the Alberta law enforcement Response Team otherwise known as alert alert the unit was established in 2006 to combat organized and serious crime including human trafficking there's specific websites that are out there for escorts to use and same with human trafficking or human traffickers use it to traffic their victims um but that's the majority of the sex trade that we see in Emon now there still is of course um Street prostitution uh but it's not as um prevalent as it was some years ago while street level sex work may not be as prevalent human trafficking is on the rise in the last 3 years the alert unit have laid more than 300 charges through human trafficking investigations a lot of times what we see is uh a main trafficker is typically a male and he will have have um kind of his his number one girl who works for him who will recruit other girls uh but she's also been trafficked at the start too and it they almost um do it so that they don't have to work in the sex trade anymore they they they find someone else they lure someone else they procure them they teach them what to do uh so that they don't have to do that according to Hayes there are many challenges to identify if a person is being trafficked as the sex work industry has shifted with online use there's sometimes a misconception from the purchasers that uh they these girls are doing it willingly um there's not very many girls that are out there doing it willingly a rock bottom to me for my was what am I more afraid of dying a change it would be more than 20 years on the streets before she decided she wanted a different life there was an older average a woman um on the corner and I and it it it stuck with me it she was almost 60 and here she is in the middle of the winter wearing rubber boots and u a winter coat and she's trying to make money to for her habit and all I could think of was that I I can't that I will never do got calling B Taylor says the trauma and violence she endured on the streets were hard on her family and that she couldn't imagine the devastation it would bring to her loved ones if she were to go missing or be murdered I couldn't quit the money but then I also couldn't cope with how I was feeling about there was a lot of guilt and shame in what I was doing and I couldn't stop I just didn't want to die out here I and I didn't want to leave leave that that kind of memory with my children it's okay cry it out let it out don't hold on to it but in reality it does feel like it's part it's always going to be a part of me this being out here it made me who I am today and I understand that but it doesn't take away there's a lot of anger here too it's a part of you but it's it's not not that's not me anymore no it's not no it never was I understand that but it doesn't change the feelings I get from being down here like the it brings back that loneliness that there's something wrong with me and why me all that [Music] stuff it is not easy to go through the healing process in any way shape or form everything's happened so organically and with my journey to get to here here and I'm really proud that I can do this and be open and share and not be ashamed of what I what I did to survive to get to where I [Music] am

Channel: APTN News

Views: 12,513

Keywords: aptn, national, news

Id: SlsKJOOWR1U

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 28 2023