Illegal sex trade
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Murders of women in Ontario shine some light on a
world of illicit sex and street drugs
Patrons leave Seductions Gentlemen's Club
on Lundy's Lane in Niagara Falls, Ont. While Seductions and other men's clubs
operate legally, many of them are located in an area of the city that draws
men and women involved in drugs and the sex trade
Derek Gee/Buffalo News
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THE DARK SIDE OF THE FALLS
By MAKI BECKER News Staff Reporter
2/5/2006 found at http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060205/1017566.asp
NIAGARA FALLS, Ont. - Around the corner from a
landing pad for helicopter rides and the construction site of an indoor water
park, a person walking through a desolate, wooded area off Whirlpool Road made a
grisly discovery Jan. 24.
Wrapped in a sheet, amid garbage and large animal bones, were the remains of
22-year-old Cassey Joyce Cichocki, who had disappeared more than a month
earlier.
She was last seen near an empty storefront in downtown Niagara Falls.
She was the fifth woman who had led what Canadian authorities politely call a
"high risk lifestyle" to be found slain in or around the Niagara Falls
region over the last 11 years.
Police soon arrested a man they believe responsible for Cichocki's death, but
the murders have exposed the underbelly of this falls-side city, better known in
the United States for its breathtaking vistas, the Skylon Tower and its
revolving restaurant, two bustling casinos and the neon-lit tourist spots.
In the midst of theme park-like Clifton Hill and just a short drive west
through Ferry Street and Lundy's Lane, or north of the city's sparkling tourist
spots is a Niagara Falls teeming with illicit sex, drugs, massage parlors and
strip clubs. "Of course there is an underworld in Niagara Falls," said
Michelle, who identified herself as a 43-year-old street sex trade worker.
Michelle said she usually works in Toronto and Hamilton, Ont., but noted she
once made $900 in two hours turning tricks near the casino in Niagara Falls.
"I picked up four rich men, went to their hotel rooms," she said.
It's another side of this city of fewer than 80,000 that draws nearly 14
million visitors a year - a side that isn't spotlighted by the tourism bureau,
which beckons "Discover Niagara Falls. There's more to us than meets the
eye."
One who left the
street
Deb Nanson knows this other Niagara Falls all too well.
Until two years ago, she was a street prostitute who sold her body for money
to buy crack cocaine in Niagara Falls, and then later in Hamilton. Nanson went
clean and stopped selling sex after being busted in Hamilton in a crack house.
She now runs Come Walk a Mile Addiction Services in Hamilton, Ont., an outreach
group that works with drug addicts and sex workers.
Nanson, 45, the granddaughter of a Falls daredevil who survived a plunge over
the falls, grew up in this city. She was raised down the street from Dawn
Stewart, the first victim in the five homicides now being revisited by
authorities. Stewart's skeletal remains, along with those of her 6-month-old
fetus, were found on a dirt road near a farm in Pelham in 1996. "We got
high together," Nanson recalled of her old friend. "She was a sex
trade worker, but she was a good mom."
She realizes she could easily have ended up dead herself, whether by a killer
or by the drugs. On Friday, Nanson stood at Ferry Street and Sylvia Place by the
Lundy's Lane Historical Museum, recalling how that had been her spot for picking
up tricks. "This is the corner," she said, pointing out the back
parking lot and the alleyway just around the way where she would go with her
customers. "My stomach's in knots," she said, admitting that even
after being clean for nearly 19 months, she still considers herself an addict.
Prostitution laws fuzzy
Canada's laws involving prostitution are not exactly clear-cut,
and Canadian strip clubs are legally allowed to have all-nude dances as well as
lap-dances, leaving a lot of gray area that is readily exploited by frisky
customers and cash-driven dancers.
"The basic idea is prostitution itself is not illegal," explained
Brenda Cossman, a law professor at the University of Toronto. "But
solicitation of prostitution is."
Canada's criminal codes specifically ban street prostitution and brothels,
called common bawdy houses. It's also illegal in Canada to live off the proceeds
of a prostitute - a law designed to prevent pimping, but a law that could be
applied to the children of prostitutes and a partner of a prostitute. "It's
a bizarre situation," Cossman said.
The law allows a customer to call for an escort and have her, or him, meet
for sex at the john's home or a hotel room that the john has rented, said
Valerie Scott, executive director of Toronto-based Sex Professionals of Canada.
But it's illegal for a john to meet the escort at her residence or even a hotel
room the escort has rented, because that place could then be considered a common
bawdy house.
Scott, whose group advocates decriminalizing prostitution, believes the law
puts prostitutes in danger. "If it's your place where you're comfortable
with your own surroundings, then you know there aren't three guys hiding in a
closet," Scott said.
Operating a bawdy house can be punishable by up to two years in jail, she
said. And police have been known to confiscate everything from a home determined
to be a bawdy house, she said. "The police can and do show up with moving
vans when they arrest someone, and they take absolutely everything."
Fears of serial killer
Although police quickly arrested a suspect in Cichocki's death, they don't
know whether they have a modern day Jack the Ripper on their hands - or if
they're faced with a disturbing increase in violent behavior toward women
involved in stripping, prostitution and drugs.
Sex workers throughout Ontario are worried about a possible serial killer
targeting them, Michelle said. Street sex-trade workers like herself face many
kinds of dangerous predators, she said. "I remember hearing about a guy in
Hamilton who was sleeping with women and giving them AIDS," she said.
"I knew I was safe because I always use a condom. But it's scary what some
guy will do to the girls. You never know what is going to happen to you."
Four out of the five Niagara Falls victims "worked the streets,"
said Detective Sgt. Cliff Sexton of the Niagara Regional Police, who is heading
the task force.
The other one, Nadine Gurczenski, 26, who was found dead in 1999 in a ditch
in Vineland, was an exotic dancer.
But with the street women, he said, "the driving force was drugs."
Sexton, a longtime investigator in Niagara Falls, said drugs and prostitution
have always plagued the city. "I don't see it as a growing problem,"
he said. "But I do think there's a problem."
Nanson recounted how she had slid into her dark life. First, she got hooked
on cocaine and then crack, became increasingly desperate for money.
"Stealing didn't cover my addiction," she said. "First, I
stole. Then I robbed. Then the sex trade. I thought it was glamorous. I would
think, "He's picked me.' "
While drugs are a major problem among street workers, escorts - who probably
make up the majority of prostitutes in Canada - aren't as affected, said Scott,
of the Sex Professionals of Canada.
"What you're seeing on the street, a lot of times, are crack addicts
turning tricks to get high," she said. "And that really is a different
issue than prostitution . . . But that being said, we still consider them our
sisters. Even though they're doing it for the drug money, they're still doing
it."
Dancers provide
extras
Niagara Falls' strip clubs are legitimate, but it's an open secret
that there are plenty of dancers in some clubs who are willing to provide
"extras" if the price is right.
A quick scan of an online chat site about one such club includes postings on
recollections of sex acts performed in private back rooms as well as questions
and advice about taking a dancer from the club back to a hotel. "You have
to pay the club a release fee and then the girl for her time," one poster
explained. "By the time you pay both fees you're better off paying for an
escort . . ."
The Canadian government has taken steps to try to regulate the adult
entertainment industry through special licenses, similar to those issued to taxi
cab drivers and street food vendors.
Niagara Regional Police Services currently has licenses issued to 2,238
people in the adult entertainment business; about 40 are operators, the rest are
exotic dancers.
Police throughout Ontario have taken some steps to stem violence against
women in the sex trade without punishing them for reporting attacks.
Niagara Regional Police and Toronto Police operate "Bad Date"
hotlines - toll free phone lines that allow women to anonymously report
robberies, assaults and rapes. That information is put into a database and used
to identify potential serial predators.
The task force will mine this database for any possible clues to help them
solve the homicides, Sexton said.
Sex worker advocates also maintain their own "bad date" Web sites
where they list descriptions, even cell phone numbers, of customers who stood
them up, refused to pay, got violent or forced them to do things that hadn't
been previously agreed to.
Nanson is now trying to start a self-monitoring program through her
organization to help keep tabs on sex trade workers. If the sex worker fails to
check in, Nanson's volunteers call around, then go to the police. Like other
Canadian sex workers and their advocates, Nanson knows how critical it is for
there to be some sort of safeguard for women in the sex trade.
She points out Vancouver, where Robert William Pickton is on trial for the
murder of 27 prostitutes from that city. For years, police there dismissed the
women's disappearances - until their remains were found at Pickton's pig farm.
"We don't want another Vancouver," Nanson said.
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WEBCAST:
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YOUR GIRLS ARE IN DANGER !
The FBI estimates that there are well over 100,000 children and teens in the
United States -- most of them young girls -- being trafficked in the sex
trade. (ABC News)
Sex-trade traffickers and pimps target young girls at shopping malls.
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