This is part 4 in the series currently running in the Edmonton Journal.
____________________________________________________
Braving threats, hostility to defend women at risk
High-profile work as advocate for sex workers exacts high toll on personal life
Renata D'aliesio
The Edmonton Journal
Monday, June 20, 2005
In a probing six-part series, Journal crime reporter Renata D'Aliesio writes about the people who sell and buy sex, how the industry works and its local impact.
- Friday: Rashmi struggles to escape street life while a serial killer prowls
- Saturday: Johns go to school
- Sunday: The secret life of escorts
- Today: The lobbying prostitute
- Tuesday: The boom in porn videos
- Wednesday: Life after prostitution
EDMONTON -- Among the belongings of two of the women found slain outside Edmonton in recent years, police investigators found Carol-Lynn Strachan's business card.
They told her so when they questioned her. They wanted to know why.
"To me this indicates only one thing," Strachan tells a committee of federal politicians reviewing Canada's prostitution laws. "They wanted to come inside, get off the streets and work in a safer environment."
Later that March day, the MPs hear privately from other prostitutes in an office on 118th Avenue. As has increasingly become the case over the past 10 years, Strachan is the only Edmonton prostitute to speak publicly.
She has worked as a prostitute for nearly three decades. She began in high school at a house party. Curiosity soon drew her to the old downtown strolls, where she picked up men when she could sneak out of her grandmother's house.
She found the street exciting but saw and felt the dangers. She knew she'd have to get off the street and work as an escort if she wanted to survive in the sex-trade industry. The move would nearly cost her her life.
Her move into the spotlight as an advocate for sex workers cost her much too.
She was beaten and threatened. She had to move three times and her homes have been repeatedly vandalized -- the word "slut" spray-painted, in one instance.
Her 19-year marriage fell apart under the strain. And her Irish Catholic family had to come to terms with the whispers of their neighbours and friends.
Strachan isn't about to back away. The mounting deaths won't let her.
"Someone has to stand up for these women," she says one afternoon at a Sherwood Park coffee shop. "Unfortunately they can't, and I will do it.
"If I have to keep moving, I'll keep moving," she says.
"That could be my picture on that billboard. I could be dead."
Strachan grew up in Morinville, about a 20-minute drive northwest of Edmonton. The baby of the family -- youngest of seven children -- she often got her way.
"I was spoiled," she says. "I was used to having everything handed and given to me."
Her parents were devout Catholics and sent Strachan to a convent school. Boys and girls mixed in classes, but entered and left the school through separate entrances.
When one of her sisters moved to Edmonton to attend graduate school at University of Alberta, Strachan, then 16, begged her parents to let her go to the city. After much pestering, they gave in.
Strachan moved in with her grandmother and enrolled at St. Joseph's high school. She remembers feeling nervous, scared. She was awestruck by Edmonton and by a group of pretty and popular girls at school.
"These girls were always dressed to the nines and they had everything."
Strachan wanted everything, too. She became friends with the girls and went with them to house parties, where the girls had sex for money.
"I went to quite a few of them before I actually did something," she says. "It was very well organized at that time. They weren't being held in some dingy basement with sheets dividing rooms and crap."
The men were older, mostly in their 30s. Alcohol and drugs were available, but Strachan didn't want to numb herself. She had intercourse for $100.
"I was a little nervous, but after it was all done, I said, 'That's it? That was pretty easy.' "
Other house parties followed, but Strachan soon became curious about the women on the street. Back then, in the late 1970s and early '80s, prostitutes worked downtown and each group -- the pretty girls, the homely girls, transsexuals and gays -- had its own strip.
"I kept asking my friends about these other girls that were downtown and they said, 'No, no, no, no.' They never wanted me to go down there and they wouldn't take me down there so I went down myself."
Over the next three years, Strachan worked the street whenever she could sneak out of her grandmother's home.
"It was a rush. A big thrill," she recalls. "It's like people who go rock climbing or bungee jumping. Some people need that adrenaline rush in their lives. That's the same thing for me.
"It's meeting the person, getting into the car, the money. It's all of it. It's all a big rush."
When mixed with drugs, the rush can be deadly. Strachan saw girls around her turn a trick and then turn to their drug dealer for a hit. The cycle was vicious, and Strachan didn't want to get caught in it.
She also never wanted a pimp, but her boyfriend became hers. It's the usual story, she says. He was older, about 10 years, and sweet in the beginning, showering her with gifts.
"They treat you like gold," she says. "Then once they suck you in, well, then you're screwed."
When Strachan tried to break free from him, he took her for a drive on Stony Plain Road to a farmer's field west of the city.
He beat her there and raped her with a beer bottle. She kicked and struggled and he beat her some more before leaving her for dead.
Her assault brings to mind the deaths of 13 prostitutes, at least 11 of them murdered, whose bodies have turned up in Edmonton and -- mainly -- in fields surrounding the city in recent years. But it has not been linked to those cases.
A passerby found her and took her to a hospital. Strachan reported the incident to the police, and her boyfriend-turned-pimp was charged. Before he went to prison for five years for the attack, he phoned her mother in Morinville.
"I didn't tell them I was a prostitute. My pimp did, as revenge," she says. "It was horrible. There was a lot of fighting and screaming and crying."
Her parents assumed she had given up prostitution. After all, she was dating a man whom she later married.
The introduction of a city bylaw for escorts in 1993 pushed her to speak publicly about her job. She didn't think the original bylaw was fair because it forced women to work for agencies.
The owners, in a way, became the women's pimps, she says, making money off the women and fining them for not dressing properly or answering their phones.
It wasn't until two years ago that Strachan really grabbed the spotlight. She made newspaper headlines and TV news when she sued the city over its bylaw, accusing Edmonton of living off the avails of prostitutes.
Strachan lost the civil suit, but she continues pressuring the city to change the bylaw. Mayor Stephen Mandel has asked his office to gather information on the bylaw, after getting e-mail from Strachan earlier this year.
Strachan filed for bankruptcy after the lawsuit. She says she can't afford to pay the city's legal fees -- about $18,000 -- as the judge ordered.
The court action also took a toll on her marriage. Her husband, a trucker, knew what she did for a living, but when her lawsuit became public his co-workers ribbed him mercilessly. Suddenly, everyone knew his wife was a prostitute.
"With all the fighting with the city and all of that, it pushed us apart," she says. "I mean he's still one of my best friends. He always will be."
She didn't hide her job from her son either, telling him in his early teens. She says her parents and siblings have also come to accept her.
"When it first hit the papers, I had one of my sisters phone just livid. 'How dare you put the family name in the paper? What are you doing to the family?'
"I said women are being abused out there. Women are being hurt. I said somebody has to do something."
Her mother now clips articles about her, like the one in January detailing the website she started with web designer Ken Miles. The site, sextradeworkersofcanada.com, offers prostitutes safety and health advice and information on filing income taxes.
Strachan also wants to open a coffee shop downtown, a safe place that prostitutes can go to for "coffee and a condom."
Strachan has her detractors. She says escort agency owners don't like her because they worry her outspokenness will hurt business. Community groups hate what she stands for. People who help women leave the street, like former Edmonton vice-cop JoAnn McCartney, believe she glamorizes prostitution. No one, they say, would choose to be a prostitute. It destroys your soul.
"We're not all victims," Strachan says. "I wasn't sexually abused as a child. I came from a very good home. This is something that I chose to do. Numerous women have chosen to do this."
Strachan's voice trembles as she speaks before the federal committee about Canada's prostitution laws. She tells the politicians Ottawa should decriminalize prostitution and Edmonton should create a red-light district.
Dressed in pant suit, her dark blond hair swept up in a French twist, she speaks quickly and candidly about her job and the dangers. She tries to slow down, but she's nervous. She still isn't completely comfortable in the spotlight.
Something else also rattles her. Next to her sits a community-league representative -- someone who wishes Strachan and women like her would go away.
"Drug addict. Drug addict," the woman whispers as Strachan speaks.
Afterwards, Strachan fumes. She doesn't confront her, though.
"I'm not going to go away."
____________________________________________________
Braving threats, hostility to defend women at risk
High-profile work as advocate for sex workers exacts high toll on personal life
Renata D'aliesio
The Edmonton Journal
Monday, June 20, 2005
In a probing six-part series, Journal crime reporter Renata D'Aliesio writes about the people who sell and buy sex, how the industry works and its local impact.
- Friday: Rashmi struggles to escape street life while a serial killer prowls
- Saturday: Johns go to school
- Sunday: The secret life of escorts
- Today: The lobbying prostitute
- Tuesday: The boom in porn videos
- Wednesday: Life after prostitution
EDMONTON -- Among the belongings of two of the women found slain outside Edmonton in recent years, police investigators found Carol-Lynn Strachan's business card.
They told her so when they questioned her. They wanted to know why.
"To me this indicates only one thing," Strachan tells a committee of federal politicians reviewing Canada's prostitution laws. "They wanted to come inside, get off the streets and work in a safer environment."
Later that March day, the MPs hear privately from other prostitutes in an office on 118th Avenue. As has increasingly become the case over the past 10 years, Strachan is the only Edmonton prostitute to speak publicly.
She has worked as a prostitute for nearly three decades. She began in high school at a house party. Curiosity soon drew her to the old downtown strolls, where she picked up men when she could sneak out of her grandmother's house.
She found the street exciting but saw and felt the dangers. She knew she'd have to get off the street and work as an escort if she wanted to survive in the sex-trade industry. The move would nearly cost her her life.
Her move into the spotlight as an advocate for sex workers cost her much too.
She was beaten and threatened. She had to move three times and her homes have been repeatedly vandalized -- the word "slut" spray-painted, in one instance.
Her 19-year marriage fell apart under the strain. And her Irish Catholic family had to come to terms with the whispers of their neighbours and friends.
Strachan isn't about to back away. The mounting deaths won't let her.
"Someone has to stand up for these women," she says one afternoon at a Sherwood Park coffee shop. "Unfortunately they can't, and I will do it.
"If I have to keep moving, I'll keep moving," she says.
"That could be my picture on that billboard. I could be dead."
Strachan grew up in Morinville, about a 20-minute drive northwest of Edmonton. The baby of the family -- youngest of seven children -- she often got her way.
"I was spoiled," she says. "I was used to having everything handed and given to me."
Her parents were devout Catholics and sent Strachan to a convent school. Boys and girls mixed in classes, but entered and left the school through separate entrances.
When one of her sisters moved to Edmonton to attend graduate school at University of Alberta, Strachan, then 16, begged her parents to let her go to the city. After much pestering, they gave in.
Strachan moved in with her grandmother and enrolled at St. Joseph's high school. She remembers feeling nervous, scared. She was awestruck by Edmonton and by a group of pretty and popular girls at school.
"These girls were always dressed to the nines and they had everything."
Strachan wanted everything, too. She became friends with the girls and went with them to house parties, where the girls had sex for money.
"I went to quite a few of them before I actually did something," she says. "It was very well organized at that time. They weren't being held in some dingy basement with sheets dividing rooms and crap."
The men were older, mostly in their 30s. Alcohol and drugs were available, but Strachan didn't want to numb herself. She had intercourse for $100.
"I was a little nervous, but after it was all done, I said, 'That's it? That was pretty easy.' "
Other house parties followed, but Strachan soon became curious about the women on the street. Back then, in the late 1970s and early '80s, prostitutes worked downtown and each group -- the pretty girls, the homely girls, transsexuals and gays -- had its own strip.
"I kept asking my friends about these other girls that were downtown and they said, 'No, no, no, no.' They never wanted me to go down there and they wouldn't take me down there so I went down myself."
Over the next three years, Strachan worked the street whenever she could sneak out of her grandmother's home.
"It was a rush. A big thrill," she recalls. "It's like people who go rock climbing or bungee jumping. Some people need that adrenaline rush in their lives. That's the same thing for me.
"It's meeting the person, getting into the car, the money. It's all of it. It's all a big rush."
When mixed with drugs, the rush can be deadly. Strachan saw girls around her turn a trick and then turn to their drug dealer for a hit. The cycle was vicious, and Strachan didn't want to get caught in it.
She also never wanted a pimp, but her boyfriend became hers. It's the usual story, she says. He was older, about 10 years, and sweet in the beginning, showering her with gifts.
"They treat you like gold," she says. "Then once they suck you in, well, then you're screwed."
When Strachan tried to break free from him, he took her for a drive on Stony Plain Road to a farmer's field west of the city.
He beat her there and raped her with a beer bottle. She kicked and struggled and he beat her some more before leaving her for dead.
Her assault brings to mind the deaths of 13 prostitutes, at least 11 of them murdered, whose bodies have turned up in Edmonton and -- mainly -- in fields surrounding the city in recent years. But it has not been linked to those cases.
A passerby found her and took her to a hospital. Strachan reported the incident to the police, and her boyfriend-turned-pimp was charged. Before he went to prison for five years for the attack, he phoned her mother in Morinville.
"I didn't tell them I was a prostitute. My pimp did, as revenge," she says. "It was horrible. There was a lot of fighting and screaming and crying."
Her parents assumed she had given up prostitution. After all, she was dating a man whom she later married.
The introduction of a city bylaw for escorts in 1993 pushed her to speak publicly about her job. She didn't think the original bylaw was fair because it forced women to work for agencies.
The owners, in a way, became the women's pimps, she says, making money off the women and fining them for not dressing properly or answering their phones.
It wasn't until two years ago that Strachan really grabbed the spotlight. She made newspaper headlines and TV news when she sued the city over its bylaw, accusing Edmonton of living off the avails of prostitutes.
Strachan lost the civil suit, but she continues pressuring the city to change the bylaw. Mayor Stephen Mandel has asked his office to gather information on the bylaw, after getting e-mail from Strachan earlier this year.
Strachan filed for bankruptcy after the lawsuit. She says she can't afford to pay the city's legal fees -- about $18,000 -- as the judge ordered.
The court action also took a toll on her marriage. Her husband, a trucker, knew what she did for a living, but when her lawsuit became public his co-workers ribbed him mercilessly. Suddenly, everyone knew his wife was a prostitute.
"With all the fighting with the city and all of that, it pushed us apart," she says. "I mean he's still one of my best friends. He always will be."
She didn't hide her job from her son either, telling him in his early teens. She says her parents and siblings have also come to accept her.
"When it first hit the papers, I had one of my sisters phone just livid. 'How dare you put the family name in the paper? What are you doing to the family?'
"I said women are being abused out there. Women are being hurt. I said somebody has to do something."
Her mother now clips articles about her, like the one in January detailing the website she started with web designer Ken Miles. The site, sextradeworkersofcanada.com, offers prostitutes safety and health advice and information on filing income taxes.
Strachan also wants to open a coffee shop downtown, a safe place that prostitutes can go to for "coffee and a condom."
Strachan has her detractors. She says escort agency owners don't like her because they worry her outspokenness will hurt business. Community groups hate what she stands for. People who help women leave the street, like former Edmonton vice-cop JoAnn McCartney, believe she glamorizes prostitution. No one, they say, would choose to be a prostitute. It destroys your soul.
"We're not all victims," Strachan says. "I wasn't sexually abused as a child. I came from a very good home. This is something that I chose to do. Numerous women have chosen to do this."
Strachan's voice trembles as she speaks before the federal committee about Canada's prostitution laws. She tells the politicians Ottawa should decriminalize prostitution and Edmonton should create a red-light district.
Dressed in pant suit, her dark blond hair swept up in a French twist, she speaks quickly and candidly about her job and the dangers. She tries to slow down, but she's nervous. She still isn't completely comfortable in the spotlight.
Something else also rattles her. Next to her sits a community-league representative -- someone who wishes Strachan and women like her would go away.
"Drug addict. Drug addict," the woman whispers as Strachan speaks.
Afterwards, Strachan fumes. She doesn't confront her, though.
"I'm not going to go away."
