Shocking Information Involving The Abuse of First Nations Women in Occupied Canada

23.4.12

[via Twitter user:@tibiamyfibula] Boner Killer: When Cops become Johns and Other Findings from The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry: A recent finding from the inquiry has revealed that members of the Vancouver Police Department, the VPD, forced many of the women they picked up on the East End to perform “sexual favours” in order for the women to avoid arrest. In a study conducted by Kate Shannon, it was disclosed that the VPD treated these women with “apathy, indifference or outright harassment.” The study included interviews with 255 people involved in the sex industry in Vancouver’s East End. 237 of those interviewed were women and 48% of those women were First Nations women of Canada. Furthermore, Shannon found that such incidents of police harassment and abuse made the women highly unlikely to report crimes. In her study, Shannon also found that 87% of the women interviewed said that they have experienced “absolute homelessness” at least once in their lives while one and five were living with HIV. An unsettling one in four were raped and 30% experienced violence by johns – 57% of them at least once in a 19-month period. 2