Special task forces to investigate missing and murdered aboriginal sex workers.

[Sexy_LanaMegane 2288]

[COLOR=#000000]Nahanni Fontaine, director of justice for the Southern Chiefs Organization, made the call at a press conference Wednesday, days after the body of Fonessa Bruyere, 17, was found in a field in northwest Winnipeg.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#000000]
[INDENT][IMG]http://www.cerb.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2007/09/05/mb-fonassa-bruyere.jpg[/IMG][I]The body of Fonassa Bruyere, 17, was found in a field in northwest Winnipeg on Aug. 30, three weeks after she was last seen getting into a car in the city's North End neighbourhood.[/I]
[/INDENT][/COLOR]
[INDENT][COLOR=#000000][I](Child Find) [/I][/COLOR]


[/INDENT][COLOR=#000000]Bruyere was last seen on the morning of Aug. 9 getting into a car on Aikens Street near Selkirk Avenue, where she worked in the sex trade.[/COLOR]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]Members of Bruyere's family spoke briefly at the press conference to express disappointment in the police response when they reported Fonessa missing.[/COLOR][/LEFT]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]"Police were notified but we were greeted with indignance and disrespect to the extent that her grandmother was refused an incident number after reporting her missing," said Carla Bruyere, Fonessa's aunt.[/COLOR][/LEFT]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]The family took on the search themselves with the help of Child Find Manitoba and an aboriginal organization.[/COLOR][/LEFT]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]"We distributed more than 100 posters to try to locate her," she said, breaking down in tears.[/COLOR][/LEFT]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]"We also made attempts to contact the press to get her picture out there as a missing child, but there was no interest at the time."[/COLOR][/LEFT]





[COLOR=#000000][B]'Find our missing youth'[/B][/COLOR]


[COLOR=#000000]Fontaine said Bruyere's story is not new; she said she knew of dozens of cases of missing or killed aboriginal women in the past two decades that had not been solved.[/COLOR]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]She called on the Winnipeg police and Manitoba government to establish a special task force to investigate missing and murdered sex trade workers, similar to task forces in Edmonton and Vancouver.[/COLOR][/LEFT]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]"You didn't do it in B.C, [and] you had 60 missing women by the time they got their stuff together. Are we going to wait until 60 women go missing?" she said.[/COLOR][/LEFT]




[COLOR=#000000][B]'If you can't find our missing youth, find the people that are stealing them.'[/B][I]? Nahanni Fontaine[/I][/COLOR]


[COLOR=#000000]Fontaine's call was supported by two other aboriginal organizations, the Mothers of Red Nations and Sisters in Spirit's Winnipeg chapter.[/COLOR]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]Fontaine also wants the city to beef up its missing persons unit, saying the four people who are assigned to the 60 to 150 cases of missing people each year aren't enough.[/COLOR][/LEFT]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]"I think that they need to pour more resources into that unit and maybe perhaps take it away from some of the other programming that they've got, [like] Operation Clean Sweep, where you're just putting all of our people in jail," Fontaine said, referring to a police program targeting street crime in inner-city neighbourhoods.[/COLOR][/LEFT]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]"Apply some real resources and find our missing youth and if you can't find our missing youth, find the people that are stealing them. Find the people that are murdering them. Find the people that are raping and mutilating them."[/COLOR][/LEFT]




[COLOR=#000000][B]19 unsolved sex-trade killings, say police[/B][/COLOR]



[COLOR=#000000]Winnipeg police say they did start an investigation when Bruyere disappeared, but they described her as a chronic missing person.[/COLOR]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]Dennison confirmed Wednesday that Winnipeg Police had 19 unsolved cases involving suspected sex-trade workers ? 17 women and two transgendered men ? who had been victims of homicides on the books over the past 25 years.[/COLOR][/LEFT]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]The force is already doing many of the same things other special task forces are doing, Dennison said, they just don't have a special name for their efforts.[/COLOR][/LEFT]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]"We're going to collect all evidence possible and go where that evidence leads us," he said.[/COLOR][/LEFT]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]"At this point in time, as I had said yesterday, the evidence that has been collected recently and in the past doesn't lead investigators to believe that these homicides were committed by one specific individual."[/COLOR][/LEFT]


[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]Police spokesman Sgt. Kelly Dennison said Tuesday that it can be a challenge for police to investigate cases involving sex-trade workers, noting they don't live a "nine-to-five lifestyle" and sometimes don't contact family and friends for long periods of time.[/COLOR][/LEFT]






[COLOR=#000000]Read more: [URL]http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2007/09/05/bruyere.html#ixzz10t7ETdje[/URL][/COLOR]





Additional Comments:

I am glad Amanda that you nominate my post. I think that people in general should take their right no matter what race. I did a little more search and found these statistics below.





Indigenous women's organizations have long spoken out against what some describe as an epidemic of violence against women and children within Indigenous communities. More recently, a number of advocacy organizations, including the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC), have drawn attention to acts of violence perpetrated against Indigenous women in predominantly non-Indigenous communities. A number of high profile cases of assaulted, missing or murdered Indigenous women and girls have also helped focus greater public attention ? in some instances, very belatedly ? on violence against Indigenous women in specific cities. For example:

° A joint RCMP/Vancouver City Police Taskforce is investigating the disappearance of 60 women and one transgender person from Vancouver, British Columbia over the last decade. Sixteen of the missing women are Indigenous, a number far in excess of the proportion of Indigenous women living in Vancouver. A British Columbia man, Robert Pickton, is currently awaiting trial for 22 murder charges related to this investigation. Police and city officials had long denied that there was any pattern to the disappearances or that the women were in any particular danger.

° In two separate instances in 1994, 15-year-old Indigenous girls, Roxanna Thiara and Alishia Germaine, were found murdered in Prince George in eastern British Columbia. The body of a third 15-year-old Indigenous girl, Ramona Wilson, who disappeared that same year, was found in Smithers in central British Columbia in April 1995. Only in 2002, after the disappearance of a 26-year-old non-Indigenous woman, Nicola Hoar, while hitchhiking along a road that connects Prince George and Smithers, did media attention focus on the unsolved murders and other disappearances along what has been dubbed "the highway of tears."

° In 1996, John Martin Crawford was convicted of murder in the killings of three Indigenous women, Eva Taysup, Shelley Napope, and Calinda Waterhen, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Warren Goulding, one of the few journalists to cover the trial, has commented: "I don't get the sense the general public cares much about missing or murdered aboriginal women. It's all part of this indifference to the lives of aboriginal people. They don't seem to matter as much as white people."

° In May 2004, a former British Columbia Provincial Court judge, David William Ramsey, pleaded guilty to buying sex from and assaulting four Indigenous girls, aged 12, 14, 15 and 16, who had appeared before him in court. The crimes were committed between 1992 and 2001. In June, the former judge was sentenced to seven years in prison.

° In Edmonton, Alberta, police are investigating 18 unsolved murders of women in the last two decades. Women's organizations in the city estimate that a disproportionate number of the women were Indigenous.


NWAC believes that the incidents that have come to light are only part of the picture. The organization has estimated that over the past twenty years more than five hundred Indigenous women may have been murdered or gone missing in circumstances suggesting violence.

Given the significant gaps in available information, it is not possible to comment on the accuracy of this estimate. Until police consistently record whether or not missing persons and the victims of violent assaults are Indigenous, and these statistics are subject to comprehensive analysis, it will not be possible to accurately estimate the true scale or the circumstances of violence against Indigenous women in Canada.

Amnesty International's own research was not comprehensive. The stories told in Amnesty International's report have been chosen because they reflect the range of concerns and circumstances brought to the organization's attention. Amnesty International's research focused on a limited number of cities in western Canada. Many regions of the country, such as the north of Canada, could not be included in this research. Furthermore, the report only includes case studies in which the families of these women and girls were willing and prepared to have these stories told publicly.