On February 8, 2002, the collective that operates Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, invited other local women’s groups to respond in a press conference to the latest move by the Joint Police Task Force. The Task Force was investigating the notorious “missing women case” and had begun searching a pig farm. Three weeks later on February 22, Robert William Pickton (one of the farm owners) was arrested and charged with the first two of now fifteen cases of planned murder.
Six years earlier, with others, I had organized a Valentine’s Day March through the Downtown Eastside to protest and mourn the missing women. My role has expanded over the years to include informing the local and international media about this violence against women. I’ve spent many hours in the courtroom at Pickton’s preliminary trial and I’ve started to write about what it has to do with us.
Read this story in Canada’s Promises to Keep: The Charter and Violence Against Women, pp. 31-34.