The prostitutes and the pimp
 
Halifax police have set their sights on black pimps who are sending hundreds of local teen-agers to sell their bodies on streets across Canada Published: The Globe and Mail, April 24, 1993,  FOCUS pg 1 BY DEBORAH JONES/HALIFAX WHEN Joan is out on the baseball mound, the ball spinning toward her, she likes to imagine she's about to swing her bat at the head of a black pimp. She knows she shouldn't harbour such anger toward other people but she just can't help it. Joan is mad as hell at the men she blames for destroying her daughter's life. Hillary, her eldest child, is one of hundreds of hookers who got their start in the Halifax area in recent years. Today many of these girls, most of them over 13 but some as young as 10, populate big-city "strolls," the streets and byways walked by prostitutes across Canada and as far afield as New York, California and Europe. Most of these young prostitutes, virtually all of them white, work for a loosely organized community of Nova Scotia black men. Many of the men are related and most come from the Halifax suburb of North Preston, one of Canada's oldest black communities. Police in Halifax estimate there may be as many as 100 Nova Scotia pimps operating across Canada - a fact that makes Halifax as important in the prostitution industry as Toronto with, the police add, a greater tendency toward violence. Most Nova Scotia pimps, they say, have two or more women on the street. It was a Toronto police operation last September that brought attention to the scope of Nova Scotia's prostitution industry. In raids on a downtown Toronto apartment and a room in the Westbury Hotel, police found seven women, aged 15 to 23, all but one from Halifax. They told police they had been forced to work as prostitutes, and claimed they had been terrorized by their pimps with threats and beatings. Three of them claimed they had been kidnapped and forced to work in a prostitution ring where they were traded among pimps in Montreal, Ottawa and Niagara Falls, Ont. Three of the men charged in the September raid, Morris Glasgow, Conrad Glasgow and Kirt Horne, all of North Preston, come to trial in Toronto on May 3; they face a total of 27 charges, including living off the avails of prostitution, sexual assault and assault with a weapon. Another two, Maurice Dixon and Marvin Smith, also of North Preston, have a court date on June 7, where they will face 27 prostitution-related charges. Until the September raid in Toronto, says Halifax RCMP Sergeant Garry Mumford, "we didn't realize the magnitude of the problem. There seems to be a pimping network across Canada that has its roots here." Indeed, police think Halifax, a relatively small urban centre, is seen by pimps as a good place to train young women for the street. Says Detective David Perry of Metro Toronto police: "There's a lot of recruiting going on by pimps. They try to get the girls to work in Halifax almost as a test, to make sure they will work as prostitutes. Once that has proved successful, they quickly move them to other cities across Canada." There had been earlier hints of Halifax's importance. For example, in Calgary last September, Mardy Wade Dixon, a North Preston man, was sentenced to four years for pimping. Says Det. Gordon McCulloch, a Calgary police officer: "It's commonplace for these fellows to have their main 'bitch' working in Toronto, and they'll have another one in Calgary, which the other doesn't know about." Today, because of public attention focused on the September raids, curbing teen prostitution has become a high priority in Nova Scotia. The province has budgeted $1.5-million to get young women off the streets, to give them counselling programs and a safe house that operates in conjunction with group homes. Police from several departments in the Halifax area have set up a joint task force aimed at curbing teen prostitution, mainly by pulling the pimps out of circulation. So far, 24 people have been arrested in Halifax, 20 of them black males. Most are awaiting trial. Two have been convicted on pimping charges: One pleaded guilty and has been sentenced to 3-1"2 years in prison; the other will be sentenced on May 10. (And in Toronto on Thursday, police arrested another Nova Scotia man, Lee Middleton, and charged him with six offences, including kidnapping, forcible confinement and attempting to live off the avails of prostitution. Police are searching for two other Nova Scotia men in connection with the case.) That this has become a deeply charged racial issue was perhaps inevitable. Black groups throughout the province believe the police are setting out to focus on black men, especially those from North Preston. They say media reports have only exacerbated the problem. Initially, residents of the suburb were willing to talk about the police crackdown on pimps. "It's hard on us. I feel like I'm in Soweto," Allister Johnson, president of the North Preston ratepayers' association, told a local newspaper in February when the body of a murdered teen-age prostitute was found in North Preston (another young prostitute was murdered in December in Dartmouth, across the harbour from Halifax). Today, the community has closed ranks. "We won't discuss that," said Mr. Johnson, turning down a request for an interview recently. "You won't find anyone here any more who will talk with you about it." Police officers deny singling out blacks; rather, they say they are going after the men who have been identified by prostitutes. "The facts are, a majority of the pimps are black," says Sgt. Mumford. "It's a loaded question, but that's the way it boils down. We don't look at the colour of their skin, we look at their crimes. We respond to the complaints that the girls make to us." Prostitution is a lucrative business. Pimps usually make the prostitutes hand over all the money they earn - usually $150 to $300 a night, though some bring in as much as $1,500 on occasion. If a prostitute wants to quit the life, she must pay a "leaving fee" of $1,500. "We also have evidence of girls being sold between one family member and another, for a payment of $2,000," says Sgt. Mumford. "They're treated as property." For many of these young women, prostitution is just another point on a continuum of despair. Det. Perry, who has headed a teen-prostitution unit in Toronto for the past decade, says low self-esteem is an almost universal condition among them. "They don't feel good enough to go back to school, their family or fit into society. These kids will tell you the only place they felt they fit in is on the streets with other prostitutes and pimps. They've reached the bottom of the barrel and they don't know how to get out." THIS is not always the case. Joan watched as her daughter, Hillary, was drawn into prostitution four years ago at the age of 15. Joan and her husband, Hillary's stepfather, are both white-collar managers. They live in a comfortable house in a Halifax suburb. Hillary's younger brother and two older step-siblings are doing well in school and university. "I used to think that prostitutes are kids who have problems, who are not living at home," says Joan, who agreed to talk on condition that her name and her daughter's name were altered. Joan believes the issue is now receiving attention because people are waking up to the fact that prostitutes do not always come from troubled backgrounds. "That's what has made people stand up and think, 'My God, those are normal kids from normal families.' " She faults herself for not structuring Hillary's time when the girl was younger and for not helping her build up her self-confidence. "She was never very, very bright. She was never involved in outside interests, other than hanging out with her friends. One of the biggest things was boredom, she was just interested in having fun. "She's brazen, she figures she can take care of herself. She started hanging around with black kids. That's not meant to be a prejudiced remark. It is all black guys they (prostitutes) end up tied with, all from North Preston. Initially, her friends were not pimps, but were friends of pimps." Hillary dropped out of school in Grade 10. She started staying out all night; eventually, she began disappearing for entire weeks. The first time this happened it was with a young black friend. When she came back, says Joan, she "told me the fellow she had lived with wanted her to work the streets. She refused, and he let her come home." But soon after, she willingly became a hooker. On several occasions over the years, she called Joan from other cities, asking for airfare. She would come home, then leave again. "By 16, she was pretty well awed by a life of having a ton of money," says Joan. "One time, I found out my daughter was in a hotel here with a pimp, and was getting ready to go to Toronto. I went down there and I told him that if anything happened to her, I was going to come back and kill him. He had a brand spanking new car, and he'd paid cash for it." But she always welcomed her daughter home. Once, when Joan and her husband were out of town, Hillary broke into the house and threw a party in which thousands of dollars of damage was done to the house. What really angered Joan was that someone poured a bottle of bleach into her 13-year- old son's aquarium, killing all the fish. Joan believes that Hillary, now 19, has left prostitution and lives with a boyfriend on welfare in another province. CORRINE Steele has been a social worker at the Nova Scotia Hospital, a mental institution near Halifax, for about 20 years. Every year she treats children who have worked as prostitutes, some as young as 10. Typically, she says, pimps have befriended them, taken them out, spent money on them. The men will admit that other girls work for them, but they say those girls are different. They assure the new girls that they would never put them on the street. Then, she says, "the rules of the game change. The pimps say the girls owe them money, and owe them for the favours. They've befriended these girls and know their vulnerabilities. They make threats of physical violence or threats of harming other family members." Helping children who have experienced such emotional and often physical abuse is difficult, says Ms. Steele, particularly now that the police are cracking down on pimps and expecting the young women to speak out in court against their former friends. The girls "fear the system can't protect them, they're afraid of repercussions. They have to testify and the system takes so long to work that some of them go back to the street. At least those ones know what to expect on the street. "The other fear is that they're looking over their shoulder all the time, especially with anything that involves squealing on a pimp. It's not just the one pimp, it's others who are related, and who provide services to the pimps. The networks are intense: There are families in the pimping situation." Ms. Steele says there's no doubt pimps control at least some young women by using physical torture. Girls have been "tied up and locked in rooms for hours at a time. Sexually, the expectation is when the pimps want sex they own them. They say 'not only do I offer you out for services, I can use you whenever I choose.' And there's verbal abuse which confuses them. One minute it's, 'you're my beauty,' the next minute it's, 'You're a whore.' " Patients of Ms. Steele have been whipped with coat hangers and beaten "in spots that are hidden, over their backs, on the back of their legs, under their arms, they've had severe head injuries in areas covered by their hair." Ms. Steele has also worked with young black boys who later became pimps, and says their lot in life is often no better than the prostitutes. "A lot of these boys have been as vulnerable in many ways as these young gals. Unfortunately, they're seen in a worse light because they're victimizing other people." While she welcomes recent efforts to clamp down on pimps, she's baffled about why authorities are only now becoming concerned about the child prostitutes who work for them. "It's certainly not new; it's been going on for years. These have been little girls (working as prostitutes) for a long time. These are kids who were invisible before. Whose children is it now that they're more of an issue?" Sarah Shaw, the executive director of Stepping Stone, a Halifax agency that provides services to male and female adult prostitutes, agrees: "There is so much violence out there, and it's not just on the streets. Why is it that (prostitutes) feel the street is a safer choice than being at home?" The means used to deal with this problem - the task force clampdown - has been controversial. Indeed, some charge that the campaign is downright dangerous. Says Nancy Rogers, of Stepping Stone: "The publicity is not good for business. When the money gets tighter the women get into cars they'd normally never get into, and are open to potential violence." The police cannot do much about the larger social questions of why there is a river of young white women and black men flowing onto the streets. And, as a rule, police forces have chosen not to actively discourage the men who buy sex. For now, in Halifax and elsewhere, the first priority of the teen-prostitute task forces in Halifax and Toronto is to get the pimps away from the young women (older women and male prostitutes often work without pimps). "Pimps are like pedophiles in a way, because if they've affected one or two girls at the time of a police investigation, you can bet they've destroyed many lives by the time they're apprehended," says Det. Perry. "If we're successful in keeping them in jail for a period of time, it probably helps dozens of girls who aren't going to fall victims to them." Back in Halifax, Sgt. Mumford's special task force, initially set up for six months, has recently received approval to be continued indefinitely. "I think it's going to have to be a permanent thing." Deborah Jones is a regular contributor to The Globe and Mail. Copyright Deborah Jones 1993 THE PIMP 'Most of the enticing is done by the ladies' Brayon Riley, convicted of living off the avails of prostitution and exercising control, explains street life. Published: The Globe and Mail, April 24, 1993, FOCUS pg. 1 BY DEBORAH JONES/HALIFAX BRAYON Riley apologizes for his appearance: standard-issue grey-green pants and shirt. "I don't usually look like this," he says, clearly embarrassed. From his shirt he pulls out photos of himself taken in happier times: in natty jacket, crisp shirt, red tie, his hair elaborately curled. In one shot, he poses with his attractive wife. From another peers his handsome eight-year-old son. Ordinary family stuff. Except that Mr. Riley is separated from his family by the locked doors of the Halifax Correctional Centre. He has been convicted of living off the avails of prostitution and exercising control, and will be sentenced on May 10. Mr. Riley, 32, who was born in the Halifax suburb of North Preston, denies he's a pimp. Indeed, he says he told girls at his escort service, Sweet Sensations, not to sell sex. He explains that he spent a lot of time on Hollis Street (a popular venue of Halifax prostitutes) counselling young women. "I've been helping girls out around the Halifax stroll for at least six or seven years. I pretty well know every pimp that's been around that stroll, and 90 per cent of the girls." He says he began counselling at the age of 16 at the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children, a group home. While stressing his innocence, he allows that he is an expert on street life, and will speak on the subject of pimps and prostitutes. In some ways, his view of street life differs dramatically from that of police officers, social workers and prostitutes themselves. For example, his contention that the girls trap men into being their pimps is something skeptical police say they often hear from men. Retorts Detective David Perry, a Toronto police officer: "Oh sure, you've got these 14-year-old girls forcing these 28-year-old men to become pimps." On becoming a pimp: "Most of the enticing really is done by the ladies; 99 per cent of the time, it's from a girl that's already worked and who would proposition him. Very seldom do you get a new pimp on the scene and a new girl. "A girl starts working without a pimp and runs into trouble. The girl then finds a boyfriend. He cares about her, doesn't want to leave her just because she's a prostitute. Before you know it, he's getting paid - at the same time not really realizing he's a pimp. "Then after she's on the stroll a while, other girls will say 'who are you working for,' and she'll mention his name, though he is really her boyfriend. Then before you know it, another girl might come around and say, 'Okay, can I work for him?' Then before you know it he's got two girls, right? That's usually how it starts." On becoming a prostitute: "It's easy money once you get used to it. Most of the girls I talk to are from single-parent families, or families with (physical) abuse, or just alcohol or drug abuse. They lack direction. They can't afford a place to stay. At least 75 per cent have kids, and are on some kind of social assistance, which is not enough for what they have in mind to provide for their children and themselves. They probably think of themselves being (on welfare) for the rest of their life. Most of them don't have a really good education, though a couple of girls I know have university degrees. "Maybe one in 30 women don't want to become prostitutes. You have guys who are over-aggressive and they'd force her into doing prostitution, probably in the first place because she's mentioned it to him." On why a prostitute needs a pimp: "For protection. Everybody has different corners. Like, you know, if a girl's been out there for a little while, she might say, 'This is my corner.' Sometimes you might get a pimp who owns two or three corners and only his girls are allowed to work, and no other girls are allowed to work unless he says so. "Sometimes you have a problem with the johns. They'll come down and drive by, you know, and either throw rocks at the girls and spray chemicals on them, throw salt in their eyes when they come up to a car or spit in their face. Before you know it, you've got a pimp or something chasing one of the johns around the city, or trying to get his licence plate to chase him around and teach him a lesson, 'Don't do that.' " On johns: "White guys. They are just plain married men, or single men. Usually they're not too young, usually anywheres from 18 and up. But 99.9 per cent are white." On why prostitutes and pimps move from city to city: "A girl that comes fresh on the stroll, right, she's a new face, and it's like opening a new business. Most people are getting tired of buying from the old. She'll make lots of money because she's a new face. After a while she's not a new face any more and money starts to decline a little bit, so what she does is she'll maybe go up to Toronto where she's a new face. After that wears out she'll go to Montreal or to Vancouver or to Ottawa." On the dangers of street life: "It's not really risky here, no more than any other job. There's been a couple murders and stuff, but not when you take it into consideration with other jobs - like painting on a bridge. That would compare with the fatalities of prostitution. But it's high pressure. You never know, you could be down there one night making money, then the next night some john could get freaked out and end up blowing your head off, or something like that." On over-aggressive pimps: "If a guy is pretty smart, and he wants to help the girl out, it is a good way for a girl to get on her feet. I'm not saying I condone it, but it's easy money. But there's some guys out there who are in it for the money. They figure if they get the girl any farther the girl might not need them. Some guys tries to keep the girls down. But that happens in all frames of life, pimping or whatever." On why most Nova Scotia men charged with pimping are black and most prostitutes and their johns are white: "Right now the task force themselves are singling out blacks. Anytime a black guy rides down through the Halifax stroll in a decent car, automatically he's going to be fingered as a pimp." On girls who "sign" (snitch) on pimps: "After all these girls have finished testifying in court and all the guys are locked up behind bars, all of a sudden the money's going to run out and where are these girls going to be besides back on the street again. The safe house is definitely going to close and the police are not going to have any more use for them, because all the use they had in the first place was signing on these guys and getting them convicted. I think the task force are looking at convictions and not really trying to stop the problems of prostitution." On social problems: "It's nice to have child-abuse laws, but young kids now are so smart that a three-year-old probably knows the number to the child-abuse centre. They'll tell parentser you and before you know it it's out of hand. That's why I see the kids coming out at a younger age, because parents have no authority over them, because that authority has been taken away by the city or the system or the laws. I got plenty of backside kickings when I was younger, and thank God I did, right?" On the future Mr. Riley would wish for his son: "The same future as I want. I was hoping to retire at a young age, in my 40s. Maybe not totally retire, but be in a position that I'd only work if I had to." Copyright Deborah Jones 1993 About this website: Text and photos by Deborah Jones except where otherwise noted. Please contact me for reprint rights. 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Police target Nova Scotia pimps running hundreds of hookers
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