The province and Vancouver are poised to settle their portion of a lawsuit with 13 children whose mothers’ DNA was found on serial killer Robert Pickton’s farm, 24 hours has learned. Each of the children will receive $50,000 plus legal costs.
A string of unexplained sex worker deaths in the same New Westminster, B.C. apartment building continues to shake the region’s sex worker community, amidst outrage that drug toxicology reports for the women are still unavailable a full month after the first death.
Named: RCMP, VPD, City of Vancouver, justice minister, crown prosecutors. Pickton siblings accused of ‘abetting’ murders.
Standing alone under the bleak overpass by the Alexander Street railway tracks, DJ Joe holds up a small white card as a train rumbles by beyond a fence. A white car slides slowly by, and Joe clutches her arms for warmth from the chilly air. Her foldable, two-sided card would fit easily into the long-time sex worker advocate’s pocket or wallet. Thousands will be handed out to survival sex workers on the street and at support centres around the Downtown Eastside.
Sex workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside will soon be getting special wallet-sized cards educating about their rights with police, thanks to two advocacy groups — Pivot Legal Society and Sex Workers United Against Violence (SWUAV).
The release of Wally Oppal’s scathing final report from B.C.’s missing women inquiry was met with sobbing, drumming, and anger on Dec. 17 as families and friends began the next stage of grieving for their lost ones, and rights groups rallied around the call for a Canada-wide investigation.
Vancouver, B.C.’s nighttime streets were wet with fresh rain as a dozen members of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) community set out on what they dubbed a walkabout tour through the poorest off-reserve area of Canada, accompanied by Indian Country Today Media Network.
British Columbia’s Missing Women Commission of Inquiry into the alleged police mishandling of the Robert Pickton serial killer investigation is taking another jab from some of the very groups who had fought for an inquiry into dozens of missing, mostly aboriginal women for years.
The independence of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry (MWCI), which examined why serial killer Robert Pickton wasn’t caught sooner, is in “grave doubt,” concluded three of the province’s legal advocacy organizations in a report released yesterday.
Family members of missing and murdered women lauded the first of 62 bronze memorial plaques for their loved ones installed yesterday on Vancouver’s streets.
David P Ball 