Barb Todd moved back to her hometown of Toronto a few years ago, stepped into All Saints Church and immediately felt a strong connection. All Saints Church is located at the corner of Dundas and Sherbourne, a notoriously dangerous area of downtown Toronto. In 2009, a study by the Toronto Star reported Dundas and Sherbourne as the most dangerous area of Toronto, topping the list in street robberies, assault-related offences, shootings, stabbings and sex attacks.
Because of its location or maybe in response to it, All Saints Church has a drop-in centre four days a week. People from off the street are welcome to come in, sit, talk, use the internet, have a coffee, and be surrounded by extraordinary volunteers.
However, as Todd pointed out to me, as we sat in All Saints Church, 90% of the people that come in off the street are male, a statistic that is true for most services in the Toronto downtown core. The few women that do attend the drop-in are by and large sex-trade workers, ranging in age from 20-55. According to Todd, “these women are in the low track sex-trade meaning that they are not [working] in a massage parlour. They are not in an escort service – they are in the sex trade in order to feed their drug addiction”.
The women that Todd saw at the drop-in were in downward free fall – oftentimes coming in battered and bruised. And while Todd estimates that 100% of women in the sex-trade have experienced abuse, only approximately 2% of them report it to the police. A police officer once told Todd that even if a sex trade worker does report violence, they really have nowhere to take her other than jail or the ER. What makes the situation even more unfortunate for these women is that it is illegal in Canada to rent living spaces to women in the sex trade. All of the women that Todd sees live in stairwells or “couch surf” because there are not enough safe beds for women in Toronto.
Todd remarked that “these women are the ones that broke my heart…so I decided to do this measly little thing. I opened the doors [of All Saints Church] one Friday afternoon [for sex-trade workers]”. While Todd may modestly call this act “measly”, it certainly was anything but. Todd visited every agency in Toronto that dealt with women in the sex trade and when she told them about her idea of having a drop-in centre just for women in the sex trade she was “flabbergasted” at the response. “I would go meet with people at different agencies and they would say this idea was amazing! They were all jumping on board. Now we have too many volunteers that we need to make a schedule!”
However, as one might imagine, not everyone was pleased with the sex-trade worker drop-in concept. As Todd noted, “Society has a violent attitude towards these women. We have neighbours in the area who will say, “how dare you harbor those maggots, they’re garbage”.
When it comes to women in the sex-trade, an overwhelming consensus from society is to blame these women – as if they are somehow responsible for their situation. Most of the time, these women have drug addictions coupled with mental health issues. Because they are stigmatized, they tend to fall through every crack and don’t receive the help that they need. Todd refers to them as the “invisible population – all the issues are thrown in and then people say, ‘we don’t know what to do with them’”.
Despite the complaints from their neighbours, the drop-in has become the successful product of a collective of women. Every Friday morning, Todd and other volunteers do outreach in the neighbourhood stairwells providing crack kits and inviting women who would not normally think about entering a church to join them for a hot breakfast, crafts, and a safe space.
“There is something about bringing a group of women together. I’ve seen it in the different places I’ve lived, like the Arctic and Nova Scotia – women get together, the elders and moms – well, so do women in the sex trade”.
Another important aspect of the all-women drop-in is to provide women with services that they might not be as willing to receive at other drop-ins. For example, there is a nurse at the All Saints drop-in centre every Tuesday; however, Todd noted that in her five years at All Saints, no women in the sex trade have come in to be seen by the nurse. Todd acknowledges that the lack of privacy at the Tuesday drop-ins may be a deterring factor for these women. So Todd has arranged for a nurse to come in on Fridays and “even if they aren’t doing any nursing, I just want them to be there so the women can be like, ‘oh yeah, I know so-and-so, she’s cool and I can ask her something’”. Todd is also doing the same thing with police. Once a month she arranges for a policewoman from the Special Victims Unit to attend the drop-in, because if a woman wants to report abuse, she might feel more comfortable with someone she has already met.
Todd recognizes that this is only the first step in helping sex-trade workers in Toronto. She is working on bringing together agencies all around Toronto that work with sex-trade workers and facilitate communication between these agencies to provide support for the women.
Todd also acknowledges that while four hours a week may offer the women a temporary escape, it is certainly not enough to keep them healthy and safe the other 164 hours. The WISH Drop-In Centre in Vancouver (http://www.wish-vancouver.net/) is a drop-in centre for female sex workers that is open from 6:00 pm until 11:00 pm, 7 days a week. WISH provides meals, hot showers and other services. Using the WISH model, Todd would like to start a 24/7 drop-in in Toronto.
Todd emphasized that the biggest part of the drop-in is just getting to know the names of the women and sit with them and chat and show them that someone cares. “We all just want to be loved; no matter who we are”. And so, Barb Todd’s advice to me and my fellow girls and women is to open our hearts and love everyone.
Written by Jaclyn Cappell
Edited by Lucinda Atwood
1 comment:
what a wonderful article. Well done getting this out and spreading awareness!
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