Somebody's Daughter (29 page)

Within two weeks, the “couple” was on the road again—Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, and finally Vancouver—another city, another stroll, another predawn party; Keri was amazed at the number of people Eric knew across the country, and it never occurred to her that anyone offering free coke and lots of drinks would find instant friends without too much trouble. It also didn't occur to her that she was paying the freight on this cross-Canada party. She even started to enjoy the late-night “fun,” although in the morning, a profound depression would overcome the confused teenager; the only relief was her writing, and luckily Eric found all the poetry stuff more of a joke than a possible threat to him. He let her continue to keep her journal.

Before long, Eric's restlessness struck again, and Keri soon found herself back on the Hollis stroll, where her shy, immature appearance caught the attention of the task force's Mitch Ginn. The constable called her over and introduced himself, then asked her to get in the car so they could talk; as usual, she obeyed without hesitation. When Ginn asked who her man was, she refused to answer—Eric had told her countless times never, ever, to identify him to police. Ginn backed off, but he did wonder aloud whether she might be willing to go with him to Dartmouth to take part in a program the task force had set up for prostitutes; to this Keri agreed. Task force officers had started to keep a photo log of girls working on Hollis, as a way of monitoring their numbers and identifying new arrivals—and to initiate a before-and-after record, essential for Botterill's eventual court corroboration, of any abuse their pimps might subject them to. After the photo was taken, Ginn asked Keri if she would be willing to spend the night at a new, safe place that had been opened to house some of the participants in the program. Then they could talk. That was Ginn's plan when he dropped her off for a night at the safe house. Unfortunately, Keri was long gone by the time Ginn arrived the following morning. She had called Eric, and although she assured him she had told the police nothing, he decided to get her out of Halifax in case they tried again. He came to pick her up shortly after 9
A.M.
, and by early afternoon they were on a flight to Montreal. It would be more than two years before anyone in Halifax heard news of Keri Sherwood again.

The safe house that Keri never had a chance to truly take advantage of was the task force's response to a growing awareness that its increasing number of potential witnesses were in urgent need of support services. Officers had spent weeks observing pimps and gathering evidence to lay charges against them, but by late fall, the team was spending much of its time cultivating ongoing relationships—with the girls who could eventually testify against them. As more and more teenagers expressed an interest in breaking free of violent pimps, investigators found these girls had nowhere to go where they could avoid the street life and find the kind of counseling and support they needed.

The lack of support services was clear to Brad Sullivan and John Elliott as they continued to try to work with Stacey Jackson, who continued the aggressive stance to which she'd grown accustomed on the street. She was angry about being in Halifax, she was angry that Michael wasn't coming back to live with her right away, she was angry about almost everything. When Debbie Howard decided to move her daughter to a relative's home in another part of the province, she began refusing to sleep at night, preferring to sit up until dawn and sleep all day. She threatened to return to Toronto and the street life whenever she felt she wasn't getting what she wanted. Her deeply concerned relatives worked in shifts to make sure someone was around to talk to her at any time, but Stacey, far from appreciating this solicitude, felt trapped, and judged, by her “square” family. Not to mention that cop, the same one who'd been bugging her at the airport. Now here he was again in the kitchen, yapping on about his task force, how it was there to help girls like her—and there was her mom and Uncle Henry and everybody taking it all in.… “Fuck off!” she shouted at Sullivan. “If I want help, I've got a family to help me!” She ignored her mother's pain, knowing Debbie Howard was well aware that “family,” in this case, meant the Scotians.

Before he left, Brad Sullivan promised to seek some support for Stacey, and some relief for her mother and other relatives. Indeed, before the day was out, the officer contacted the province's community services department for advice, and was able to find space for her and another seventeen-year-old former prostitute at an Annapolis Valley shelter for battered women; department counselors had to bend the rules to get them in, but agreed with Sullivan that the teenagers' treatment at the hands of their pimps certainly constituted physical abuse. Surprisingly, Stacey accepted the move and agreed to give high school another try—deep within her remained the seeds of ambition for higher education—but after only two days in a classroom with “little kids” who knew nothing of the “real world,” she and the other girl took off for the city. They were found on the outskirts of Dartmouth by a Cole Harbour RCMP officer; both of them had been drinking and were detained at the detachment overnight. The next day, the other girl agreed to return to the shelter, but Stacey insisted she would never return.

Stacey's family was exhausted and out of answers, so Sullivan continued to try to find help through the Department of Community Services. Stacey was sent to the Princess Alexandra unit of the Nova Scotia hospital, a ward for young people who need both counseling and educational facilities. At first, Stacey exploded in another burst of rage so extreme that she had to be sedated—the hospital is a psychiatric facility, and Stacey felt the police were treating her like “a crazy person.” Within a few days, however, the unit's experienced counselors had enabled her to realize she was there to be helped, not judged. Still, Sullivan and the other task force members needed to find a long-term solution to accommodating their potential witnesses once they were off the streets.

Finally the decision was made to establish a safe house in the Halifax area: there would be no age restrictions, and investigators would no longer have to travel to Truro to talk to the girls, although some of them, like Taunya and Teri, opted to stay at the girls' school, a decision applauded by their parents who were beginning to believe the girls really did want help. The new safe house was located in an unused wing of the Nova Scotia Hospital, at the bottom of a hill just below the task force office in the Dartmouth Police Station. For the police the location was perfect. While the girls were in Truro, it took an hour to drive down and meet with them and the police were never sure what the girls were doing when they were not there. The new unit was a two minute drive from the task force office and they could see it as the drove to and from work every day.

Dave Perry, left at table, briefs Halifax reporters October 1992. [Print from ATV video tape]

The task force officers could thank their Toronto counterparts as much as anyone else for helping to get a safe house up and running. In the weeks and months following the Toronto raids Dave Perry became a regular visitor to Nova Scotia where he continued to interview his witnesses, guide the members of the new task force, and meet with the media. Perry had become a favorite of local reporters. He knew prostitution better than most people and he knew how to speak in the sound bytes that were the lifeblood of modern journalism. Perry condemned the “monsters” he said were behind the “highly organized and far reaching” Nova Scotia pimping family. He claimed his raid had “just barely reached below the tip of the iceberg.” On October seventh, Perry described the success of Moberly House, the JTF safe house in Toronto, to reporters. He told them a safe house was “essential” if the fight against the “vicious men who prey on these children” was to succeed. Perry well knew the local Task Force needed and wanted a safe house and he told the reporters as much, saying if the resources were not available “I can only humbly say that I think they should be given them. If the dollars aren't there it can't be done.” The following morning, the provincial justice minister announced the formation of a committee whose first priority would be to look into setting up a safe house. Hardly a firm commitment, but that came two months later when Roland Thornhill, Minister of Community Services, announced a half million dollar a year budget for the operation of the safe house.

The new residence was named Sullivan House, much to the delight of task force officers who teased Brad Sullivan by claiming he had insisted the house be named for him. The name actually originated from the name of small pond in Halifax. When community service workers met in Halifax to discuss the establishment of the safe house they met in another youth facility across from Sullivan's Pond. At the end of the meeting when someone asked what the new house would be called they all agreed Sullivan House would be appropriate enough. After that meeting Shane Kirk, a twenty-four-year-old child services counselor, began preparing Sullivan House for its new role. Kirk and other workers did everything they could to remove the institutional appearance of the old hospital building and give it a more relaxed home like feel. Stacey Jackson was the first resident, and she was met at the door by a smiling Shane Kirk. Stacey thought Kirk was another task force officer; his muscular build and short hair were enough to identify him as a policeman for her. Kirk quickly informed Stacey that he was not a policeman but that he was there to help her make the transition to a normal lifestyle. Within days, other girls began arriving, and Stacey found herself among friends who shared her problems and frustrations, and understood where she had come from. The girls lost no time redecorating their small rooms, putting up posters from their favorite magazines and setting out their jewelry and scarves to brighten up the usual institutional beiges and yellows that Kirk had unthinkingly used in his efforts to make the place more homey. The girls also did some redecorating in the large common room they shared when they were not in their own bedrooms. The common area gave the girls a lovely view of the tree-filled lawn of the hospital—and, unfortunately for girls wavering on the brink of a return to The Game, an unobstructed view of the lower end of Hollis Street, just across the Harbour.

Sullivan House.

Access to Sullivan House was closely restricted, and even relatives had to observe visiting hours. Kirk and the others running the facility heeded warnings from task force officers concerned that pimps would try to kill one of the girls as a means of getting a strong message to the others. Sullivan House followed a double lock down routine. The girls were housed on the second floor behind a large wooden locked door. On the main floor even task force officers were required to show their badges through a hole in the main entrance before they were granted access to the lobby. Visitors would walk through the large lobby, then up a flight of stairs that looked like it had been taken from a 1950s Hollywood musical. At the top was a foyer with a door that opened onto the residence itself—and no one without clearance from counselors and the task force was permitted beyond either the main entrance or the one at the top of those stairs. Along with Sullivan House's location, on the second story of a building minutes from a police station, investigators had imposed the stringent visiting rules to protect the girls.

In its early days, Sullivan House was also a locked unit, but some of the girls became so outraged—they had come from Truro, where no such restriction existed—that they lowered themselves on bed sheets from the common-room window and took off, some never to return while others came back reluctantly after being found by task force officers. A system of supervised releases took care of the problem. At first, the supervised releases were a challenge for the counselors required to provide the supervision. Shane Kirk recalls one trip to a Dartmouth bowling alley that proved disastrous. “There were five girls, and the minute we arrived at the bowling alley they all ran. We had task force officers, regular Dartmouth police force officers and every spare body from Sullivan House out looking.” The girls were not intent on escaping and had just run off to give their young counselor a tough time. They all returned after a few hectic hours of searching on the part of Kirk and the police.