Death of sex worker in London raises host of difficult questions
Police review of how cases handled will include how public warnings issued
LONDON When Lynette Brennan called London police to tell them her sister, Josie Glenn, was missing, she left out one fact: Her sister was a sex worker. She left it out on purpose. “I thought of Shelley Desrochers and about another working girl that had gone missing. They treat the women with less respect. ‘It is not important. This is the lifestyle they choose,’ ” they say.
Brennan does not regret the decision. London police were criticized in 2016 for moving too slowly after learning Desrochers, a sex worker, was missing.
In her sister’s case, police moved quickly, although by the time they found Josie, she was dead.
When the officer confronted her later about leaving out her sister’s work, “I told him why, that I didn’t want her to be treated less seriously.”
Brennan’s reluctance to tell police her sister was a sex worker speaks volumes about the reputation of London police in the minds of those workers, their families, friends and allies and the organizations advocating for women.
It’s an image tarnished even further with the death of Glenn in October, and revelations about other assaults that surfaced since.
Oluwatobi Boyede, 25, was charged Oct. 28 with second-degree murder in Glenn’s death after her body was found in Boyede’s home in south London.
In the days following his arrest, disturbing details emerged about other charges against him for sexually assaulting two women.
Police were criticized for not releasing information to the public about the earlier charges and for not warning agencies that work with women in the sex trade about a condition of his release that he not have any contact with anyone for paid sexual services.
“This community is being failed at this point by police services,” Megan Walker, head of the London Abused Women’s Centre says.
“At this point, there is clear criticism toward them and some clear learning needed,” AnnaLise Trudell, education manager at Anova, a shelter and agency for abused women, says.
It’s worth noting the two women stand at opposite ends in the political debate about the nature of sex work. In a city divided over how to approach sex work — even to the point of what to call it — condemnation of police over the Boyede case has crossed all political lines.
It may seem a shocking turn of events for a force credited in the 1980s for leading the battle against domestic violence, that is part of a thriving program helping streetlevel sex workers and which has a unit dedicated to helping trafficked women.
But the death of Glenn has brought attention to a part of the sex worker community that is not easy to label, talk about comfortably or agree about the best way to help.
“They are hidden. They are indoors,” Treena Orchard, a Western University researcher who has studied London sex work, says.
“They are getting ignored and their lives are being sacrificed. It can’t be ignored because it’s messy. It can’t be ignored because people don’t like it.”
Escorts, strippers and body rub workers don’t fall into the category of survival sex workers, selling their bodies for drugs, or a place to crash for the night. Survival or street level workers have a 25-agency effort called Street Level Woman at Risk to help them in London.
They don’t fall either into the category of trafficked women, forced into sex work and moved from motel to motel, city to city. London police have an anti-trafficking initiative to help them.
“They don’t fit our victim narrative,” Trudell says. “They have been very clear, they don’t want to be saved.”
It’s easy enough for organizations and the media to support anti-trafficking measures that save girls and women from being forced to sell sex, and it’s easy enough to support programs that help street level workers battling mental illness and addiction, Trudell says.
“It doesn’t really cost us any of our moral ethics to help.”
But the concept of a woman choosing to sell her body can challenge our morals and make helping women a little less comfortable.
“Not only does the public not like to talk about sex in this way, but it would require they look at what does consent mean. At the end of the day we are debating consent. We are debating whether money can be consent,” Trudell says.
“Everyone of us has a sense of what is normal and right around sex and what is not. I am not saying this to abdicate any of the responsibility the police should have on this, because they need to look at fundamental practices.” In some ways, police can’t win. Trudell and other advocates want to see sex work decriminalized. The current laws that charge johns for buying sex, but not sex workers for selling, forces sex work deeper into the shadows, they argue.
Facing a criminal charge, a john will insist on transactions even farther from public space or businesses. And women will be less likely to talk about what is happening in their work lives.
“Any person can’t fully enact the ways they can be safe in their workplace if they cannot talk about their workplace,” Julie Baumann, a coordinator at says SafeSpace, a support centre for sex workers.
It’s a shameful dichotomy, SafeSpace volunteer and researcher Jodi Hall says.
In order to get attention, sex workers have to play the role of victims — needing help with addiction or mental illness or their choice of work — to get help, Hall says.
But when they are victims of assault, police don’t believe them.
“You’re a victim until you’re a victim, then it’s your fault,” Baumann says.
But Walker takes the opposite point of view of the laws. She supports Canada’s relatively new laws on sex work, prefers the term prostitution, and believes if police just started enforcing the laws, they’d make women safer.
Boyede should have charged with purchasing sex when the first woman came forward, Walker says.
“And then it gives credibility to her story . ... Her story should be given the highest priority and believed.”
Every time a john isn’t charged, he feels more power to do whatever he wants the next time, Walker says.
“To me that sends a message to society and particularly to men that it’s not the priority of police. It’s just a free-for-all for everybody. You go out and you do whatever you want to that girl. We’re not going to be enforcing the law so you’re going to get away with it and that woman believes she has no protection from police,” Walker says.
“For God’s sake, how many women have to be murdered until they (police) wake up and say, ‘We’ve got to do this a different way’? Isn’t one enough?” Walker says.
Representatives of several organizations say they’ve been in contact with London police over the Boyede case.
“Nothing was accomplished,” Walker said after a meeting earlier this month with police. “We remain very concerned about police response to sexual assault and their failure to lay sex purchasing charges.”
Trudell says she has also been in contact with London police, but adds it will take much more than changing one police force to change police.
“Unless it’s rooted in the Ontario Police College, unless it is a consistent model, a cultural understanding, nothing will change.”
Sometime next year, an advisory committee will begin working with London police to create a system for community-based reviews of sexual assault cases.
The review is one result of The Globe and Mail’s Unfounded series that discovered London police classified almost one-third of sexual assault complaints as unfounded — a law enforcement term for a baseless allegation or when a criminal charge isn’t warranted — one of the highest rates in the country.
Trudell says she’s determined to make sex work part of the review discussions.
“I will die on that sword. Not because I am wanting to go off and politicize an issue for the sake of radicalization. We have to talk about sexual assault and sex work.”
London police say they’ve already been working with groups to improve responses to sexual assaults and welcome more discussion.
“The London police service believes that every victim of crime should be treated with respect and that all women should be able to live in safety and security without fear of violence,” spokesperson Const. Sandasha Bough says.
“We have and will continue to train our officers about the sensitivities to the needs of victims as we constantly strive toward improving the service we provide to the community.”
In earlier interviews, Bough said there would be a review of the investigation into Glenn’s death, as there are of all investigations. More recently, she elaborated that the review will include how police issue warnings.
“That would include what processes are in place in regards to how and when we issue warnings to a specific community or the public at large.
“Once that is completed and we have seen any resulting recommendations, we will be in a better position to take any further action that may be required.”
On Nov. 17, police notified the media, the London Abuses Women’s Centre, Anova and SafeSpace that they were investigating an assault on a sex worker that took place Nov. 12, and was reported to them Nov. 16.
Leaders of those organizations welcomed the notification as a first step toward improving police responses to sexual assaults.
Many women’s organizations themselves are awakening to the fact a large segment of sex workers in London aren’t getting the help they need.
“We don’t talk enough about the women who are just trying to make a living,” says Susan Macphail, director of My Sisters’ Place, an organization that helps at-risk women, including those in street level sex trade.
“There is a lot of stigma and judging around individuals who are making their own choice to work in sex work.”
All the organizations aimed at helping women in London need to work together to step up efforts to reach out and help women working as escorts and in clubs and parlours, Macphail says.