Somebody's Daughter (26 page)

Taunya and Teri gave their statements and Dave Perry had what he wanted, solid evidence to go with the information he had been gathering on the Scotians. By the time all of the statements were analyzed Manning Greer faced a total of twenty charges ranging from kidnapping and living on the avails of prostitution to possession of a weapon. Slugger, Eddy, Peanut and Smit faced twenty-six charges among them.

Meanwhile, the treatment Stacey received at the hospital was clearly restoring her usual mood—which is to say, the arrogant, angry and defiant attitude task force officers often observed in prostitutes first dealing with the police. Oddly, though, the teenager also answered every question the investigators asked. It was a strange interview for the investigators who listened as Stacey alternately cursed them, then responded to every query in great detail, without hesitation, from her recruitment into The Game to her experiences in Toronto. They had their signed statement, but what were the police going to do with Stacey now? Perry pondered the question as he read through the account of her nightmare. Understandably, her mother desperately wanted Stacey home in Halifax, but it wasn't quite as easy as that. She was seventeen, and hadn't been declared a ward of the court, so he had no authority to hold her or send her home.

Perry would have to play it by ear: he started by telling Stacey who he was and that he'd been speaking with her mother. The girl promptly turned on him, cursing and shouting and demanding to be released; familiar with this reaction, the officer gently explained that everyone around her, including her mom, knew she was a victim and had no intention of pointing fingers at her. Perry understood that Stacey was judging herself, that she believed everyone would think she was nothing but a “whore,” and that her sense of guilt could be very dangerous; it was a feeling that could drive a girl back to prostitution as much as a year after she'd left the streets. A girl misjudged or ostracized by former friends in the “square” world often began to feel cut off from mainstream society, and understandably inclined to seek questionable comfort even in the welcoming arms of a pimp.

Dave Perry knew he had to keep this from happening if he possibly could, and his first step was to make sure Stacey stayed away from the lawyers arriving at the station to see to the needs of Manning Greer and the other Scotian players. These lawyers, who had previously represented Annie Mae and a few other incarcerated prostitutes, also wanted to talk with Stacey and her friends, to ensure their rights were respected.

As the police tried to find a way to convince Stacey to return home they took her back to the waiting room where Annie Mae was sitting alone. Incredibly, Annie Mae who had no intention of leaving The Game had given the police a signed statement. She did it, she told Stacey, because she was angry at Smit and Peanut for their behavior the night before and she wanted to scare them a little. Annie Mae told Stacey she would not testify and would not cooperate any further when the cases came to trial. She kept her word and avoided the police after that night. She also gave Stacey a bit of advice. “Our lawyers are coming now honey, you talk to them and they'll get you outta here. If you want to testify against Smit that's your choice, but first you need some cool down time and they'll get you away from the police.”

Stacey thought she would testify but she still wasn't considering leaving The Game, even as she glimpsed the horrible results of its down side each time she looked at her injured legs. It was only sheer circumstance—or luck—that got the seventeen-year-old Haligonian away from the pimps and their high-priced legal help, and out to the Toronto airport. Mrs. Howard had told Perry that her brother was on the next flight to Toronto, so the constable asked two task force officers to drive with Stacey, treat her to some coffee or a snack, then get her to the airport to meet that flight. Her uncle could take it from there. When the two men in suits came to the interrogation room and told her to follow them, she thought she was being freed by those lawyers Annie Mae had told her about. Annie Mae waited, and when the real lawyers arrived she left the police station with them. Annie Mae was free but her pimp was not. She returned to the stroll and told the few Nova Scotia girls left there what had happened. Ever the “Choosy Suzy” Annie Mae picked one of their pimps and, agreeing with his assessment that Toronto was too dangerous, returned to Halifax and continued to play her part in The Game.

As Annie Mae linked up with another player, Stacey drove around with the two police officers, convinced the pimps were making sure she was safe. Even when they got to the airport, she did not realize something unusual was going on: Stacey sat numbly, watching as a throng of journalists, some wielding huge cameras, begin to gather around a man walking towards her and the officers. Suddenly he was beside her, smiling. It was her Uncle Henry.

Now completely confused, she stared uncomprehendingly at Henry Peterson. How had he known where to find her? Why were those reporters bothering him? And what would these lawyers do if she tried to talk with someone from home? Stacey's uncle embraced her in a big hug, but he could feel her whole body recoil, partly because the physical contact renewed the discomfort in her arms and legs, partly because she did not want affection. His concern mounted as he glanced at her bruises and her street clothes. The two officers guided them outside to escape the suddenly converging reporters who wanted a word with the Maritime teenager who'd been at the centre of the police raid, and as they sat in the officers' car near the entrance to the terminal, Peterson started chatting encouragingly about how happy the family was that she was coming home. “I'm not going back to Halifax,” Stacey retorted defiantly, looking at the “lawyers” for confirmation. Instead, they started talking to her uncle about severe trauma, and recovery period, and support mechanisms—what did that have to do with the family? Heartbreakingly, Stacey was still thinking of the Scotians as her family—not her devoted uncle, or her mom waiting anxiously at home. Stacey's uncle described everything he felt she had to look forward to at home—her old friends, her plans to go back to school—and finally he hit on an effective approach. “Stacey, if you don't come home now you can forget about ever seeing your son again,” Henry Peterson said, bluntly. “They'll take Michael away forever.”

“They can't do that, can they?” He nodded, gravely. In the weeks since coming to Toronto, Stacey had banished all conscious thoughts of her child, telling herself he'd be better off with any of his other relatives, hers or Roger's, than growing up with a prostitute for a mother and pimps for baby-sitters. Suddenly she desperately wanted to see her baby again. “Do you think it'd be okay if I went home for a little while?” she asked the two men, who glanced at each other, confused; didn't she understand that home was exactly where they wanted her to be? They didn't understand that Stacey still thought they were lawyers for the Scotians—lucky thing, too, for the officers. “Of course you should go home” would have met with utter opposition, coming as it did from the police. Well, she would go home for a bit, but as Stacey sat next to her uncle on the plane, her mood grew aggressive again; she answered all Peterson's questions with contempt and defiance. Her whole family was so square it hurt! Then she saw Taunya and Teri sitting a few rows away, and Stacey felt a bit better just knowing the girls were there. She couldn't have known that her two friends were experiencing an entirely different range of emotion—guilt at having turned to prostitution when all they had wanted out of their trip to Montreal was a bit of adventure; anxiety that their families would hate them for making that decision; and fear that they would be unable to fulfill their goal of leaving The Game.

At the Halifax airport, Constable Brad Sullivan was sitting with Debbie Howard, waiting for the arrival of Stacey and the other girls. Sullivan had made sure there was a private room for the families, so they could have a reunion untroubled by a barrage of journalists' questions about what it was like to be a juvenile prostitute. Debbie Howard appreciated media efforts to focus public attention on the serious issue, but she too wanted to avoid a mob scene. As she sat waiting with the other families, a woman walked over and asked who she was.

Mrs. Howard smiled and introduced herself but the answer was not what the woman was looking for.

“No I mean who are you, you must be someone important the way everybody is talking about your girl. It was on TV and the radio and everything.”

Debbie was puzzled by the question and explained that she wasn't anyone special, just a mother who wanted her girl back. That answer didn't wash; Teri's mother, Lorraine MacDonald, also wanted her daughter back, but she explained, no one had seemed to care.

“Did you call any reporters and tell them about her?”

“No.”

Teri's mom had been trying to hide what had happened to her daughter from others in her family. She had considered it a very private matter to be dealt with discretely, she had contacted police and filled out a missing persons report but had not gone further. Debbie explained it was a police officer from Toronto who told her to contact the media and she was glad she followed the advice. Mrs. Howard had a very different view of what had happened to her daughter. Mrs. MacDonald believed Teri had chosen to run away and be with the pimps and she was ashamed of her young daughter's decision. Debbie knew Stacey had gone with the pimps but she knew first-hand how an abusive man could force a young woman into almost any decision. Debbie wasn't much older than Stacey when she married her first husband and she knew when she walked down the aisle that he had a drinking problem and that he was prone to beating her but she still went through with the marriage. Debbie had gone through a great deal of self analysis in the years since she walked away from Stacey's father. Her understanding of her own guilt and confusion would be a valuable asset as she tried to help Stacey cope with the decisions the teen had made.

When the flight arrived and the girls were re-united with their families Brad Sullivan introduced himself to Stacey and told her he would like to have the opportunity to talk with her about the people in the Halifax area that had been involved in her recruitment. Stacey became defiant very quickly; she still believed it was the lawyers for her pimp who had freed her and allowed her to return to Halifax. She had no intention of talking to some cop and getting herself into trouble with the family. For weeks Smit had been lecturing Stacey about how she was now a part of the family and that only the family would look after her if there was ever trouble. At the time Stacey thought he was being foolish but the moment she was free of Smit and her life in the street she began to use the expression “my family” whenever she talked about Annie Mae or the others she had left behind. The phrase would lead to some heated arguments between Stacey and her mother.

Brad Sullivan decided he would give Stacey some time before he tried to get any real cooperation from her. Sullivan left to allow the family time to deal with the emotions of the moment. For Debbie the emotion was more than she could handle, she had promised herself she would be strong for Stacey but that resolve had melted away the second she set eyes on her daughter.

There had been no effort made to get Stacey any new clothing in all the confusion at the Juvenile Task Force office. Stacey arrived in Halifax dressed like a hooker in a tight-fitting miniskirt, a T-shirt and her usual choice: fish net stockings. It was not the clothing that had reduced Debbie to a mass of tears, it was what she saw beneath those stockings. By now Stacey's legs were a horrid mass of red, black, yellow and blue as the welts from the coat hanger began to heal. Debbie's heart was broken; she had been unable to protect her little girl from abuse at the hands of a man, and it was more than she could handle. Her only relief was that she could see Stacey, she could touch her; her little girl was alive.

Part Five: Operation Hectic Heats Up

The core of downtown Halifax offers an irony to the law makers and law breakers who people it. Hollis Street is home to the historic stone home of all Nova Scotia law makers, Province House. A block away sits the tall office building that is home to many of the top prosecutors whose job it is to make sure those laws are upheld. Much of the work done by the prosecutors takes place a block further down toward Halifax Harbour in the Province's supreme court building, the Law Courts. All of that surrounds a stretch of Hollis Street pavement, several blocks long, known as the downtown stroll. Long after all but the most dedicated government officials and Crown attorneys have packed it in for the night, the prostitutes are starting work. The girls of Hollis Street can be found just after dark lounging against buildings or power poles, waiting for a client to drive by; a quick discussion of service sought and price expected, and the date begins, usually concluding no more than a half-hour later. This scene is still played out on the sidewalks of Hollis today with one crucial difference. There are fewer girls now than there once were, and although their pimps call them girls they are no longer the thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds who made Hollis Street the centre of prostitution in Halifax.

A single police operation launched in the fall of 1992 is credited with the remarkable achievement of strangling the life out one of the city's most disturbing problems: juvenile prostitution. A joint-force task force whose twelve members included municipal, regional, and federal police officers, as well as a provincial Crown prosecutor, Operation Hectic was established as a direct result of the pressure politicians felt after media revelations of the abduction, abuse, and torture in Montreal and Toronto of four Nova Scotia teenagers—Stacey Jackson, Annie Mae Wilson, Taunya Terriault, and Teri MacDonald.

Action was demanded, and action was taken. The operation was announced by area police chiefs one week after Toronto juvenile task force officers moved in to arrest the man they called the pimping kingpin, Manning Greer. A little over a week later the Nova Scotia government handed one hundred thousand dollars to the task force to help it begin the job of tackling the pimping problem. The move was exactly what longtime Toronto task force member Dave Perry had been hoping to see; and he was certain that his main Halifax contact RCMP Constable Brad Sullivan, would be delighted at the decision. Indeed, Sullivan, who with fellow Mountie John Elliott had conducted a 1990 study of pimping in Halifax was more than happy with the announcement. It was his and Elliott's detailed proposal for a massive attack on pimps who preyed on juveniles, that formed the basis for the new task force's objectives. The two RCMP officers were also asked to help select their teammates for what would come to be known as Operation Hectic. Among those who became key members, along with Sullivan and Elliott, were three men whose backgrounds made them clear choices.