ATTENTION READER: The topic of this essay and its contents can be triggering for some audiences, and graphic in a couple places. Some content warnings include assault, prostitution, sex crimes, police-related trauma, and homicide.
Iris
Last week, I had the fleeting and rare privilege of falling in love with a beautiful woman. I had booked a spontaneous trip to Texas, a place that I might want to live someday. No one could go with me due to work schedules (and general disinterest in a getaway that didn’t involve a beach), so at my mother's recommendation, I booked a bunk at a hostel in Deep Ellum, a trendy, walkable neighborhood of Dallas. Traveling is not something I would be able to do during a non-Covid semester, but being an online (and vaccinated) student for now, I figured I might as well take advantage of the quarantine ease-ups and go check out my possible future home for a few days. Plus, true crime is a passion of mine. I wanted to see the infamous Grassy Knoll and study the angles and make my own informed decision about whether there was a second JFK shooter or if Lee Harvey Oswald had operated alone.
One hitch made me hesitant about the trip. I had an article to write, but I love a challenge so I decided to go for it. As long as I have WiFi access, I reasoned, why not? Plus, time on the plane and in airports? I knew I could make it work.
I'd traveled alone before but had never stayed at a hostel. My mom, who has traveled all over the world, promised I'd meet people there. When I walked into my all-female dorm, I wasn't sure how to act. Do I introduce myself to the other guests? Do I mind my own business? I went with the latter at first, not wanting to come off as weird or intrusive. Quickly, all that was washed away when a girl in the top bunk across from me asked “Where you from?” I answered her, found out she was from Chicago, but had recently been in California. Her smile had me instantly transfixed and the way her attention was laser-focused on me felt overly intimate but welcoming at the same time. “You seem pretty,” she said. “Let me get my glasses....” She fished around in her blanket then placed them on her face. She leaned forward from her bunk and studied me, asking me to look at her. “See, I knew it. You're gorgeous.” She stated it like it was not an opinion but an empirical fact that was not up for debate. I smiled a little and blushed. Who was this brazen woman?
And so began my week of falling in love with a woman named Iris. She was twenty-five, had long, stylish locs and dressed with just the right amount of sexiness and class. She was graceful and enchanting and I wanted more of her attention.
When I asked Iris about the nearest convenience store, she mentioned a 7-Eleven down the street. I nodded then rolled over in my bunk, not sure what to say next. I checked in with my mom before some mindless Facebook scrolling. I was surprised when I heard her voice, “Are you ready?”
“Huh?” I said, turning back to look at Iris.
“To go to the 7-Eleven. I was waiting for you.”
I looked to see her standing by the door, purse in hand. When I asked for directions, I in no way assumed that she would accompany me, but she of course assumed the opposite. A sense of community was in the air. I knew then she must travel solo often and that she was at ease with fellow travelers. My mom had explained this, that experienced hostel travelers, especially ones that are going it solo, have an unspoken pact of cutting to the chase. The “getting to know you” period of a friendship lasts about two minutes in a hostel and she was right. That’s part of the allure of hostel travel. Cheap prices, best locations and the pleasure of meeting people from all over the world with no strings attached or weighty expectations of a life-long friendship. Friends for a day, my mother says, will be some of the most meaningful connections of your lifetime.
On our walk to the store, Iris told me she had lived in Thailand, Shanghai, New York, Chicago. She must be an ESL teacher, I thought. Or maybe an artist. Intelligent, beautiful, cultured, we talked about sex and joked around about men who take too long or don’t take long enough.
I joked with her. “When it's been like an hour and he still can't shoot, it's like, god, are you gonna pay me hourly for this?”
“Well, I’m being paid hourly,” she said, matter-of-fact. “But still. It’s like come on dude, let’s end this already.”
I was struck with embarrassment at my assumptions about her but tried not to show it. Iris went on to tell me that she is a sex worker. She was in Dallas looking for a club where she could dance. Stripping is her primary source of income but she said she enjoyed the ability to offer full-service sex work to favored clients. “My thing is,” she explained. “I'm a stripper first, so I don't have to put out for guys. The money's great when I can though. But they have to be nice to me and I have to find them handsome.”
I thought about the cosmic chances of meeting a sex worker at the same time that I am literally writing an article about sex workers. Do I ask for an interview? I decided against it. I wanted this girl’s company more than anything. I decided whatever I learned about her life was secondary to the paper. If I could use what I learned for the paper that would be a bonus. I was there to experience life and--fingers crossed--work on the paper whenever I could tap into free Internet. On the plane I had been revising the section of my essay titled “Sex Workers: Real People or Sub-human?” I was pretty jazzed with what I had written so far.
Sex Workers || Real People, or Sub-human?
95,096 cases of missing women were filed in 2020 (Statista, 2021). In a descriptive study, Salfati studied the homicides of prostitutes in the U.K. for key characteristics of this subgroup of crimes. Salfati et al. (2008)found that of the homicides studied, 46% were unsolved. Although this subgroup of the population being relatively small, they are extremely high at-risk for homicide. Another focus study suggested (Egger, 2003) that 65% of serial murder victims are female and “nearly 78% of female victims of serial murderers are prostitutes” (2003, p. 49). The implications of these statistics are wide; they expose a deep, dehumanizing stigma in our society surrounding sex workers.
A Netflix film titled “Lost Girls” dramatized and highlighted this stigma by taking the perspective of Mari Gilbert, mother of Shannan Gilbert who was found dead along the southern shore of Long Island. In the film, Mari's character is enraged with the way her daughter is referred to by the police and media, complaining that when the victims of the Long Island killer were talked about, if at all, “it's 'prostitute,' 'hooker,' 'sex worker,' 'escort.' Never 'friend,' 'sister,' 'mother,' 'daughter.'” The narrative surrounding sex workers in the media often leads viewers believing that prostitutes are only one thing: prostitutes. That they have no families, no one looking for them or missing them, and absolutely no futures to be concerned about, and no contribution to humanity. But what about Iris? No contribution to humanity? I’m part of humanity. If Iris went missing, I would feel loss and I like to think I would go looking for her. But the truth is, I probably wouldn’t even know about it because her life is transient and mysterious and talking with her about her childhood, I was learning sadly that her family likely wouldn’t notice if she disappeared, either.
Die Fighting
One night, we got back to the hostel after a night of drinking, which Iris had told me before depresses her and she doesn't enjoy. She had recently broken up with her ex of seven years who had funded a lot of her lifestyle but was too controlling. We talked about her mother who birthed eight kids in order to live off of welfare. The words stung my ears. They disrupted my view of government assistance and social programs which are much nicer ways to say “welfare.” She told me about going hungry during much of her childhood when the money would run out each month. Her mom used it unwisely sometimes, selfishly even, rather than making sure the fridge was full.
She told me she had seen many of her friends go down this same path, raised by mothers who did the same, and that when she left home at 16, she made a conscious decision to reject that path. Sex work offered her another route toward a decent lifestyle that doesn't pass a burden onto any children. She takes birth control and always requires a condom, yes, to avoid disease, but probably more so to act as a double shield against pregnancy. It pained me to hear that Iris has no relationship with her mother who still lives in Chicago. Yet, she remembers some things about her mother fondly, particularly a piece of advice that turned out to be especially useful for someone in Iris’s profession.
“One thing she taught me, that I'll never forget,” she said, “is to fight. She told me ever since I was a little girl, 'you fight for your life, and if they kill you anyway, at least you'll have died fighting.' And someday I'll have to, and I'll die fighting for sure, because somebody on these streets is going to kill me eventually.”
My mom taught me the same thing. About stranger danger and never letting a kidnapper take you to a second location. To fight with everything you have at ground zero because you will be dead if you don’t. But I never took that advice as seriously as Iris has had to. The odds of me getting kidnapped, raped, and killed are infinitesimal compared to Iris’s. Still, how could she be so sure this is how she would die?
“Do you really believe that? That you'll get killed for sure?” I asked.
“Oh, of course I will,” she said, casually. She said it without pain and without tears or fear. It was just a fact to her. It made my stomach hurt. I wanted to tell her “That won't happen, not to you,” but I couldn't. I simply listened, and wondered if it would be true.
In the dorm, I heard Iris talk to a few friends on the phone but the relationships seemed more casual than friendships I have. Like these people knew and accepted her lifestyle and weren’t the least concerned about her whereabouts and safety. Or at least not concerned enough. And then the stories she told me about her childhood painted a grim picture of her background and reinforced the stereotypes that sex workers come from bad homes. Iris comes from a rough home. The fact is, like in most missing sex worker cases, I don’t think anyone would notice if Iris disappeared. At least for a while. And when or if they did, would reporting it to the police even make a difference?
What I found in my research for the paper is that certain themes repeat themselves in these cases; family and friends' having difficulties in filing missing persons reports, having to harass police departments to investigate their disappearances, biased media portrayal of the victims, as well as a number of issues within law enforcement: The distrustful relationship between sex workers and law enforcement, problems with the process of filing missing persons reports, outdated data management, a lack of communication between police departments, and a general reluctance to fully investigate these crimes.
So the bottom line is that cases of missing sex workers are generally dismissed. They are not taken as seriously by law enforcement as other missing person cases.
In the case of Shannan Gilbert
The words the characterized version of Mari Gilbert spoke in “Lost Girls” was an echo of a statement made by Shannan's sister, Sarra, on CBS News' “48 Hours.” she said “"I believe they judged her by her profession and not as a person," she said. "Not as the missing sister, the missing aunt. They're just, 'Oh, a missing prostitute.'"(Gilbert, 2011)
Shannan Gilbert was a 24-year-old woman from New Jersey who disappeared in May 2010. Shannan called 911 after visiting a client as an escort. Shannan's 911 call lasted nearly twenty minutes, and she can be heard screaming “they're trying to kill me” as she ran through a gated Long Island neighborhood, knocking on doors around 4:51 a.m. One would think that because Shannan's mother took note of her disappearance the very next day and attempted to file a missing person's report with local law enforcement, that this would be beneficial in finding her but Mari ran into roadblocks almost immediately.
Shannan lived in New Jersey, but disappeared while working in Long Island, and neither department wanted to be the one to take the report. Mari was bounced between police departments, New Jersey telling her to file with Long Island where she disappeared, and Long Island insisting she call New Jersey where she lived. Eventually a report was filed, and Shannan's 911 call —made less than 24 hours before her missing persons case was opened— was not connected to her case for four more months.How does this happen? They received the call that same night and an immediate connection should have been made if any proper investigation was done at all regarding Shannan initially. Shannan's body was finally found in a search along a stretch of New Jersey highway, but not before police uncovered ten more bodies of murdered sex workers. The murders were connected and soon, a serial killer dubbed The Long Island Killer was in the news. He was never caught, and he is either still out there or has already died a free man.
Many of the women that fell victim to the Long Island Killer (henceforth dubbed “LISK”) were determined to have been killed afterShannan Gilbert. Shannan herself was not found until two years later, and although her body was found in the same dumping grounds as the ten other victims, police have insisted that for some reason, Shannan was not connected with them, proposing a limp theory of an accidental drowning. Mari and her family commissioned their own autopsy which concluded that Shannan's injuries were consistent with homicidal strangulation. The LISK case was already huge, the investigation fully launched and media circling coverage. Why insist that just Shannan specifically was not one of the murders? What is different about Shannan in the eyes of law enforcement? If Shannan was a victim of LISK, then she is the only victim who was reported missing immediately, and her case was not taken seriously for months while LISK continued to operate. The implication that Shannan was a victim of LISK reflects poorly on the department for dismissing prior evidence of a killer while he hunted many more victims. The ten other bodies were found at once and a full investigation was launched into LISK, but a legitimate investigation into the disappearance of Shannan Gilbert when she was reported missing after her 911 call could have led police to the presence of a serial killer months earlier and could have saved womens' lives, but they did not care about Shannan or her family. It is in this way that it benefits the Long Island police department to state that Shannan was unconnected with the other womens' bodies.
Easy Pickings?
With sex workers as a popular victim for serial killers, cases like this are all too common; prostitutes are not investigated properly or not reported missing at all, and the killer may operate longer and take more victims before he is caught, if he ever is. So what makes sex workers such popular victims for these killers? For insight, we can look to the killers themselves. Gary Leon Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer, was convicted of 48 separate murders, making him the second most prolific serial killer in the United States history according to confirmed murders. All of his victims were women, and most of them sex workers. After he was caught, Ridgway spoke with reporters and testified in his own trial about his motivations and methods, giving one of the most dehumanizing, disgusting comments regarding his choice in victims: “I picked prostitutes as my victims because I hate most prostitutes and did not want to pay them for sex. I also picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught. (State of Washington v. Gary Leon Ridgway, 2003, p. 7). And wasn't he right, really? Forty-eight convictions. The term “conviction” in this case refers only to victims that could be proven in court. It's safe to assume that however many he was convicted of is but a percentage of his victims.
In 1998, researchers James Alan Fox and Jack Levin studied patterns of serial and mass murder looking for trends in killers, motivations, methods, their findings are still one of the most extensive research articles covering trends in cases of mass murderers and prostitutes. They replicated this study again in 2005, and what they found is that of their male serial killers, 33% chose female victims only and another 12.2% chose only prostitute victims (2005). In all these cases, Fox and Levin found there are a few key factors that these victims have in common: They are working at night in dark/unpoliced areas, they have a higher rate of homelessness leading to no meaningful way to track the person's whereabouts, can often be cut off from families, move from town to town and their locations can be sporadic, and the stigmas surrounding their area of work lead them to being seen as sub-human. A study of prostitutes in Colorado Springs found that 34% of adult prostitutes had not lived in a household in the last 6 months, living instead in homeless shelters, halfway houses, hotels, rooming houses, or on the street, with some having been in prison or jail (Brewer et al., 2000).
Documentation: A Double-Edged Sword
After exploring the neighborhood one evening in Dallas, going to some art galleries and having the best land-locked sushi of my life, I got back to the hostel and overheard Iris on the phone with another club, asking about auditions. I heard her ask if they require fingerprints, and shortly afterward, she hung up. “All of these clubs in this city ask for fingerprints, are they trying to get me killed?”
She explained that the process of fingerprinting puts her stage name on file alongside her real name, and someone savvy enough could find this information, find her real name, her real Facebook, her real address back home in Chicago. “They want to take my fingerprints and have me fill out paperwork,” she said, “ so they can come off like a more 'professional' type of club, but all they’re doing is putting my name into a database so someone can look me up and message me on my real facebook and go 'Hey, you're Iris and you work at this club.' I'm not trying to get stalked and killed that way.”
In regards to their vulnerability in being captured, Fox and Levin put it best: “Vulnerability is most acute in the case of prostitutes, which explains their extremely high rate of victimization by serial killers. A sexual sadist can cruise a red-light district, trolling for the woman who best fits his deadly sexual fantasies. When he finds her, she willingly gets into the killer's car and is completely at his mercy. Even when it is well known that a killer is prowling the streets in search of victims, far too many prostitutes place profit above protection, erroneously believing that they can fend for themselves.” (Fox and Levin, 1998). It is in this way that women in sex work are forced to make a choice between their personal safety and finances, a choice no one makes because they just want to or don't care about their safety. It's a tough choice but these women are making it every day.
Unlike some of these sex workers, Iris has some variables going for her. She is not a street-walking prostitute. She is not on drugs. She is extremely beautiful and can dance. All of these factors keep her off the streets and an attractive candidate to be hired by strip clubs where the chances are likely a lot lower that she will encounter serial killers who prefer to go unnoticed. But the fact that she moves around a lot is problematic. Often, the most fruitful sex work means moving locations. High-profile events like the Superbowl, major music festivals, biker rallies, or political conventions can draw sex workers to other cities. Shifts in local laws, or a sudden influx of gang activity that prompts potential customers to relocate are also factors that influence a sex workers decision to stay in a particular place. When a sex worker moves around a lot, it can drastically decrease the chance that their disappearances will be noted. Fox and Levin go on to report that “... victims are lacking in connections with the local community and are expected to be on the move. Because the disappearance of a prostitute is more likely to be treated, at least initially, as a missing person rather than a victim of homicide, the search for her body can be delayed weeks or months.” (Fox and Levin, 1998).
In the Case of Megan Waterman
Megan Waterman's body was found alongside LISK's highway dumping grounds in January 2011. She was 22-years-old and worked as an escort on Craigslist and had a four-year-old daughter, Liliana. Megan lived in Maine, but she traveled to New York and then regularly to Long Island looking for work as a prostitute. She checked in to the Holiday Inn Express on June 5, 2010 with her boyfriend, who called Megan's grandmother the next day to tell her she was missing. She was last seen walking out of the Holiday Inn alone at 1:30 a.m. (Lam, 2011).
Was Megan reported missing? You bet she was, immediately, by her mother. Police did not investigate Megan's murder until nearly a month after her report was filed. When they did investigate her hotel room, her phone and wallet were found. This evidence would have been crucialif it had been found earlier in her case. In a statement made by her mother in 2018, “When I called the Suffolk County Police Department, they should have gone to her hotel room that day,” Ela told the Lost Girlsfilmmakers. “They don’t care about the sex world. They just think they’re dirty, scummy people.”(Killoran, 2018).Megan may have already been dead by the time the police report was filed, however, when her body was found almost a year later it was decomposed so badly, her remains mostly skeletal, that identifying her took weeks and most evidence of her attack was lost.
In the Case of Wendy Evans and Cynthia Pugh
The cases are endless. Take Wendy Evans and Cynthia Pugh, as another example. Their convicted killer James Randall also specifically sought out prostitutes as his victims. He would pick up prostitutes on evenings when his live-in girlfriend, Terry-Jo Howard was gone or at work, bring them back to their home and commit crimes against them there, most leading to murder. In an interview with ForensicFiles, Terry-Jo Howard says “Afterwards, when I did find out and was talking to him, it didn't seem like it was that big a deal to him. 'They were just prostitutes. They were just drug addicts. They were just.... women.' [he said].” In Randall's case, his motivation in choosing prostitute victims was based in their status as “Less Dead,” telling Terry-Jo after his arrest that “I hurt them so I would not hurt you.”
In the Case of Natalee Holloway
But then there are the girls that EVERYONE notices are missing. The ones who get 24-hour news coverage. One particularly famous case was Natalee Holloway. Natalee was an 18-year-old woman who went missing on May 30, 2005 after visiting Aruba in the Caribbean after her highschool graduation. Holloway's case made international news, garnering media attention for years after her disappearance. During the year of her disappearance, she was reported on by the 24-hour-hour news cycle by every major news source, talk-show hosts such as Nancy Grace taking great and enduring interest in her case. Natalee encompassed everything that makes a victim sympathetic to the public: She was pretty, American, blonde, young and bright. She had lots of family and friends. She was essentially everything that a prostitute victim cannot be seen as.
Search and rescue attempts began immediately upon Natalee missing her flight. Multiple arrests were made within two weeks of her disappearance, an entire pond drained in the search for her body, as well as landfills searched multiple times (CNN, 2005). Although her case was never solved, the resources allotted to her case were highly disproportionate to most cases of missing women. I myself was nine years old in 2005, and I remember her. I remember her name and her face in the news. I cannot remember a case of a missing adult so clearly as I can remember Natalee Holloway's. The case of Natalee Holloway is important, it highlights the abilities of law enforcement under meaningful motivations for a more “sympathetic” victim. If police were able to do all of this to find the pretty, bright, clean-record, college-bound, blonde, white teenager, why were resources suddenly so scarce in the cases of the victims of LISK? Natalee Holloway deserved the resources and Herculean effort to find her. She deserved justice. But so do all the other missing women and this includes sex workers.
Why no resources?
With most homicides like these, the investigation begins with the police report. Shannan Gilbert's mother was bounced back and forth between police departments, her path to getting the report filed filled with roadblocks and uncaring attitudes. The pushing-off of a case onto another police department is a common attitude; police departments notoriously prefer not to collaborate with one another. This could be because law enforcement hopes to solve the case and have it attributed to their police department, or it could be because law enforcement already assumes the case will run cold, and therefore wants it attributed to another department. Either way, it seems a police department would rather never solve a case at all than have it solved by outside parties, an attitude that only hurts more victims and withholds justice from their families.
Even once a report is filed, if police lack proper motivation in finding the victim, investigation can be slow, just like Megan Waterman's personal items being found in the very hotel she was reported missing from nearly a month later. In Shannan's case, the search for her body took place a year later after intense pressure from her family, leading investigators to the ten other bodies attributed to LISK.
Bad Relations
A huge problem investigating missing sex workers is one I haven't discussed yet, but is arguably a huge part of the problem: The mistrust between sex workers and the police. When it comes to the idea of filing a missing persons' report for a coworker in sex work, the decision to reach out to law enforcement can be a lot more complicated and challenging. Sex workers and law enforcement have a long, harmful relationship. Sex work being illegal in the U.S., traumatic experiences with police, perceptions of sex workers, and their vulnerabilities against the power of law enforcement all contribute to a sex worker's unwillingness to communicate and work with law enforcement. For more insight into a sex worker's perception of law enforcement, I spoke to Mila, a sex worker currently working in Youngstown, Ohio. Mila is not a prostitute, or as she calls it, “a full-service worker,” but a professional dancer and stripper, working five nights a week at a local club. Mila graduated from YSU and also works as a graphic designer, is a local community leader of the Youngstown Freedom Fund and Operation Liberation, and a certified Narcan distributor and educator. Mila has given me permission to use her stage name during her interview, her legal name she prefers to remain anonymous.
Mila has been dancing in clubs for six years, and in that time she has never seen anyone call the police for any reason. This isn't for lack of cause; she and her coworkers experience assault, violence, and stalking on a regular basis.
“Drunk guys who couldn't get their money back, thought they were going to 'get some' in the back room then realized that's not what happens back there, sometimes they'll take a swing at the bouncers... When you're in the back room, it's just you and the customer. They think that sex workers are an outlet for their depravity. So you get a lot of people trying to touch you inappropriately, being aggressive or violent. I've had people try to follow me home, I've had customers waiting for me in the parking lot, I've had people try to touch me while I'm dancing and insert fingers in places while I'm dancing... I've had my face spit on during a lap dance, and I just got up and I kicked that man in the face with my four-inch heels.” When I asked her whether she had ever considered calling the police in any of these instances, she flatly replied, “I have never seen anyone call the cops for anything that happened in the club. Not ever, not once.”
Mila has worked twice in a club that underwent a police raid. “It was absolutely traumatizing; man, everybody had to sit in handcuffs for hours, watching them go through all our belongings, feeling vulnerable just sitting there in lingerie for hours in handcuffs up against the lockers. And you can get busted for anything in the state of Ohio being considered prostitution: If you take your shoes off on the floor you can get busted for prostitution, if a customer touches you or you touch them, if you leave the club with a garter on you can catch a prostitution charge, if your panties move to the side while you're dancing, and undercovers come in regularly looking for that stuff. That's why people don't call cops, because they can arbitrarily arrest you for anything.”
Mila told me about another issue with police officers I hadn't considered before our interview, which is the personal harassment they receive from them. She tells me of a particular club she worked at where these issues were so bad the club was regularly calling the state of Ohio and filing complaints about inappropriate behavior towards their workers by police officers. “The state troopers will wait until the club closes, and we're thinking 'they're waiting for drunk customers'... wrong. They don't care about the drunks. They wait until the club closes and they harass the girls, they ask them out on dates, try to intimidate or ridicule them, and when you have cops that will intentionally let a dangerous driver go just to wait and sexually harass the dancers leaving the club, you don't trust to call them in an emergency. It's absolutely traumatizing.”
Proposals for Law Enforcement
What can be done to get justice for these women, forgotten and disregarded by society— both in life and death? Massive reform towards deep-seated issues in law enforcement is the most vital part of rectifying this unjust situation. For police departments to establish meaningful communication with each other is a start. When Thomas Hargrove, a retired investigative journalist and creator of the Murder Accountability Project, investigated into the LISK killings was interviewed for the AMC series The Killing Season, (created by filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Rachel Mills.)he calculated over 222,000 unsolved murders in the U.S. Since 1980. He and his colleagues believe that “the failure to solve murders is a failure of political will to apply the necessary resources to solve them.” Over and over throughout Hargrove's documentary we see the institutional breakdown of communication highlighted as one of the biggest contributors of unsolved homicides in the U.S., and the competitive, ego-driven nature of police departments needs to end.
The Murder Accountability Project is a non-profit organization consisting of volunteers dedicated to the accurate accounting for unsolved homicides in the United States. Their site aims to be useful to investigators in testing theories about murders in their communities, and easily find data to develop and test theories about suspects who may have killed across multiple jurisdictions or within the same jurisdiction over a period of time. It is the most complete accounting of homicides available anywhere. (MAP, 2021). “We have this idea that law enforcement is putting this information into supercomputers, but that’s completely untrue,” Zeman says on The Killing Season. “The public sector is so far behind the private sector when it comes to data management.” Ultimately, an investigation, even when launched, can stop when crucial interviews and information that other sex workers may have is mishandled.
Farewell, My Friend for a Week
Throughout my week in Dallas, Iris became my temporary best friend. We went to rooftop pool parties together, grabbed lunch and breakfast together, and every evening she left to go out on auditions. She was running out of money, and without work, she'd soon be unable to afford the hostel and have to live on the street. “I wouldn't really mind,” said. “I've done it before and it was kinda fun.”
Iris was and is a whole person. She was and is bigger than life and, for one week, I hung on her every gesture and her every word. We talked about men but we also talked about different cultures and places she had experienced. The majestic architecture and skyline of Shanghai. Eating fried scorpions on Khaosan Road in Bangkok. Watching children play in the Strawberry Fields of Central Park. Things she has seen but that I’ve only read about in books or heard stories about from my mom. So to imagine her one day being murdered for her occupation makes my stomach hurt. Would the police think a rich and interesting life had been lost? Would anyone care? I know I would care because Iris was magical. Leaving her at the end of the week, I felt like I was leaving behind a best friend. A platonic lover.
By diminishing the significance of her life and the lives of other sex workers, the cases of the ones who are killed or go missing are easier to swallow. The interest in solving their cases, both by police and the public, is low, so they don't get solved. Resources are not allotted to their investigations. These are women that, when they are killed, their deaths are less “sympathetic” than other victims— they were “just prostitutes.” Does that mean sub-human? Undeserving of our resources, or of justice? Simply put, prostitutes are the “less dead” victims of killers in our society, and they go missing or their bodies are found nearly every day in the United States while no one knows their names.
There is a fundamental dehumanization of sex workers that undeniably exists in the eyes of police officers, and harassment, disregard, and it leaves families without justice, puts more women in danger, and is a disgusting product of our society's look upon sex work. These women are women,they have stories, they have children, mothers, and futures. They are not “just prostitutes.” They are women. They are workers. They are humans. Shannan Gilbert, Megan Waterman, Wendy Evans, Cynthia Pugh, learn their names like you learned Natalee Holloway's. Never accept a dismissal of someone's disappearance because of their occupation. If you think you saw a missing person, call in a tip to local law enforcement. Pay attention to missing person flyers posted around your town. Pressure your local law enforcement to find these women. Report their disappearances. Make people listen.
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