In September 2016, the Government of Canada launched a ‘National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’, after decades of advocacy from Indigenous groups. Its mission is defined by three goals: finding the truth; honouring the truth; and giving life to the truth as a path to healing. These goals parallel the power of Biblical stories that reveal the truth of human relationships, demand that the truth be honoured, and call humanity to healing through repentance and justice. The Biblical stories of repentance and justice often involve powerful people exploiting family members and neighbours. It is no accident that Jesus’ genealogy in the gospel of Matthew includes at least two women who experienced sexual exploitation: Tamar and Bathsheba.
In Genesis 38 we read that Tamar’s father-in-law, Judah, forced her to resort to prostitution to avoid destitution. When Judah publicly threatens to execute Tamar for an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, she reveals that he is the father of the unborn child in her womb. Judah is forced to acknowledge that Tamar had been more righteous than himself.
It is no accident that Jesus’ genealogy includes at least two women who experienced sexual exploitation: Tamar and Bathsheba.
In 2 Samuel 11 and 12, we learn that Bathsheba was married to King David’s neighbour, Uriah the Hittite. Not only was she David’s neighbour, she was the daughter of Eliam, one his ‘thirty seven mighty men’ (military champions) and the granddaughter of his senior advisor Ahithopel. Like a peeping tom, King David spies Bathsheba bathing while her husband is at the battlefront. The king arranges for the beautiful woman to be brought to him for his sexual pleasure. Inconveniently for King David’s public position, Bathsheba becomes pregnant and informs King David. He becomes aware of the immediate threat of public disgrace and recriminations from Bathsheba’s influential father and grandfather. So because of Bathsheba’s pregnancy in the absence of her husband, King David orders Joab, his most trusted senior general, to manipulate circumstances for the murder of Uriah. Sent by the Lord, the prophet Nathan publicly reveals King David’s sexual exploitation and murderous behavior.
If you are paying attention to the ongoing work of Canada’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, you will know that about half of the missing persons were involved in prostitution. What you may not know is that their involvement in prostitution includes circumstances similar to the experiences of Tamar and Bathsheba.
Little Warriors is a national organization committed to the awareness, prevention, and treatment of childhood sexual abuse; its website (www.littlewarriors.ca) presents a significant compilation of research about childhood sexual abuse in Canada. That distressing profile includes the statistic that 76% of prostitutes have a history of child sexual abuse. (My experience with sexually exploited people through the John School program of Indian Metis Christian Fellowship in Regina suggests that almost all prostitutes have experienced sexual trauma.) Compounding that dynamic is the assertion that 95% of childhood sexual abuse cases go unreported.
My experience with sexually exploited people through the John School program of Indian Metis Christian Fellowship in Regina suggests that almost all prostitutes have experienced sexual trauma.
My conversations with survivors indicate that many more suffered sexual abuse than the official statistics which report that one in five Indigenous students suffered sexual abuse at Canada’s residential schools. Many survivors lacked the courage to speak, were silenced by shame, or have passed away and their experiences are held by stories shared with their relatives. These thousands of sexually abused survivors left their respective residential schools without adequate preparation for adult life either with their families in their First Nation communities or to participate in urban communities. Consequently, many of these vulnerable persons sought survival in urban ghettoes across Canada where they were exposed to the life-destroying pressures of poverty, racism, violence, gangs, and inadequate housing.
Like other survivors of childhood sexual abuse they prematurely entered adulthood with social and psychological challenges including: low self-esteem, guilt, self-blame, social withdrawal, depression, life-disrupting anxieties about physical pains (somatic complaints), difficulties with sexuality, eroticized behaviour, irrational fears, anxiety, deliberate self-harm, depression, difficulties in interpersonal relationships, and eating disorders. Simply put, there was little or no support for young adults who had suffered too much trauma at the hands of church- and government-sanctioned authorities. Consequently, many turned to alcohol or drug abuse to numb the haunting pain of child hood trauma. Many were caught up in a vicious cycle where the temporary relief provided by alcohol or drug abuse led to powerful addictions that made them vulnerable to prolonged sexual exploitation.
Indigenous people are reported by Statistics Canada to be 4.3% of the Canadian population. Although Statistics Canada does not keep national statistics on Indigenous women in prostitution, reports from cities and provinces reveal a high level of Indigenous women in prostitution. It was reported in 2001 that 14 to 60% of prostituted youth are First Nations people, depending on the province in question. In 2013, the National Post reported that “About 70% of the girls in the sex trade in Winnipeg are Aboriginal.” Prostitution may or may not be the world’s oldest profession, but it is certainly a deadly business. A study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that the workplace homicide rate for prostitutes was 50 times greater than the next most perilous situation, women working in a liquor store.
The racist reality is that the majority of prostitutes’ customers are Caucasian men who feel entitled to brutalize their sex worker, who all too often is an Indigenous survivor of traumatic childhood sexual abuse.
The racist reality is that the majority of prostitutes’ customers are Caucasian men who feel entitled to brutalize their sex worker, who all too often is an Indigenous survivor of traumatic childhood sexual abuse. Certainly not all of them are as evil as Robert Picton of Abbotsford, B.C. who was convicted of killing 6 prostitutes, but who may be responsible for the gruesome deaths of up to 49 victims. One former Aboriginal prostitute reports that “her clientele was so predominantly white that, even today “I can’t be on an elevator with a Caucasian man.” It seems that not too much has changed since 1792 when the Chipewyan Indians complained of the injustice done to them by Canadians in taking their women from them by force.
In June 2017, nine months after the National Inquiry was launched, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported “Indigenous women and girls in Canada face greater risks of violence and homicide.” Ironically, for a long time, relatives of missing and murdered Indigenous people have complained about the inadequate response from police services to their reports of missing family members. Bridget Perrier, who was adopted into a Caucasian family, recalls, "When I would go missing, my dad was told not to report me as an Aboriginal girl, just to say I was Caucasian, because if he said I was Aboriginal, they [police] wouldn’t look for me." Like so many others, her child abuse began when she was sexually assaulted by a boarder in her adoptive home at the age of eight.
The National Inquiry has the mandate to be like the prophet Nathan and say to Canadian society, “You are responsible for your missing sisters!”
As the National Inquiry proceeds, it must consider childhood sexual abuse as one of the causal factors contributing to the spectre of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. That will be an uncomfortable process for the Inquiry staff and for the people of Canada. If the Inquiry is effective, it will help Canadian society to recognize the ‘Judahs’ and ‘King Davids’ in Canadian society and history who have used positions of power and privilege to sexually exploit vulnerable Indigenous people. The National Inquiry has the mandate to be like the prophet Nathan and say to Canadian society, “You are responsible for your missing sisters!” May the Lord give them the time, resources, and courage to do that work and may the Creator give us the grace and humility that, like King David, we may confess our culpability and take responsibility for our sisters.
Author’s Note. I wish to thank the people in the community of Indian Metis Christian Fellowship, a ministry of the Christian Reformed Church, who reviewed drafts of this article and made excellent suggestions. Thank you!
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