The anti-pimping task force was a success, but unfortunately that success has seen a return to the status quo. Prostitution has once again slipped to the back burner on the political agenda.
What the task force could not do, what it was never asked to do, was target the real source of the problem. In Nova Scotia, pimping is a complex, uniquely delicate problem with roots stretching deep into the province’s history—a problem that is widely misunderstood and formidably challenging. In a word, the problem is racism.
Unfortunately, what happened to Annie Mae Wilson and Stacey Jackson is fodder for the racists. It is the kind of fodder that perpetuates the ignorance that lies beneath racism. Merely to state a single fact—that the vast majority of Nova Scotia’s pimps are black men from a small community just outside Dartmouth—is to hold a lighted match under the powder-keg of racial politics past and present. If the discussion proceeds past this first danger-point, add a second fact: their “employees” are invariably white women and girls. Annie Mae Wilson and Stacey Jackson—white victims; Bruno Cummings and Michael Sears—black criminals. Those facts are enough for the racists.
Facts alone don’t tell a story. People do. Statistics are a very dangerous tool that, in the hands of a manipulator, can appear to bolster an extremist’s view. The statistics tell one story, all but two of the men charged with pimping by the prostitution task force were black and all but a handful of the girls helped by the task force were white. The people behind those statistics tell a very different story. It may be that politicians are more comfortable with prostitution on that back burner because they are afraid to walk into the minefield those statistics present. What they fail to see is the minefield is not what it appears to be. It is ridiculously ignorant to apply a racist view to the facts presented by prostitution in Nova Scotia. Only a tiny proportion of white females become prostitutes, just as a small minority of black men become pimps. People who understand even a scrap of the history behind the image of the jive-talking, gold-laden Cadillac-driving black pimp would no more consider this caricature an accurate reflection of a racial group than they would picture white women—as a group—in stiletto heels and leather miniskirts, cigarettes dangling from their scarlet-painted lips.
The trouble is that many people know nothing, or very little, about the history of black people in Nova Scotia—let alone the factors that influenced the rise of pimping in the ranks of a very small minority of young men in one of the province’s several black communities.
This community, North Preston, traces its roots to the end of the U.S. War of Independence, when the first large influx of Loyalist blacks arrived in Canada, to be joined in the eighteenth century by a large group from Jamaica. Often highly skilled trades people, they worked on many of the building projects in the quickly growing town of Halifax, including the reconstruction of Fort George on Citadel Hill. The early black settlers had been promised land grants, but they were not expecting the rocky, hilly territory they were give, overlooking the lakes and woodlands that would demarcate the city of Dartmouth. This was thin, unyielding soil from which it was almost impossible to coax a decent crop; and the area, now only a fifteen-minute drive from downtown Halifax, was a journey of many hours on foot or by horse and wagon. An equally daunting challenge to the settlers of what would become North Preston was the exodus of more than one thousand black residents of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to Sierra Leone, West Africa, in 1791. Many of the best-educated and most influential community leaders believed there was no future for black people in Atlantic Canada, and those who remained were hard-pressed to prove them wrong.
Incredibly, the many obstacles they faced only seemed to forge a stronger bond among the settlers, united by spiritual values, an abiding belief in the importance of education and self-sufficiency, and a deep sense of community loyalty. These remain the principles of the vast majority of North Preston residents today, people who have had to fight for just about everything they have, from adequate schooling for their children, to decent jobs at times when unemployment could soar to 80 per cent. Unlike other communities facing some of the same problems, the people of North Preston have had to fight the deep-set racism blocking them from achieving many of their goals. Integration helped improve educational standards for young black people, but it also exposed them to a barrage of racial slurs that seriously undermined the focus of their early teaching, tolerance based on equality.
Racism, and the frustration and anger it evokes, is cited by social scientists studying the source of criminal activity, along with poverty, high unemployment, inadequate education, and the breakdown of family. All these factors, except the last, were at play in the proliferation of pimping among young men from North Preston in the 1980s. Ironically, the very importance of family unity they had learned as youngsters became twisted into the Scotians’ most valuable weapon as a criminal ring. Loyalty to “family” members (relative or not) against other pimps, or against the police was the key to the Scotians’ success. By 1992, more than one hundred young people from North Preston, a community of five thousand, were identified by the police as being involved in the prostitution game; a deeply concerned community group was formed to examine the underlying causes. To the list of sociological triggers for crime was added the powerful influence on these young men by the handful of “pioneers” who paved the way for them in the 1970s.
Miles States was one of these men. Born into a military family that moved frequently, he lacked the strong sense of community that had such a positive effect on most of the residents of places like North Preston. Like them he learned early on that racism was a reality he would face all his life. States was only seven years old when a white boy at the military base where his family was stationed called him “nigger,” and he never forgot how the cruel taunt made him feel singled out for ridicule, contempt, and hatred because of the colour of his skin. Many other such incidents fed his anger, and his growing sense of resentment towards all white people. That resentment grew slowly into anger and then rage. That was the makeup of Miles States personality when he returned to Halifax with his mother at age fourteen. In the late 1960s as civil rights activism took hold across North America, he joined the Black Panther Party, attaching himself not to the factions of the movement establishing programs for disadvantaged young people in inner cities, but to the more radical elements of the party. For three years, he helped smuggle his American comrades, denied entry into Canada because of their involvement in violent political activity, into Toronto from Buffalo.
For a few years States believed his membership in the Party and the work he was doing would someday make a difference. Gradually he became disillusioned with the movement. He began to believe white men would always hold the power and his midnight runs across the border were nothing more than a slight ripple against a tide he could not slow. When States met a young prostitute in Halifax, an experienced woman in her twenties who offered to teach him the trade on her home turf of Montreal, in exchange for his protection, he accepted. The thought of earning hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars by selling white women to white men was an irresistible irony to a man who saw his race as an insurmountable barrier to making it big in a predominantly white world.
During the 1970s, Miles States became one of Canada’s most successful pimps, running a stable of as many as fifteen prostitutes in cities on both sides of the border. By the end of the decade, States was pulling in thousands of dollars a week, most of it going to support his taste for fancy cars, expensive clothing, comfortable apartments, and cocaine. It was the drug that proved to be his downfall; the cost of cocaine, on which he quickly became dependent, forced the high-roller to extend his criminal career to narcotics trafficking. In 1981, a drug deal went sour on him in Michigan when his contacts pulled their guns. States was forced to kneel facing away from the two men and began to believe his life was about to end. He knew the men were high and listened as they joked and taunted him. Fortunately Miles was not high. He slowly lowered his arms—th
e gunmen had forced him to clasp his hands behind his head—a move that made it possible to get to his own .22-calibre handgun. Miles States shot both men and then quickly grabbed their drugs and his money and fled the scene. The men were not dead. States had hit them in the legs and hoped the wounds would teach them a lesson. What he did not know was the police had been following the two men and had watched as the deal went bad. States raced back to his hotel room where he locked himself in a washroom and began to sample his drug cache. The police kicked in the door and his reign as a high-rolling pimp ended. States was sentenced to three years in Michigan State Penitentiary, and it was during his prison stay that he met a man whose influence changed his life. The change began when an older inmate made a statement that, at first, puzzled and angered States. “You’ll never be a man because you won’t let go of your toys.” What Miles States thought was the most torturous ordeal he had ever faced, endless days of marking time in a cell, turned out to be the single factor that saved his life. States could not escape the older inmate turned philosopher and gradually the older man prevailed. When Miles States walked out of the Michigan Prison he believed his career as a pimp had been driven by a need to erase a self doubt he had fostered since the day that young boy called him “nigger.” The older man convinced States that his drive to attain wealth and all the toys that came with it was a fight to prove himself to a world that didn’t care who he was. States decided he would begin his new life by proving himself only to himself.
In the mid-1980s, States returned to Halifax and took a job as a janitor. Later he decided to seek a career helping others who were going down the same path he had traveled. Today, Miles States is a counselor of ex-inmates, and a keen observer of the trends that have led the young people of North Preston into such criminal activities as prostitution. States acknowledges his flamboyant behavior during the height of his pimping days—during visits to Halifax, he would flash a huge wad of bills to impress his friends—but he feels the significance of “role models” like himself on the next generation of pimps is slight. States believes the young men of North Preston increasingly turned to pimping because they were still facing extensive racism, as he had in his youth, as young black people still do. North Preston’s parents, along with church and community leaders, still strive to instill in the younger generation a sense of pride in their history and of value in their potential. Institutions such as the Black Cultural Centre help provide information to students about their rich cultural heritage, there’s even an Internet home-page devoted to the subject, and the annual Black History Month gives school-age children of every background the opportunity to meet together to discuss the black experience in Nova Scotia, past and present.
Still, many Nova Scotians, both white and black, acknowledge that racism remains prevalent in the schools and the workplace, and in society as a whole. Only a small percentage of the victims of racism turn to a life of crime as a response to the hatred they face. Some who do, and are able to break free long enough to enlighten others about the cause, point to racial hatred as the primary impetus. The hatred works both ways: one young man who grew up with several of the key Scotian players recalls using racist stereotyping as a weapon in the schoolyard.
If white students saw blacks as tall, tough and violent, that was the image they cultivated. “You could get their lunch money just by standing there, looking mean, and asking for the money,” he remembers. “It didn’t even matter if you knew how to fight.” The same kinds of principles could be applied outside school and they were, as a growing number of North Preston teenage boys gave up on their education, another commonly cited characteristic of a young person headed for trouble. Angry, frustrated by their inability to get anything better than a minimum-wage job in a burger joint—or bagging groceries, like Bruno Cummings, and increasingly obsessed with revenge against “the system,” a few of these teenagers began to follow their slightly older friends into the world of prostitution. The precious heritage of community loyalty, distorted by these pimps into a bond based on greed and violence, made the newly forming group of Scotians a powerful and dangerous force. “We could do anything, it didn’t matter,” recalls one jailed member of the ring. “You always knew you had the family behind you.” Like Miles States, these young men saw a certain irony in running white girls on Hollis Street to attract white buyers to the apparent indifference of a mostly white police force, which in the early 1980s did not view pimping as a serious problem. And, like States, these young men enjoyed the cars, the clothes, and the money.
But, unlike States, the new breed of pimps showed a decided, and disturbing, penchant for violence against “their” girls as a disciplinary measure and a method of exercising control. This, and the Scotians’ preference for underage girls—even preteens—went completely against the experience of States and other successful pimps of his era. He rented well-appointed apartments for the prostitutes he controlled—not run-down hotel rooms where regular beatings, verbal abuse, and repeated rapes were all the young women had to come home to. “A girl must respect her man.” States says “and violence will only drive her away.” States knew some brutal pimps in his day, and took their girls away from them easily, but he says the extent and level of violence seems more pronounced now. As for the pimps practicing that violence, they have convinced themselves that it is the girls who want it. “Many of these girls come from homes where they were abused,” explains a jailed pimp. “They really think a beating is the only way to be sure a man loves them. We didn’t teach them that, their fathers did.”
One thing is certain, the violence was self perpetuating. Pimps began to brag to one another about the beatings they handed out. In that light the group dynamic played its part—Biker’s taunting of Bruno Cummings was a common example of the kind of peer pressure exerted on a pimp reluctant to dole out a beating. The violence was a yardstick of success in the Scotian hierarchy; if a young player wanted to get closer to the Big Man and his core group of pimps, he would have to show that he commanded his girls’ respect. Many of the Scotians believed respect was instilled with a fist. In the case of Michael Sears it was instilled with a wire whip. Dehumanizing the girls, referring to them a “dumb ’ho” or “stupid bitch,” made it easier for these men to lash out in increasingly sadistic ways. Miles States was wrong about how at least some young prostitutes responded to their pimps’ violence. It didn’t drive them away, some believed it was all they deserved.
Millions of dollars have been spent on police operations like the Metro Halifax task force yet, every night men drive their cars to the local strolls and offer cash for sex; and every night girls like Stacey and Annie Mae make the trade. This full and tragic account of the lives of Annie Mae and Stacey and the others caught up in the prostitution game during the early part of this decade is not offered as a recipe for solving the problem of prostitution. Instead it is offered as a window for parents, teachers and others who should know the warning signs that signal a child’s entry into that dangerous world. The Game has a life force of its own; a life force fueled by millions of dollars and the greed that kind of money can create. While The Game has its own energy it cannot play itself. The Game needs somebody’s daughter and somebody’s son to stoke its cash starved furnace. Understanding its rules may help you keep your children from becoming its pawns.
Part Two: Stacey and Annie Mae
In the spring of 1992, Stacey Jackson was seventeen years old. She was a shy, attractive single mother—and a perfect candidate for the pimps recruiting young women in Nova Scotia. She had just taken a small apartment in the Highfield Park area of Dartmouth. She was sharing it with her six-month-old son, Michael. They were alone because Stacey had just ended the relationship with her boyfriend, Michael’s father, Roger Morgan. Highfield Park overlooks the McKay Bridge, one of the two bridges linking Dartmouth to Halifax. It is a mass of high- and low-rise apartment buildings where people live in close quarters but for the most part don’t bother to get to know the people living in
the next building, or even on the next floor. Stacey loved its bustle of early-morning activity. She and Michael would sit in the window of their apartment and watch the parade of strangers leave for work each day. The mornings were the busiest time for Stacey; it was when Michael seemed to need the most attention. After lunch, there’d be a knock on the door as her friend Rachel Williams came over to visit. Her visit meant an afternoon of TV and chatting, more time with Michael, supper, and then bed. That was the routine and Stacey was comfortable with it. She had dreams of going back to school someday, maybe even college, but that would be someday, not today. Life here was a lot better than it had been at home for the now seventeen-year-old mom. Home was a place filled with bitter memories of violence and hatred.
For years, Debbie Howard had tried to hide the violence from Stacey and her younger brother. When their father started drinking—a sure sign that trouble would follow—Debbie would play games of hide-and-seek with the kids. It was fun at first, but they soon got tired of squatting in a broom closet or kitchen cupboard, and they were frightened at the sound of their mother screaming and their father throwing things. Stacey’s earliest memory is the confusion she felt during a “game” with her mother. “I remember we were running up the street, away from the house, and he was chasing us. I remember wondering where we were going and why we were running.” Mrs. Howard also recalls the incident: “Stacey must have been about three. Her father came home from work and the trouble started right away. When I couldn’t calm him down, I took her and ran to a corner store just up the street. I can still see him behind us with a baseball bat, cursing and threatening me, and all I could think was, ‘My God, the neighbours.’”
The incidents of abuse continued until in 1989 Debbie Howard decided she had had enough. She left her husband and began the job of putting her life back in order. Stacey and her brother, by this time young teens, refused to come along. Within a year, Stacey was pregnant, and a few months after the baby was born she had her own place. Her father helped her find the apartment in Highfield Park, and the Nova Scotia Department of Social Services helped her pay the rent and fill the apartment with a few pieces of used furniture.
Somebody's Daughter Page 3