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.
The members of Operation Hectic, including clerical staff.
Mitch Ginn, age forty, a senior constable with Halifax police with twenty years experience, was responsible for a sting operation between April and August 1992. That operation shut down the Hollis Street nightclub that was the front for six girls working for a Halifax pimp. He had been involved with surveillance activities for sixteen weeks before the perpetrator was apprehended on August 29. The arrest was made through evidence gathered with electronic surveillance monitored by Ginn, which saw the pimp charged with living on the avails of prostitution and conspiracy to commit an indictable offense. Ginn was keenly aware of the extent of the problem on Hollis involving juveniles.
Operation Hectic task force member Darrell Gaudet.
Darrell Gaudet, age thirty, was a junior constable with the Dartmouth police who was currently gathering information on his own time about escort services in Dartmouth. His interest in prostitution dated back to a job as a counselor in a facility for young offenders. His clients included two juvenile males convicted of rape who had insisted it was their right to have sex with the girl any time they wanted because she was a prostitute working for them. He never forgot their arrogance, and promised himself he would do something about it someday. The young officer’s concern and determination more than compensate for his inexperience.
Craig Botterill, age thirty-one, was a Crown attorney in the provincial justice department. He had volunteered for the operation as the lead prosecutor and consultant on points of law. He recalled his frustration of a lost case in 1983 involving a pimp charged with assault and living on the avails of prostitution after the victim, age seventeen, was allegedly kept against her will in North Preston home, beaten with a wire whip, and punched through the padding of a pillow to avoid bruises. The pimp was acquitted on basis of believability of the witness. The prosecutor intended to accompany officers on interviews with juvenile girls in the hopes of establishing credibility of potential witnesses. He was hard working and committed to the issue of prostitution.
Craig Botterill was appointed to Operation Hectic before most of the investigators. His job would be to guide the officers in their investigations, examine the statements obtained, and determine what charges would be brought against the pimps. In the early days of the investigation into the Nova Scotia pimping problem the task force members realized Botterill was not your average persecuting attorney. He was more than willing to become involved in the investigations at the street level.
When the justice department decided to appoint one of its attorneys to work with the Joint Force Operation, Craig Botterill was in the right place (or wrong place) at the right time. In early fall of 1992, he was chatting with a number of other Crown Attorneys who had gathered around his work area in the Halifax office. The lead prosecutor approached the group, saying he was looking for a volunteer to be assigned, for six months, to a special police operation. Botterill asked his boss what the operation was—an attack on the pimping problem in Halifax. The other attorneys gradually returned to their desks, leaving Botterill and his boss alone. Botterill knew it would mean a heavy work load but decided a break from the regular office routine would be refreshing, so he offered to take the job. The six-month projection was a very optimistic one.
Crown prosecutor Craig Botterill. [Print from ATV video tape]
When he learned some of the task force officers had been driving down to Hollis Street at night just to introduce themselves to the girls and hand out business cards, Botterill asked if he could go along. For the task force officers to have a prosecutor willing to become involved in the investigation at the street level had a number of unexpected benefits.
The task force members had developed a straightforward routine. They approached the girls to explain what the task force was all about and to ask if they wanted to help. For the most part the girls refused, but the officers left their business cards and asked the young prostitutes to call if they ever needed help. The officers were surprised by the lawyer’s more aggressive approach. When Botterill accompanied a team of investigators, they would park the unmarked police car just off Hollis Street and
walk up to one of the girls to introduce themselves. The officers would tell the girl the prosecutor in charge of the case wanted to speak with her. The girls often agreed to go meet with Botterill who then made his pitch. A career lawyer and a gifted debater since childhood, Botterill used his powerful persuasive skills to good advantage.
Botterill is a small man, about five foot six and weighs one hundred and fifty pounds on a good day. His close-cropped curly dark hair, wire-rimmed glasses, soft voice and tendency to maintain eye contact put the girls at ease. The street-toughened girls took to Botterill fairly quickly. The prosecutor sold the girls on what he knew would be the most attractive thing the task force had to offer. His pitch always began with a sympathetic acknowledgement of how hard they worked every night and his conclusion that they must be making lots of money. He told them how unfair it was for them to have to hand all of their money over to a man who did none of the work, and who beat them savagely if they stepped out of line. Botterill told the young girls he was building a team that would help stop that abuse and that they would be a valuable asset to the team. Once he had their attention, he explained to the teens that they were the most important ingredient in the operation designed to protect them. Many of the girls had never heard anyone tell them they were important, let alone someone as powerful as the police officers had said this man was. Although Botterill won a good deal of support from the girls on the stroll, very few would go so far as to give him a statement against a pimp. The prosecutor’s approach was not that different from the one used by pimps recruiting the same girls. The difference was that Botterill was not lying when he told them they were very important to him. Many girls offered information the investigators accompanying Botterill found valuable, but in the early stages of Operation Hectic that was as far as the girls were willing to go.
As committed as he was to Operation Hectic, Botterill was worried that the team might end up thwarted, as he had been during his 1983 case involving the supposedly violent North Preston pimp who’d been set free. When he read through the statements that Stacey, Taunya, and Teri had made in Toronto, Botterill was overcome by the same feeling of unease he’d experienced about his young witness’ assertions—the accounts of brutality were so extreme, so protracted, as to strain even his credibility, let alone that of a judge. The team would need to amass a great deal of corroborative evidence—and persuade a convincing number of girls both to sign statements and testify against their pimps—if this operation was to be a success.
Brad Sullivan and John Elliott knew the operation would be a success—it had to be. The two RCMP constables attacked their work load with the voracity of a cat deprived of food for a long time. They had waited, watched and wondered; now they were ready to act. Initially the two worked as a unit but that was changed when it became clear the other task force members were starting from scratch and Sullivan and Elliott were not. They were teamed with different partners to spread the advantage around. Both officers had already emphasized many times in team meetings how important it was for everyone involved to fully recognize that the young prostitutes they were dealing with were victims—potential witnesses—who deserved support; the pimps, not the girls, were the criminals. This viewpoint had been adopted by every juvenile task force in the country, from the Metro Toronto operation, to the equally successful “Pimp Program” developed in Vancouver in 1988. As their contacts on these task forces had warned them, it was not necessarily a viewpoint police officers would instantly embrace; many members of Operation Hectic, including its most senior policeman, twenty-five-year veteran Sergeant Gary Mumford, started out with the belief that anyone working as a prostitute is, quite simply, a criminal. “Whores are whores,” was the attitude Mumford had before his new assignment. Sullivan and Elliott were certain the officers would quickly change their minds when they met teenage girls who had been whipped and kicked into criminal activity by powerful, intimidating armed men who took advantage of the vulnerability produced by their frequently troubled backgrounds. They were right.
The two officers were especially charged when Dave Perry suggested they go to Toronto to interview Manning Greer and his legendary Uncle Popeye. Sullivan and Elliott hoped the two pimps might be able to shed some light on the August 1989 disappearance of Kimberly McAndrew, the Halifax teenager whose case was the reason for the investigation of Halifax area pimps, a case they continued to work on. If anyone would know if McAndrew had been abducted by a pimp, it would be one of these major Scotian players; but the Greers were typically uncooperative with men who carried a badge. The older pimp, the worse for wear, simply quoted the Bible in response to every question the officers asked; and the Big Man, towering over the two officers, arrogantly folded his arms across his chest and refused to talk to them. Kimberly McAndrew? Never heard of her. No, don’t know anyone who might have. The Halifax policemen were forced to leave the Don Jail with no more information than when they’d arrived. Sullivan and Elliott returned home with a deeper-than-ever commitment to protect the girls who’d been hurt by the likes of this man—and to bring their abusers to justice.
The scope of the problem they had undertaken to solve was daunting. Police estimated that at least one hundred pimps were operating in the Halifax Metro area in the fall of 1992, double the number observed by Sullivan and Elliott only two years before, while they were conducting their fact-finding project. The new, much higher figure, came from the persistent young officers who continued to gather information on Halifax pimps long after Operation Heart ended. They still had no clear sense of how many prostitutes worked for those men, the trade was too fluid and the people seemed to be in constant motion. They did know that most of the girls were under age eighteen, and had learned of at least one who entered The Game at the tender age of eleven.
Slowly, but surely, fired up by the determination of Sullivan and Elliott, the team began to gain the trust of the girls on Hollis Street. The first statements, scrutinized by the increasingly confident Craig Botterill, were put on file in the task force’s Dartmouth office. Finally, one sunny afternoon in early winter, the task force mobilized for its first takedown. The target, a thirty-three-year-old pimp whom prostitutes had identified as an active player in Halifax, was based in Montreal but had come home for what turned out to be an untimely visit. The pimp did not know that a girl he had beaten and abandoned when he last visited Halifax had given a statement to a task force officer. He’d been signed on. A minor player, the girl’s statement indicating he ran one or two girls at a time and had little or no contact with the Big Man, he was suddenly the most important pimp in the eyes of Nova Scotia’s new task force. He was important because he would be the first. One moment he was driving down a busy street in downtown Dartmouth, the next, he was forced over to the curb by an unmarked task force vehicle and ordered to step out of his car and extend his hands for the cuffs. Within moments, several other team members who had heard the radio message alerting them to the bust—John Elliott was among them—had converged on the scene to witness what they considered history in the making.
The team’s media relations officer badly wanted this piece of history recorded for posterity, most importantly because he knew what a positive impact extensive coverage could have on Operation Hectic’s early efforts. Sergeant Bill Price, the RCMP media liaison officer for Nova Scotia, contacted local reporters, triumphantly reporting that the task force, only in its infancy, was already making a difference in the battle against juvenile prostitution. Reaction to reports of the arrest was overwhelmingly positive: an outpouring of support from the public, congratulating police for tackling a problem that had been too long ignored. Interestingly, a number of calls from parents requested that task force team members speak with their daughters—who they were concerned were hanging out with the wrong crowd—about the dangers of prostitution. This preventative action became a regular activity of Operation Hectic, and one the officers welcomed: keeping a girl away from The Game was a lot easier than rescuing her from it after sh
e had chosen to play. Even more significantly, there was a noticeable increase of calls from girls who had been approached on the stroll by Botterill and the others; apparently, they were beginning to believe that police truly meant to crack down on violent pimps, and not on the young prostitutes themselves. The officers began to hear stories of brutal torture that at first seemed too horrendous to be plausible—like the statements of Stacey, Taunya, and Teri. As they heard similar accounts from girl after girl, police realized the pimps’ abusive behavior was both widespread and extreme.
Most of the girls told their stories in the interview room at the Dartmouth police station, which had been pressed into service as the task force’s office. The rooms, with their cinder-block walls and sparse furnishings—a table and three chairs at most—provided starkly dramatic backdrops to the graphic stories. One of the first accounts the task force heard was the experience of Linda Devoe, a seventeen-year-old prostitute who at eleven had run away from an abusive family in rural Nova Scotia and headed for the big city. In Halifax, she met a man of thirty-three who quickly persuaded her to move in with him: in rapid succession, he had sex with her, talked her into working the Hollis Street stroll—proof that she really loved him, as he put it—and subjected her to a taste of what she could expect if she ever opposed his wishes. Overcome with guilt after her first night as a working girl, Linda told her pimp she was leaving; the price of his love was too high. His reaction was swift and violent—and a chilling reminder to task force officers of Stacey’s brutal treatment. Unwinding a wire coat hanger, he beat Linda repeatedly as she begged for mercy. That was not enough for him. He took a small steel bar from the pile of weights he used to keep his impressive physique well toned, and kneeling beside the terrified child, he ripped off her clothes, and raped her with the bar. Linda went back to the stroll the next night; she never argued with her pimp again.
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