Somebody's Daughter

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Somebody's Daughter

Inside an International Prostitution Ring

Phonse Jessome

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

This book is dedicated to the memory of Joe Jabalee, a teacher who always found the time to foster the talents of his students and to help them develop a strong sense of self worth. You will live on in the accomplishments of those students, Joe. For those of us you have left behind, we miss you.

Contents

Preface

Part One: Horror and Hope

Part Two: Stacey and Annie Mae

Part Three: Taunya and the Big Man

Part Four: From the Brink of Death

Part Five: Operation Hectic Heats Up

Part Six: Crime, Punishment, and an Uncertain Future

Preface

First, I want to offer a few words on purpose and approach. This book is not an academic assessment of the problem of juvenile prostitution in Canada, nor does it suggest solutions to that problem. My intention here is to provide a window on that violent underworld so you, the reader, can have a clearer understanding of who the girls in the tight skirts really are.

All the incidents described in this book are real, although some of the dates, times, places and names have been altered. The current and former prostitutes who agreed to share their stories asked that their names be changed, and that has been done. The jailed pimps who cooperated in the research for this book made the same request, and it has been honored. The names of other pimps who would not cooperate, but whose stories are contained in this book, have also been changed. This approach permitted me the luxury of combining certain stories to make this a more concise and readable book. There are those who will compare this book to the well-publicized cases it describes and draw conclusions as to the real identities of the pimps and prostitutes. That would be a mistake; some of the characters presented here have been created from the experiences of more than one person involved in those cases. My purpose was not to repeat the coverage given to those incidents in the media, but rather to take you inside the lives of the people caught up in them.

Many people have contributed their time and expertise in order to make this book possible and to them I say thank you. I will not individually list them because to do so would risk omitting someone and consequently offending a person to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. Many of the people you will meet in the pages of this book, many more are not identified but have added to the content in various ways. One person I wish to single out is Miles States, a former pimp who had no reservation in sharing his experiences and allowing his name to be used. He is a valuable and, unfortunately, underutilized resource.

Book writing is very much a team effort. My name is on the cover, but there are others without whom it would never have been completed. I would like to thank my publisher Dorothy Blythe at Nimbus. Also a special thanks to Joanne Elliott who worked long and hard to chase these pages to the printer. Perhaps no one worked as hard on this book as my editor Liane Heller who took a mass of information and helped shape it into a digestible form.

I thank my employer, ATV, for allowing me to use the resources of its considerable video archive to supply most of the pictures in this book. Thanks to Kevin “fuzzy” Hilliard and Gary Steele for transforming the moving pictures of the video tape into the pictures contained here.

Finally, thanks to the task force officers who shared their experiences with me. To those officers whose names and stories I did not use, do not feel offended. Your efforts and experiences have been included in the stories of those officers I choose to represent the larger group in this book.

Part One: Horror and Hope

It was late in January 1992 and nineteen-year-old Annie Mae Wilson was spending the final moments of her life watching television. Annie Mae was lounging on a couch in her sister's apartment in the north end of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, enjoying some time with the new man in her life, her new pimp. Annie Mae ignored the irritating sound when the old brown phone in the kitchen began to ring. Unlike the newer phones with the electronic warble, Annie Mae's phone had a real bell inside activated by a tiny wire connected to a small lead weight that slammed repeatedly into the bell when someone called. It was appropriate enough that a bell sounded; the call represented the tolling of the bell for Annie Mae.

Annie Mae's sister took the call and shouted to the nineteen-year-old. When Annie Mae heard the familiar voice on the line, she knew she was in trouble. Bruno Cummings was in a rage. Bruno was calling from another Dartmouth apartment where he was playing cards with a group of friends. Like Bruno, they were also pimps. Bruno was upset because in his opinion he, not the young man on the couch in Annie Mae's sister's apartment, was her “man” on Hollis Street in Halifax and he knew she had not been working for him. Annie Mae's decision to switch pimps didn't really bother Bruno; it was how she was doing it. Pimps take their game seriously and don't like anyone breaking the rules. When a girl leaves one pimp and chooses another she is required under the code of The Game to pay her former pimp a leaving fee. Leaving fees are one of the methods, torture and terror being two others, used by pimps to keep young women from breaking free of the prostitution game. The fees run from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on a girl's age and appearance and the level of respect her pimp has earned in the street. Contrary to popular myth, there are very few street pimps who share the profits with their young girls. Pimps take all the money and give their girls an allowance for clothing and food, ensuring that a young woman cannot save enough money to pay her own leaving fee. If a girl wants to break free of a pimp she usually approaches a new man and convinces him to pay the fee, but the girl is still in The Game.

Annie Mae had been a prostitute since she was fourteen and she knew the rules. By not paying the leaving fee Annie Mae was committing the ultimate act of defiance: she was showing complete disrespect to her man or, in the words of the card-playing pimps, “dissin' Bruno, big time.”

Bruno knew he had to regain control of Annie Mae. If he let her walk away without paying a fee, his short career as a pimp was over. The message would spread in the street in minutes; Bruno's girls were open targets for any pimp who was shopping for someone new. No pimp would ever bother to pay Bruno a leaving fee again. Bruno did not like the idea of supporting himself with his part-time, legitimate job, bagging groceries. He had already lost more in the poker game that afternoon than he could make at the super market in a week.

Annie Mae knew she had gone too far when she slammed the phone down and now she paced her sister's apartment trying to decide what to do. Annie Mae had worked the streets of Halifax, Montreal and Toronto for more than five years. She knew an angry pimp was not to be trifled with and she knew she was once again getting herself into trouble. Annie Mae had developed a reputation that was not all that uncommon in prostitution. She was known as a “Choosy Suzy,” a girl who liked to jump from one man to another. None of the pimps felt Annie Mae was a threat to The Game, they considered her a lifer who was just a little restless. Annie Mae thought she could get away without paying Bruno a fee because he was a minor player. At least that was what she had hoped. Bruno, she knew, was considered small time by most of the players. He had no ambition and never bothered running his girls in Montreal or Toronto. Bruno was content to make a few dollars from his girls in Halifax and then live the big life wasting it all at the poker table with the real players. But Annie Mae now realized she had misjudged Bruno; he would not stand for her leaving without paying the fee. She decided she better take the initiative. Bruno had not mentioned where he was calling from but Annie Mae knew how to reach him. She quickly dialed the number of Bruno's pager and left a message for him to call her. It was one of Bruno's card-playing buddies who was wearing his pager that afternoon and he returned the call.

Annie Mae was on the right track when she realized the mistake she had made. Her problem was in the approach she took when she tried to fix it.

“You tell him when he gets some man sense he can give me a call,” she told his buddy. Annie Mae had instantly gone from being frightened to defiant and instead of easing the tension between herself and her former pimp, she had unwittingly pushed Bruno to the breaking point.

When the card player wearing Bruno's pager passed on her angry message, everyone at the table heard it. There were a few chuckles but one man was not laughing. Richard “Biker” Benson flashed a sinister smile when he heard what Annie Mae had to say. Biker was an older, well-respected player who had girls in Montreal and Toronto. He was also a violent man. He did not like Annie Mae and had slapped her around once—after she had left his brother, another pimp. Now Biker could force Bruno into dishing out some pimping persuasion to the errant girl while he watched the fun. He enjoyed beating his girls and seeing other pimps beat their girls almost as much as he enjoyed the hefty profits he earned in The Game.