Press coverage of violence against sex workers and people in the sex trade is often sensationalized and insensitive. In April 2011, the New York Times (NYT) chose to present the murders of women on Long Island differently. The article “Prostitutes’ Disappearances Were Noticed Only When the First Bodies Were Found” takes the time to illustrate the details of the missing women’s lives, humanizing them and critiquing the idea that they were “disposable.” Twenty four year old Shannan Gilbert was last seen in a community a few miles from where four bodies were found and is still missing. “Ms Gilbert was a prostitute, but much more,” wrote Manny Fernandez of the New York Times who added that “she was an aspiring actress, and the oldest of Mari Gilbert’s three daughters.”
The notion that sex workers (or people who are assumed to be sex workers) are “disposable” and of no importance underpins police response to violence against these communities. Colleagues of the sex workers murdered by the Gary Ridgeway– the”Green River Killer” who admitted killing 48 women on the West Coast–tried to provide the authorities with details that they believed would help solve the crimes but were ignored. Police are often slow to investigate the murders of people who they profile as prostitutes frustrating families and others who care about them. Patricia Barone whose daughter went missing in 1996 tried to bring attention to the case but was rebuffed by most media outlets and investigators. In the NYT article she is reported as saying, “If one Vassar College girl was missing, we would have had cops all over the place.”
Advocates for sex workers and people in the sex trade have responded to the press coverage of the murders. On April 8, 2011 SWANK and SWOP-NYC responded to the issues saying that “Sex workers are targeted for violence because of the stigma against what we do… if we do experience violence, most of us can’t go to the cops, because we could get arrested, they might not take us seriously, or they could have been the ones who were violent to us in the first place.” A SWOP-NYC member noted that criminalization of sex work is large part of the problem adding that “murders like these show that we must use new strategies to create safety and dignity that don’t reinforce stigma or discrimination.”
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