Serial killings have a parallel

I have come to refer to the women in Rocky Mount as “The Missing Women.” I know I am using this term rather loosely.

“Missing Women” was the term originally coined to identify the 60-70 prostitutes who disappeared from Vancouver’s East side in the 1970s-80s. They literally vanished.

Eventually, Robert Pickton was accused of their murders and was sentenced to a handful of the killings (having disposed of their bodies on his pig farm).

“Missing Women” became a larger metaphor for the manner in which society treated these victims as translucent (think Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” and the marginalization of the lower strata).

In the case of Rocky Mount, I use the term in the same context; these women are missing; society does not see them; it only acknowledges their presence as prostitutes, drug addicts and general low-lifes.

It is an age old practice of blaming victims for their outcomes, then abdicating society’s responsibility to do anything about it (thus the lag to form a task force and lag in media coverage.)

The situation in Rocky Mount is so disturbing because it so closely echoes what happened in Vancouver (and what is happening along the Highway of Tears in British Columbia).

Have we learned nothing?

Well, we’d better start learning or the cost to tax payers will be in the millions with the reforms that will (very slowly) come in the wake of what is brought forth (very slowly) in the disclosure of justice. Not to mention the endless public hand-wringing and blame that will out.

John Allore

Chapel Hill