Dharm Makwana

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Police confirmed Tuesday the woman found dead a day earlier in Burnaby's Warner Loat Park was a sex-trade worker.

Homicide investigators are now speaking to other sex workers along the same stroll 27-year-old Carla Marie Smith was known to frequent to learn if anyone had seen her in her final hours.

"It's an assumption we're taking," said Cpl. Dale Carr. "We want to firm up a time-line about when she was last on the street."

Coroners had yet to confirm how Smith, a woman with several run-ins with the law, died.

Foul play befell an adult found dead Monday in Burnaby at a wooded area near Winston Street and Piper Avenue.

"It's a homicide," declared Cpl. Dale Carr just hours after a passerby walking through a trail found the body lying in bushes.

Carr declined to identify the age or gender of the victim, who investigators believe died a short time before the grisly discovery.

The RCMP spokesman ruled out any connection between the latest body found to a case in North Vancouver where a woman in her 40s was found stuffed inside a garbage bag last Wednesday. He added there were no apparent signs the killing was the work of gangs or organized crime.

Homicide investigators have identified the charred body found in a ditch more than a week ago as Tara Lynn Westgarde, 34, of Surrey, B.C., RCMP said Wednesday.

Westgarde, who was found Nov. 13, was last seen two days earlier by a family member.

Investigators are now turning to the public to piece together the last hours of Westgarde's life.

"We are releasing a photo of the victim along with her description in hopes that someone will be able to provide us information to tighten the timeline from when she was last seen to her discovery," said Integrated Homicide Investigation Team spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr.

An advocacy group is rushing to the defence of a 14-year-old girl accused of recruiting other teens into the sex industry.

Vancouver-based Justice For Girls is demanding RCMP in Chilliwack drop pimping charges against the teen who allegedly recruited at least two other girls into prostitution, and who, police claim, posed as an 18-yearold when posting erotic ads on classifieds website Craigslist.

"By charging this young woman as a pimp, the police are violating a well established consensus [held] in Canada and internationally that teen girls in prostitution are victims of child sexual abuse and therefore should not be treated as criminals," said Justice For Girls spokeswoman Annabel Webb.

Webb asserted adult males, who she believes are responsible for commercial sexual abuse, should face the full force of the law.

A legal challenge mounted in British Columbia against laws governing prostitution will go forward after an appellate court ruled Tuesday the plaintiffs have public interest standing.

Retired prostitute Sheryl Kiselbach and an umbrella group representing survival sex workers can now go forward in their attempt to strike three laws surrounding prostitution from the criminal code on constitutional grounds in hopes of creating safer working environments.

"One of the biggest things that would come out of this is that sex workers are going to be more able to report violence to police without any consequences or repercussions," said Kiselbach, 59, who worked in the sex industry for 30 years. "That to me is a really big step because it gives them power and takes away power from predators."

In December 2008, B.C. Supreme Court accepted a federal government argument to have Kiselbach's case thrown out because only active sex workers could challenge the laws. Working prostitutes represented by the Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society were not named as plaintiffs.

In light of an Ontario Superior Court ruling, the provincial government should act now to amend prostitution laws to create safe conditions for workers, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said Monday.

"In B.C., as in many parts of Canada, sex work is effectively legal," explained BCCLA board member Megan Vis-Dunbar. "You have governments at the municipal level charging licensing fees. It's promoted and advertised in a whole bunch of newspapers and through different types of media."

The de facto nature of prostitution across the province, Vis-Dunbar argued, was enough evidence for the province to take action despite policing efforts.

Instead of shining a spotlight solely on a prolific sex offender, a Vancouver-based activist is targeting a B.C. Supreme Court Justice who will rule on his fate.

Holly Dignard, has spearheaded a 1000-plus signature petition calling on Justice Austin Cullen to sentence confessed sex tourist Kenneth Klassen to the maximum penalty for 15 counts of sex offences carried out in Cambodia and Colombia.

"When you let the people in charge know that everybody is watching, they're pressured to - ideally - make the right decision," she explained. "We want the maximum sentence of 12 years."

Dignard, founder of Caleb's Hope, a non-government organization focused on micro-enterprise in Northern Uganda, said many fail to fully understand the severity sex crimes have on victims.

Vancouver police made a "disturbing" discovery during a raid of an apartment brothel one week ago.

Inside a suite at 909 Burrard St. investigators found a 17-year-old girl working as a prostitute along with two women, age 33 and 34.

"It's disturbing to us that there are juveniles and youths procured into these types of situations," said Vancouver police spokesperson Const. Lindsey Houghton. "And the type of situation being prostitution is especially disturbing."

The teenager, a home-stay student from China, is under Ministry of Children and Family Development care and could be deported.

Signs of Vancouver's waning exotic dance scene are showing in a charity event to benefit breast cancer research.

The 7th annual Exotic Dancers For Cancer is happening at Cecil Exotic Show Lounge Wednesday night for one last time before the developer's wrecking ball demolishes the downtown strip club.

"We are losing another strip club in Vancouver, which is tragic," said Ryann Rain, who's coming out of retirement for the cancer benefit. "That means more girls will have to go to Alberta to pay rent."

Fewer dancers are able to donate shows because more women are opting for paying gigs or touring neighbouring provinces, Rain explained.

This image can be found in a Huffington Post gallery titled "Outrageous Vintage Ads That Show How Far We've Come".

Some of the messaging behind this cigarette ad and others from the era seem ridiculous in hindsight: Doctors and athletes endorsing smoking, wives affectionately serving their husbands on their hands and knees, and a black waiter serving an old white man "double-rich whiskey".

Thankfully, there's next to no validity left in the messaging behind most of the ads in the gallery but the motto, "Blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere" remains to some degree at the front of many men's minds.

Mary Elizabeth Williams offered a thoughtful analysis at Salon.com on how contemporary pornography has changed sex between young adults, I assume, with blunt force.

She concludes:

Aping an adult star doesn't make a person a lover any more than playing Rock Band makes him a musician. Good sex makes room for honest passion and uninhibited enthusiasm, and doesn't feel like an audition for AVN rookie of the year. It's messy and silly and profound. And unscripted.

More study needs to be done on how pornography has affected a generation of young men and women – a disconnect facilitated by computers serving as porn jukeboxes. But the sentiment of Tipalet ad for smokes, I believe, remains prevalent.

A movement aimed at disrupting demand for paid sex during the Olympics has landed on the doorsteps of Vancouver’s exotic show lounges.

A B.C. Supreme Court justice made crucial errors when he ruled an ex-call girl had no legal right to challenge existing prostitution laws, the provincial court of appeals heard Thursday.

Attorney Joseph Arvay argued plaintiff Sheri Kiselbach, representing Sex Workers United Against Violence, should be allowed to move forward in her challenge to strike three prostitution-related laws as survival sex workers suffered from extraordinary problems, such as addiction and mental illness, and could not bring legal action alone.

"To think that they could be a witness as easily as a plaintiff doesn't ring true," he said. "Sex workers expressed to Pivot advocacy and participation couldn't be done unless some degree of privacy and security is guaranteed."

Pivot Legal Society LLP collected 91 affidavits from women in the Downtown Eastside, who asked for anonymity, and told of unsafe and violent conditions.