Missing teen ‘wanted better’

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This article was published 04/09/2007 (6664 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FONESSA Bruyere was a smart, sassy teen, but she was exploited in a cycle of poverty and sex-trade work for middle-class customers, said a furious Aikins Street resident who believes the girl is the person found dead last week in a field.

The 17-year-old had been missing since Aug. 8, according to a Child Find poster publicizing her disappearance that was plastered on a lamp post on a North End street that sex workers frequent.

Bruyere may be the third Winnipeg sex-trade worker whose body has been found in the last five months in fields inside or near the city.

Police refused Monday to confirm the identity of the decomposing remains of a female found last week in a field near Ritchie Street and Mollard Road on the northwest edge of Winnipeg.

The area is known as a dumping ground for the dead, and two known prostitutes have been found there in the past decade.

The poster described the teen, born in February 1990, as blond-haired with hazel-green eyes.

She was last seen in the Selkirk Avenue and Aikins Street area wearing black clothing and white shoes, the poster said.

“I believed she wanted better for her life,” said the Aikins Street resident, who was devastated after learning of Bruyere’s death from the girl’s family Friday. The woman frequently chatted with the teen when she was hanging out in the neighbourhood.

The woman did not want her name used, fearing violence from gangs who run the sex and drug trade in the North End area where she lives. She said she was disgusted with the cycle of poverty that she said entrapped Bruyere.

“Fonessa talked tough… but I could see in her eyes that she could see that I cared for her and wanted better for her than her present life,” the woman said.

“The drug gangs and prostitution cycle is ongoing and it’s 24/7, yet there’s nothing to deal with this that’s a 24/7 solution… It continues to destroy youth who should have had a better chance at life than they received. How many young women have to die?”

She likened the area where Bruyere worked to a “war zone of evil,” and said family members and friends of the teen panicked when she went missing in early August.

Last week, police cautioned members of the media that the woman found in the field was not necessarily a sex-trade worker. A police spokeswoman also said last week it was unconfirmed if the death was a homicide.

Regardless, the neighbour said Bruyere had been working the streets in the area since last winter. She is disgusted by men who drive into the North End area before their workday begins or during their lunch breaks. She said the sex trade feeds on young women like Bruyere.

About 10 days before her disappearance, the woman said she and Bruyere sat on the curb on Aikins Street and discussed the teen’s precarious future.

“I could see an intelligent, lost child who had left school at 13 and was caught in a lifestyle she didn’t know how to get out of… What is going on is the exploitation of the poor to the benefit of people who care nothing about them,” the older woman said.

“To watch these girls, who are truly lost and caught up in a cycle of addiction, being exploited by drug dealers and white suburban men, who in my opinion look at them as nothing more than sexual toys, just breaks my heart.”

The area where the decomposing body was found last week is near where the beaten body of 36-year-old Aynsley Aurora Kinch was discovered in July, in a field off Murray Avenue about a kilometre west of McPhillips Street.

Kinch’s family identified her as a sex-trade worker with a drug problem, and urged other young women at her funeral to be aware of the risks of prostitution.

Police classified Kinch’s death as a homicide, but no one has been arrested.

In April, the body of Crystal Saunders was found by a trapper in a field neat St. Ambroise.

Family members confirmed Saunders was a sex-trade worker who struggled with a crack addiction, and who had told her mother she feared for her life in the days before her death. RCMP released no details about how Saunders died, and the case remains unsolved.

When contacted through a family friend, Bruyere’s family members said they did not want to comment on Fonessa’s death. A funeral is being arranged for Bruyere this week at a North End funeral chapel.

gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca