The disappearances and murders of women on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside were a consequence of the displacement documented by Becki Ross, Jamie Lee Hamilton, and others in the West End Sex Work History Project. 

This is also an accurate description of how sex workers' narratives get written out of dominant histories, emphasizing the need for the archives I'm accessing for this project and the complexities of the systemic marginalization and narrative extremes they navigate. (It might also be worth mentioning that, sensationalized as the Pickton case became, it's hardly unique. He didn't murder all of Vancouver's missing women, or the women missing from Northern BC, or the women missing from Edmonton and Winnipeg, and he's not the serial rapist targeting sex workers in Ottawa, and he's not the people assaulting and killing women off and on in Halifax and Toronto, and he's not responsible for the 600 or so missing and murdered Indigenous women who keep Canada on human rights watchlists. That women and trans sex workers can be assaulted and murdered with relative impunity is a systemic, state-supported injustice, purposefully represented, if it's represented at all, as the result of sex workers' bad decisions and the inhuman actions of a few bad individuals.)

VANCOUVER - Late one night in March 1997, a sex worker in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside took a john up on what appeared to be a lucrative offer: ride to his farm in the nearby suburb of Port Coquitlam and have sex for $100.

Several hours later, the woman arrived in hospital with life-threatening stab wounds and carrying a knife covered in the blood of Robert Pickton.

The woman, who can be referred to only by the pseudonym Ms. Anderson, is expected to testify as early as this week at a public inquiry into the Pickton case. Anderson was initially scheduled to appear on Tuesday, but late Monday afternoon, the commission announced her testimony may be postponed.

Anderson is expected to tell the hearings about her harrowing visit to the Pickton farm 15 years ago and what happened when prosecutors later declined to put the pig farmer on trial for attempted murder.

That attack has become a symbol of everything that could have been done differently as women vanished from the Downtown Eastside in the 1990s and early 2000s, raising the devastating question of how many lives could have been saved, but weren't.

Anderson was attacked in March 1997, and prosecutors decided in January of the following year to stay charges against Pickton, including attempted murder and forcible confinement.

Two dozen women later connected to Pickton's farm disappeared between March 1997 and Pickton's arrest in February 2002, including 19 who vanished after the Crown's decision to stay the charges in January 1998.

And after Pickton's arrest in 2002, forensic investigators found the DNA of three missing women on evidence seized after the 1997 attack, including clothing and a condom package.

Anderson testified at Pickton's preliminary hearing, but her story was never told to the jury at Pickton's trial. The details were banned from publication until August 2010, when Pickton lost his final appeal on six convictions of second-degree murder.

She testified that Pickton picked her up in Vancouver and drove her to his farm in Port Coquitlam.

After they had sex, Pickton slipped a handcuff onto one of her wrists, she testified. She grabbed a knife and slashed him across the neck and arm. Pickton managed to stab her before she ran outside and down the road.

A couple driving past noticed Anderson, picked her up and brought her to hospital, where she was treated for injuries so severe that her heart stopped twice on the operating table. She was still holding the knife when she was picked up, and the handcuff was still on her wrist.

Pickton arrived later at the same hospital and a key was found in his clothes. It matched the woman's handcuff.

The RCMP in Port Coquitlam recommended Pickton be charged with several offences including attempted murder, and those charges were quickly approved by Crown prosecutors.

But in January of the following year, Crown counsel stayed the charges over concerns that Anderson, who was addicted to drugs and had missed several meetings with prosecutors, would be an unreliable witness.

Keller, James. "Woman who survived attack on Pickton's farm to testify at public inquiry." News 1130. 9 April 2012. Web.