In the memoir, Missing Sarah, Maggie De Vries recounts her perspective of sister Sarah’s life in struggle with drug addiction and prostitution on the Downtown East Side of Vancouver at a young age up until she went missing in 1998. De Vries focuses a great deal of her memoir towards understanding the media coverage and investigation of Sarah and other missing women at the time and how many members of the community failed to recognize the human in these people. For this post, I would like to compare this missing women media coverage with the publicity surrounding the case of serial killer Aileen Wuornos and how their lives were portrayed in uneven ways. This is to understand that a misconception is created when the media sees all these missing women in a similar light to Wornhouse, thus dehumanizing these women with the idea that they all become violent and dangerous members of society and should be further isolated.
Similar to Aileen Wuornos, many of the occupants of the Downtown East Side suffered from poor upbringings including intergenerational trauma. This video biography details her upbringing and how she was abandoned by both her parents at a young age and was forced to live with abusive grandparents which drove her towards a life of violence, prostitution, and murder. The father of Sarah De Vries’ children, Charlie, also faced similar trauma, but rather as an aboriginal child going into foster care which is explained by De Vries as acts that although don’t deliberately exist anymore, they still hold great consequences today for the aboriginal populations ( 121). Sarah, although growing up in a loving and supportive family, was adopted into it and therefore felt a similar sense of isolation as to Charlie which may have contributed to her future decisions. This intergenerational trauma proves to have difficult consequences for future members of the family as said by De Vries that Charlie had numerous children, none of which that he raised (121) and Sarah’s children Jeanie and Ben had little to no contact with their mother before she went missing, facing a heritage disconnect. For Aileen, her biography stats that she was “destined for a life of turmoil” which is a similar statement for what can be said about Charlie, however for some of the missing women like Sarah who had a more positive upbringing, it’s difficult to understand the reasoning behind entering a world of drug use and sex work.
De Vries’ attempt to understand the media coverage on missing women and how they provide a framework solely associating them with their lives with drugs and prostitution made me wonder why a serial killers like Aileen Wuornos received more widespread public attention focused on her traumatic upbringing. Her story was told in numerous documentaries and biopics, some with Aileen being portrayed by major Hollywood actors like Charlize Theron which I see as the media attempting to make a story out of her life as if it were fictional. I found a connection between this and the missing women stories out of Vancouver because many coverages chose to focus on the darker elements of the situations in order to create a “story” that spikes the interest of people and makes the situation appear less real even though it’s happening right in the community. I wonder if we would see changes in societal perspectives of women in protestation if the media chose a more personal framework or if it would only strengthen the divide.
Works Cited:
“Aileen Wuornos.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 28 Apr. 2017, www.biography.com/people/aileen-wuornos-11735792
Filmrise Documentaries. “Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer.” Online Video Clip. YouTube. YouTube, 18 Sept. 2014. Accessed, 2 March. 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsgVFplffl0&t=42s
Monster. Dir. Patty Jenkins. Media 8 Entertainment, 2003. YouTube, 2 June 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq70brIQP40&t=9s
Vries, Maggie De. Missing Sarah: a Memoir of Loss. Penguin Books Canada, 2008.
