Super Creep: He hunts for innocents
Searching in our suburban malls, he lures unsuspecting girls into prostitution
Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, December 09, 2006

The story began mundanely with a phone call in October 2005 to Vancouver Det. Const. Oscar Ramos. A contact told Ramos there was someone he and his partner, Det. Const. Raymond Payette, should meet. She was 15 years old and needed help.

Ramos and Payette were quick to agree to the meeting. Through various departmental reorganizations and program shifts, they had spent close to five years trying to keep children out of prostitution and to deter men from buying sex.

They met with the high school girl and later through her met a number of other young women ranging in age from their mid-teens to early 20s who had been seduced, trafficked and prostituted by Gerard Parker.

Parker wasn't known to police. There was no reason for him to be. His business was in New York City and Las Vegas.

Parker met the 15-year-old as he was doing his rounds. As Payette and Ramos describe him, Parker worked 24/7. He was always looking for young women to lure into prostitution, whether he was at the mall buying shoes, in a restaurant, strip club, nightclub or convenience store.

He is tall, good-looking and grew up in the Lower Mainland. He didn't live in any of the trendy neighbourhoods such as Yaletown; he had a nice house in the suburbs.

The teen fit Parker's needs -- beautiful, healthy and she didn't use drugs.

He began romancing her, taking her to expensive restaurants and parties with people who seemed to have all kinds of money.

She was living at home with her parents in a middle-class Vancouver home. She thought she and Parker were dating. For the teen, it was something to be taken out by an older man. Not only did it seem glamorous and sophisticated, the fact that he was in no rush to have sex with her led her to believe that he really cared about her.

It was two or three months before that happened -- which is atypical, according to Ramos and Payette.

But all the while, Parker dropped hints about how there was money to be made. He started taking her to parties where there were other young women who already worked for him. They told her what a great life it was and how much money they made. They told her she was beautiful and that she looked 20. They were paid to tell her those things.

Parker gave her an ultimatum. It wasn't just that she could make money, he told her, but to sustain the lifestyle she was becoming accustomed to, she was going to make money by selling sex.

"I'll take care of it," he told her. "I'll set you up and I'll make sure you'll be safe. I'll take care of everything."

In late 2003, Parker paid for her flight to New York. He told her what to tell immigration officials. He told her someone would meet her at the airport.

Someone did. Who?

The police in New York never could find out because the airport greeters never gave full names, nor did they give real names to the girls Parker sent south.

The greeter took her to a motel, took away her passport, handed her a cellphone and gave her instructions. She was to call Parker before she went out on a "date" and after she got back. She had to tell him how much money she'd made and then wire it to him within 24 hours. She was told which accounts to wire it to and told always to wire less than $1,000 so it was harder to trace. She was told that people would be watching her.

The high-end escort agency also had to be paid. She ended up with a small per diem.

She was alone. She had never been to New York. She didn't know anybody there. She was in the country illegally, doing something that is illegal. There was no one she could call without fear of being arrested or deported.

She was frightened, but Parker reassured her that this was nothing like being a street prostitute. It was also no Pretty Woman kind of setup. She didn't go on dates or wear beautiful clothes. She went to Manhattan hotel rooms and gave men oral sex or had sex for money.

Parker called several times a day, but at specific times. He checked up on her unexpectedly, monitoring what she was doing.

For the first few weeks, every time she talked to Parker, she cried, told him how awful it was and begged him to bring her home. After six or seven weeks, Parker relented.

Back in Vancouver, he regained control of her. The young woman loved him or thought she did. The relationship between pimp and victim is little different from that of spouses in a domestic dispute, says Ramos and Payette. If the abuser is nice and promises to never do it again, the victim stays and hopes for the best.

Why does a victim stay? "Because she loves him," Ramos says.

After a few weeks, Parker sent her back to New York.

All of the more than half-dozen of Parker's victims that Payette and Ramos met were from middle- and upper-middle-class families. All were Caucasian, attractive and ranged in age from their mid-teens to early 20s. Not all of them went to New York; some were sent to Las Vegas.

But all were seduced and controlled in virtually the same way.

Parker kept them constantly off balance. They never knew what he might do and what might set him off.

He made sure they knew he had guns. He'd leave them lying around on a table or grab one on his way out the door, saying he had business to attend to.

Parker used middlemen to spy on them and physically assault them. It meant he could play the good guy the following day and blame the thug for having gone too far.

He turned up at their doors without warning -- including in New York. He'd call their cellphones, tell them to open the door and there he'd be.

"They all saw some violence," Payette said. "But none of it was done directly by him. It was the white knight thing. He'd come in and save them."

If one of them was taken aside for questioning by immigration officials and told him, Parker would say he'd heard about it from his contact and they'd done the right thing by sticking to the story.

And when the two detectives spoke to them, most of them wept. One was so relieved to unburden herself of the story that she cried non-stop for nearly half an hour.

"This is the kind of thing that we [as human beings] bury in the pits of our stomachs," says Payette. "It's amazing to watch them and see them start to talk about it and start dealing with it."

Ramos says: "It drove home for me just how debilitating this is and how fragile these victims are. For them, it's like living in hell. You just don't recover from it because most people don't see these women as victims, they're prostitutes so they just have to suck it up."

The other similarity between the victims was that not one would agree to testify in Vancouver. They were afraid to, not just because of him, but because they want to go on living here and don't want to be labelled for the rest of their lives -- for their sakes and for the sake of their families.

Ramos and Payette got in touch with the American Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) and the federal district attorney in New York.

The Vancouver investigators continued their work and eventually three of Parker's victims agreed to testify in New York. When Avi Weitzman, the assistant district attorney, had enough information, he took it to a grand jury and got an indictment against Parker. The grand jury also sealed the identities of the victims to protect them.

Gerard Parker was a wanted man in the United States. He just didn't know it.

Payette and Ramos could have arrested him in Vancouver, but then there would have been a lengthy extradition process. Instead, the detectives waited. They knew his pattern and that he'd soon be taking another trip to New York. They found out the date of his trip, and called Weitzman and their contacts at ICE.

On March 20, 2006, Parker breezed through U.S. customs and immigration at Vancouver International Airport. The moment the plane's wheels left the tarmac, Payette got a page from an ICE officer. Six hours later, his pager went again. Gerard Parker had landed safely.

Just as his "girls" had had a greeter waiting for them, there was a greeter waiting for Parker. It was an ICE agent who arrested him as he stepped off the plane and onto the bridgeway.

In June, Parker pleaded guilty to charges of transportation for prostitution and coercion for prostitution under U.S. federal law.

Last month, a U.S. federal judge sentenced Parker to "up to 30 months" in a federal prison and fined him $165,000 US, which is just some of the money the young women wired to him between November 2004 and August 2005 from New York.

dbramham@png.canwest.com

© The Vancouver Sun 2006