Jen (not her real name) started working the streets at 12 years old. She was a Children’s Aid kid and did it to survive. When she turned 16, she moved out of foster care, found an apartment and got a job.

Society often views sex work as an identity, not an activity, and Jen argues many sex workers self-stigmatize.

“That category of sex worker is a master identity — it’s a permanent social identity,” she explains. “You’re viewed as a pariah, as damaged, as amoral. People feel comfortable treating you poorly, which reflects an awareness that organizations aren’t going to take up your rights or enforce them in the same way.”

A couple dozen concerned residents braved the snowy roads to gather at the Croatian Centre on Kathleen Street this week for a public forum on sex work. Organized by the Greater Sudbury Police, NOAH’s SPACE, the Sudbury Action Centre for Youth, the Corner Clinic and Shkagamik-kwe Health Centre, it pointed to the ongoing stigmatization of sex workers, which can deter women from accessing services or leaving the trade.

Shelley MacKewn is a happy mother to two children. But she told a crowd assembled at Tom Davies Square she is also “physically, emotionally and financially” exhausted. Her seven-year-old daughter, whom she and her husband adopted at birth, has been diagnosed with partial fetal alcohol syndrome.

“It is not easy living with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). It is not easy when it is invisible, when you see a lot of behaviour, when you see the dysmaturity,” MacKewn told the crowd.

“(But) I’m a happy mom. I have joy in my life. I have two beautiful children,” she added.

About 40 people associated with the Sudbury-Manitoulin FASD network gathered at Tom Davies Square on Monday to declare Sept. 9 FASD Awareness Day in Greater Sudbury.