✝️ Sereena Abotsway, age 29 – August 2001, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 🇨🇦💔
Sereena came from a tightknit family–a foster family, but one to which she remained close–with resources and social standing.
Her half brother Jay Draayers chokingly recalled a protective but playful older sister with “roaring laughter and warm smiles.” “Sereena quite often, when talking to us on the phone, would ask us to make sure that the younger [foster] children would never end up living the life that she was living.”
Sereena was an American Indian, one of the “urban aboriginals,” in Canadian parlance, who have long been among the poorest of the poor here. They make up barely 3% of greater Vancouver’s population but account for more than half of its downtown street prostitutes.
Many share her history of early-childhood abuse and subsequent foster care. Sereena was known as a drug user.
Sereena was photographed by Seattle Times for their article „No bodies, No clues: women disappearing without a trace.“ saying that Sereena feared for her own safety.
Sereena had joined the marches of feminists and downtown activists who had been demanding for a decade that city and federal police mount a joint investigation into the disappearances and wrote this text:
“When you all went missing each and every year we all fought so hard to find you. You all were part of God’s plan. He probably took most of you home. But he left us with a very empty spot.”
She later disappeared from the Downtown Eastside herself. She was a victim of serial killer Robert Pickton.