Marginalized sex-trade workers are easy pickings for killers such as Robert Pickton, the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry was told.

Dr. John Lowman, a Simon Fraser University professor renowned for his research into prostitution and its laws, was the first witness to testify .

He said women in the 1990s were forced to work in isolated Downtown Eastside industrial lands because police had pushed them out of residential and business areas.

“When women are pushed out to the back streets and alleys, it’s much easier for them to be targeted by a misogynistic predator,” Lowman said.

And that’s exactly what happened with Pickton, the expert went on.

“He’s a classic example of this predatory behaviour,” he testified.

In 1995, it was becoming clear women were going missing from the Downtown Eastside.

Lowman helped draft a report to Ottawa in 1996 on the surge of sex-trade- worker murders.

Despite the warning signs, Lowman didn’t see police organizations take charge. “Was there a general attempt to do something about what the research was suggesting was a very serious problem? It didn’t look like it.”