From prostitution to church pews, Marion Little sees them both as places where compassion should be extended and human dignity respected.

Little, responsible for administering the safe church and sexual misconduct policy for the 48 Anglican churches on Vancouver Island, in November was made executive director of PEERS, the Prostitutes' Empowerment and Education Society.

She has never found either position to put her in conflict with the other.

"The people [at PEERS] really seem to make an effort at withholding judgment and honouring people's dignity," said Little.

"Those are the core values that I have pulled out of my experiences in relation to the Anglican Church."

Right now, Little's work with the church's sexual misconduct policy is getting set to shift.

She said until recently that work has been mostly reactive, dealing with crises as they arise. But now it's time to take a preventive approach by maintaining healthy communities within the church.

Little said the preventive stage will also likely involve the writing of a code of conduct. And the church could perhaps learn something from PEERS, which has already developed its own code of conduct.

"Ultimately, I don't see those codes will look a whole lot different from each other since it is has to do with people extending mutual respect," said Little.

Her work at PEERS is mostly about advocating for people involved in the sex trade. But it is also about extending support to sex trade workers so they can develop confidence to gain access to services they need.

Little said society can ostracize sex trade workers. So walking into places like medical clinics or even soup kitchens and food banks to look for food for children can be hard.

Also, everyone in the community, without exception, has a right to be free from violence. But society too often shrugs off violence against sex trade workers. Little believes that endangers the entire community.

"If anyone in our community is targeted by violence, if anyone in our community is targeted by stigmatization and ostracism, then we are all at risk," said Little.

As far as current and former sex trade workers are concerned, Little is so far doing a good job

at PEERS advocating for and assisting them in Victoria.

Nobody within PEERS ever considered her involvement with the church might make her too rigid or judgmental to work with sex workers.

"There are as many stereotypes about people with church backgrounds as there are about people in the sex trade," said Megan Lewis, one of the founders of PEERS.

"Marion is an amazing woman," said Lewis. "She is kind, sensible and very bright."

Bishop James Cowan of the Diocese of British Columbia was likewise unfazed by the notion of Little working for the Anglican Diocese at the same time as working with PEERS.

Cowan noted a line in the Eucharist prayer saying Jesus Christ "healed the sick and ate with outcasts and sinners."

"He didn't make any kind of judgment and that means He was accepting of people where they were," he said.

"Marion has an amazing ethical aptitude that she brings to her work and to her relationships with people."

rwatts@timescolonist.com