Child Exploitation.org
Most people have no idea how large the problem truly is.
Prostitution
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Sex tourism is a very lucrative industry that spans the globe. In 1998, the International
Labour Organization reported its calculations that 2-14% of the gross domestic product of
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillipines, and Thailand derives from sex tourism. In addition,
while Asian countries, including Thailand, India, and the Phillipines, have long been prime
destinations for child-sex tourists, in recent years, tourists have increasingly traveled to
Mexico and Central America for their sexual exploits as well.
Child sex tourists are individuals that travel to foreign countries to engage in sexual activity
with children. The non-profit organization End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and
the Trafficking of Children (ECPAT) estimates that more than one million children worldwide
are drawn into the sex trade each year.
"Lin Lin" was thirteen years old when she was recruited by an agent for work in Thailand.
Her father took $480 from the agent with the understanding that his daughter would pay
the loan back out of her earnings. The agent took "Lin Lin" to Bangkok, and three days
later she was taken to the Ran Dee Prom brothel. "Lin Lin" did not know what was going on
until a man came into her room and started touching her breasts and body and then forced
her to have sex. For the next two years, "Lin Lin" worked in various parts of Thailand in four
different brothels, all but one owned by the same family. The owners told her she would
have to keep prostituting herself until she paid off her father's debt. Her clients, who often
included police, paid the owner $4 each time.
Child Prostitution in Ethiopia
The story of Tirsit Tirsit is 16 years old and began working on the street at the age of 13.
Tirsit's reasons for entering street life as a prostitute are sadly commonplace. Domestic
quarrelling and violence left her no other option than to go to the streets for money. Aided
by more experienced girls, Tirsit began a life of commercial sex work.
"I've been working on the street for 3 years because I had a conflict with my parents. My
stepfather used to get drunk and beat us. Also, he used to favour my sister who is his real
daughter. I met some girls on the street and I began to get close with them.
Underage sex, driven by poverty, lures paedophile gringos to a place in the sun
This city, on the north-east coast of Brazil, is rich in culture, and rich with underage sex.
Driven by poverty and lured by the prospect of wealthy gringo customers, girls as young as
12 prostitute themselves for as little as £2. "But I am already too old," says Adrianna, a
pretty 17-year-old who has been working since she was 12. "Gringos prefer girls between
10 and 14." Brazil has one of the world's worst reputations for child prostitution. Salvador
has just been visited by the Juan Miguel Petit, the UN's special rapporteur on child
prostitution, child pornography and trafficking of women and children.
The child-sex tourism industry that caters to pedophiles preying on the world's poorest
children is slowly being chipped away at through tougher laws in the United States and new
efforts worldwide to pull back the curtain on this underground network. Although trafficking
in children has plagued countries such as Cambodia, Thailand, and Costa Rica for
decades, in the past year a synergy has developed between the US, NGOs, and the UN to
curb the part of the multibillion-dollar sex-tourism industry that targets children.And their
efforts are beginning to show results. In the US, pedophiles who regularly traveled abroad
for cheap, abundant child sex are being prosecuted.
A FILIPINO girl, at the tender age of three, was forced to perform oral sex on strangers.
What's worse is that her pimp is her own mother, a drug addict.
The girl's plight is shocking but not unique, said Dr Jean D'Cunha from the United
NationsDevelopment Fund for Women (Unifem).
Children of increasingly young ages are being forced into prostitution to fuel the billion-
dollartourism trade in child sex, said international experts on prostitution and human
trafficking at aconference here.
When they brought me here, it was in a taxi. I kept looking around, wondering what kind of
work was going on in this area of this big city. Everywhere I looked, I saw curtained
doorways and rooms. Men would go and come through these curtained entrances. People
on the street would be calling out, “Two rupees, two rupees.” I asked the other Nepali
women if these were offices; it seemed the logical explanation. In two days I knew
everything. I cried.
Tara N., a Nepali woman who was trafficked into India at sixteen.
Children around the world are sexually abused and exploited in ways that can cause
permanent physical and psychological harm. In some cases, police demand sexual services
from street children, threatening them with arrest if they do not comply. In detention and
correctional facilities children may be sexually abused by staff or are not protected from
sexual abuse by other inmates. In refugee camps many children are exploited by adults or
sometimes forced to sell their bodies for food. Children in orphanages may be abused by
staff members or other children. In conflict areas children are kidnaped to serve as child
soldiers and also as sexual servants for adult soldiers. Children working as domestics may
be assaulted or raped by employers.
OTTAWA — Megan Lewis turned her first trick when she was 13 and worked in a brothel
with other girls as young as 11. They sold their bodies in the back of a knick-knack shop in
Vancouver's Gastown tourist district. Lewis felt she was making big bucks when she
finished a night's work with $30 in her pocket.
For 11 years she was physically and sexually abused. But she couldn't turn her back on
the life she had grown used to — until she was violently raped.
"I went through about two weeks where I was bathing every hour on the hour, I was
brushing my teeth every 10 minutes or so," she says. "And for a month afterward, I couldn't
let anyone come near me. If someone came up from behind me, I'd scream. I'd wake up in
the middle of the night screaming."
The constant fear of death made her quit prostitution and re-unite with her family. That was
four years ago.
Cambodia's 55,000 prostitutes are children under the age of 16. The oldest girls in the sex
industry today are teenagers, says Sao Chhoeurth, who works with AFESIP, a French NGO
that rescues and rehabilitates child prostitutes.
With recent media attention on pedophiles such as Gary Glitter in Cambodia and Matthew
Kelly in the United States of America, child prostitution and pornography have suddenly
become extremely important to Cambodia's cultural image.
With the death of Pol Pot and the end of the Khmer regime in 1998, Cambodia prospered
as a sex attraction for the many pedophiles keen on exploring new avenues after Thailand,
Vietnam and other South-East Asian nations.
CHILD PROSTITUTION ON THE RISE IN BRAZIL
By Selma B. de Oliveira
Brazil's economic crisis in recent years has aggravated chronic social ills, placing the
country among other nations with the highest degree of unbalanced distribution of land and
wealth in the world. As a sad illustration of further social decay, the Brazilian Center for
Childhood and Adolescence (CBIA) has recently estimated that there are about 500,000
girls who have turned to prostitution to earn a living. Some of these girls are as young as
nine years old. The prostitution of girls in Brazil is the direct consequence of years of
economic recession, and the low status afforded to women in the country. Because women
have a limited access to occupations and resources, they are the ones hardest hit during
economic crises.
The National Center on Missing and Exploited Children calls child prostitution “the most
overlooked form of child abuse in the United States.” While statistical data are hard to find,
one national prevention organization estimates that there are between 100,000 and
300,000 children who are sexually exploited through prostitution and pornography in the
United States. And we know this is a problem of international dimension, with many more
victims all across the globe.
These children suffer from unimaginable abuse. This afternoon, we’ll hear the very
powerful stories of those who survived child prostitution and extricated themselves from this
web of suffering.
Too often, child prostitutes are perceived by the public as willing participants in their own
victimization. Too often, they fall under the radar screen of victim assistance and child
protective services. Too often, their cases are treated as simple nuisance crimes by the
criminal justice system.
After a deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly was escorted from his office in
handcuffs and several days later was accused of the attempted rape of a 16-year-old boy,
the city newspapers were filled with items about (the alleged) "lechers in the Mariinsky
Palace" [the Mariinsky Palace is home to the legislative assembly], their authors savoring
the details of the unsuccessful rape attempt. While in the city’s newspaper printing complex
editions with unproved accusations and the names of victims were coming off the presses,
12-year-old children, as before, were jumping into shiny foreign cars at the Moscow
Station, to emerge half an hour later with bundles of bank notes, and the city’s procuring
agencies continued to supply girls and boys to their proven clientele and, as before, video
cassettes with child pornography were being sold in the city’s marketplaces. On St.
Petersburg’s streets, 11-year-old boys sell their younger sisters to groups of drunken men
for a handful of candy; their peers are engaged in oral sex for two tubes of Moment glue.
Child prostitution is flourishing in St. Petersburg:
child prostitution: the horrors of selling sex
by Andrew Johnson
One month before her 14th birthday Aliyah Ismail was found dead in a grubby flat in
Camden Town, London, in her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend's bed. She had taken twice the
amount of methadone needed to kill her and had been working as a prostitute in nearby
King's Cross.
© stockbyte
Shocking but not unusual, according to Andy Bates of children's charity Barnardo's. 'It's not
a long-term career option,' he says of child prostitution. 'That lifestyle is extremely violent
and dangerous. Some children do die.' At Barnardo's they don't use the term 'child
prostitution': 'We call it abuse through prostitution,' Andy Bates says. 'It's child abuse.'
how does it happen?
Child prostitution is national in scope. Pimps have become more sophisticated in their
recruitment and maintenance of the children they force to prostitute, moving their victims
from state to state, often forcing them to work as prostitutes outside the larger cities and in
small towns where police are unfamiliar with the operations of child prostitution rings.
Child prostitution crisis
By BBC Radio 5Live's Angus Stickler An investigation for 5Live has found that child
prostitution is in danger of spiralling out of control. According to both the police and
child care agencies, hundreds of children around Britain are being lured into the
world of paid-sex. They admit they are unable to keep track of the number of
children involved, but both warn that sophisticated networks involving children of
both sexes are being set up by ruthless criminals. In Rotherham alone for example,
80 girls are said to be working as prostitutes. And experts say prostitution is rife in
every major town and city.
Girls offer sex to earn pocket money!
Increasing numbers of young girls in Singapore are offering sex for sale on Internet
chatrooms, shrugging the transaction off without any remorse or fear of AIDS.
Although the situation here is less dire than in Japan, counsellors and social workers cite
cases of girls as young as 13 having no qualms over paid sex to obtain pocket money.
They blame the nonchalant attitude on neglectful parents, the lack of stigma on losing
one's virginity, the pervasive message of one-night stands on television and
advertisements that encourage instant gratification, according to The Sunday Times.
Internet chatrooms make it easy for girls to befriend teenage boys or men, said counsellor
Ong Lea Teng of the Singapore Planned Parenthood Association.
"The thinking of some girls is that since they are doing it, they might as well get something
out of it," she was quoted as saying.
Often they want to buy things their parents cannot afford: mobile phones, the latest
fashions or recreational gadgets, she said.
"With so much material temptations around them and so much desire for instant
gratification, sex for money is inevitable," Deline Koh, a senior social worker at a family
service centre, told the newspaper.
There are no figures available on the trend, but Ong said hotline calls from girls asking if it
is all right to have sex for money have quadrupled in the last two years.
Koh cited the exploits of a 15-year-old girl who used chatrooms to settle her boyfriend's
debts by having paid sex with three men.
Child prostitution in India
I. Introduction
Child labour is not a new phenomenon. It has existed in one form or the other in all
historical periods. What is new, however, it its perception as a social problem and its being
a matter of social concern.
In older days the child was viewed with a tender feeling and treated with warmth, mercy,
and compassion. But the fund of knowledge about the psychophysical needs and the
environmental influence impinging on his growth and development was rather meager. The
mechanics and dynamics of child development were not adequately and scientifically
understood. Today on scientific grounds it can be asserted that work as a direct fulfilment
of child's natural abilities and creative potentialities is always conducive to healthy growth
but work when taken up as a means for fulfilment of some other needs becomes enslaving
in character of a social problem in as much as it hinders, arrests, or distorts the natural
growth processes and prevents the child from attaining full blown personality.
Prostitution of Belgian children
32. In a highly developed country such as Belgium, in which just 6 per cent of the
population is living in poverty, entry into prostitution cannot be imputed to economic
necessity. For those who become involved with some degree of Avoluntariness@, the
causes are the same as those found throughout Europe and in other developed countries.
33. These causes include suffering violence and sexual abuse, or emotional neglect and
indifference, in the home from a young age. The Special Rapporteur even received reports
of children having been given by their parents to other members of the family or friends for
the purpose of sexual abuse.
34. It is particularly difficult to assess the extent of child prostitution involving young
children. Much of this type of abuse is hidden, taking place behind closed doors while the
child is still living with his or her family, and most children feel too much guilt and shame to
try to seek help.
35. Many children who suffer such abuse in the home run away around the age of 12 or
13. They often enter prostitution shortly afterwards in order to make some money while
living on the streets, and often to recreate the abuse that they have suffered throughout
their lives, in circumstances in which they have control over it.
The commercial sexual exploitation of children affects millions of children each year, in
countries on every continent. One form of this exploitation is the growing phenomenon of
Child Sex Tourism (CST). Persons who travel from their own country to a foreign country to
engage in a commercial sex act with a child commit CST. The crime is fueled by weak law
enforcement, the Internet, ease of travel, and poverty.
Tourists engaging in CST typically travel from their home countries to developing countries.
Sex tourists from Japan, for example, travel to Thailand, and Americans tend to travel to
Mexico or Central America. “Situational abusers” do not intentionally travel to seek sex with
a child but take advantage of children sexually once they are in country. “Preferential child
sex abusers” or pedophiles travel for the purpose of exploiting children.
In response to the growing phenomenon of CST, intergovernmental organizations, the
tourism industry, and governments have begun to address the issue. World Congresses
Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation convened in Stockholm and Yokohama in 1996
and 2001, drawing significant international attention to the issue. The World Tourism
Organization established a task force to combat CST and promulgated a Global Code of
Conduct for Tourism in 1999. Over the last five years, there has been a worldwide increase
in the prosecution of child sex tourism offenses. Today, 32 countries have extraterritorial
laws that allow the prosecution of their nationals for crimes committed abroad, regardless
of whether the offense is punishable in the country where it occurred.
Several countries have taken commendable steps to combat child sex tourism. For
example, France’s Ministry of Education along with travel industry representatives
developed guidelines on CST for tourism school curricula, and state-owned Air France
allocates a portion of in-flight toy sales to fund CST awareness programs. Brazil
implemented a national and international awareness campaign on sex tourism.
It is not a very visible problem in our community, but each year, youths as young as 13
years are recruited to work in the sex trade. They do it because they are lured by promises
of glamour and excitement, because they can sell their bodies for the security of a place to
stay or food to eat, or because they have a drug habit or alcohol problem they must feed.
The life they encounter on the street and in the sex trade is anything but glamourous and
secure. Beatings and rape, drug and alcohol addiction, sexually transmitted diseases such
HIV, syphilis and gonorrhea , and unwanted pregnancy await many of them. In 2000,
Burnaby social service agencies tracked 35 local young people who were either known or
suspected to be working in the sex trade, or who were highly at-risk to be recruited. That
figure equates to one whole school classroom of youths who are experiencing or are likely
to experience exploitation and abuse in the child sex trade!
Stemming the tide of young people lured into the commercial sex trade will take a co-
operative effort on the part of all sectors of the community. Public education is an essential
first step in raising the awareness of this community issue; awareness is a necessary
prerequisite to action. The Burnaby-New Westminster Task Force on the Sexual
Exploitation of Children and Youth has prepared this information to help raise public
awareness of this issue. The Task Force is led by the City of Burnaby and has
representation from over twenty Burnaby agencies, including the Burnaby School District,
the Burnaby RCMP, Simon Fraser Health Region, several Provincial ministries, and a
number of non-profit service providers. For more information about the work of the Task
Force, call the Burnaby Planning Department at 604.294.7400.
child prostitution: the horrors of selling sex
by Andrew Johnson
child prostitution
One month before her 14th birthday Aliyah Ismail was found dead in a grubby flat in
Camden Town, London, in her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend's bed. She had taken twice the
amount of methadone needed to kill her and had been working as a prostitute in nearby
King's Cross.
© stockbyte
Shocking but not unusual, according to Andy Bates of children's charity Barnardo's. 'It's not
a long-term career option,' he says of child prostitution. 'That lifestyle is extremely violent
and dangerous. Some children do die.' At Barnardo's they don't use the term 'child
prostitution': 'We call it abuse through prostitution,' Andy Bates says. 'It's child abuse.'
how does it happen?
Children end up as prostitutes as the result of a complex process involving manipulation,
violence, sexual abuse, drugs, alcohol and poverty. Barnardo's gives an example of how it
could happen: A girl, who has run away from home or is being abused at home, meets a
young man, probably aged between 18 and 25. He gives her the love and affection she is
missing. He pretends to be her boyfriend, impressing her with his maturity and lifestyle, his
money and car. She falls in love with him and they start to have sex.
What is being done to raise awareness of the problem of girls being sold into brothels?
Many local groups, especially in Bangkok, and in the North where many girls come from,
are working on the issue. Many focus on explaining to girls and their families exactly what is
involved in going with an agent who comes to their village, and offers money to take the
girls away. For example, one organization distributes a story book about a girl who is
tricked into the sex industry, and another takes parents to see conditions in brothels. A
very important campaign spread the message that "men of the new generation do not use
commercial sex."
What are some of the major problems that you face in putting an end to child prostitution?
We need to remember, before we even look at the families where the girls come from, or
the circumstances under which they are sold or bonded, that none of this would be taking
place without a demand from men for the sexual services of underage girls. The
perceptions of Thai and foreign men towards women and sexuality needs to change. While
visiting brothels remains a norm among Thai men and sex tourists, young girls will be
forced into the sex trade.
Some people think that the fear of AIDS has reduced the demand for the commercial sex
industry, because AIDS is associated with brothels, but in fact the sex trade has just moved
away from brothels to all kinds of other locations. Men seem to think that paying for sex with
a hostess in a karaoke bar or a snooker hall is somewhat less risky so they do that instead
of visiting a brothel, so their behavior hasn't really changed much. Changing male behavior
in this respect would be the most effective solution. Stop buying sex!
In the meantime, police underresourcing is a big problem. Police need more training, so
that they can identify offenses, collect evidence and prepare cases better. Many policemen
are not familiar with the laws that refer to the sexual exploitation of minors. And of course,
as long as police wages remain so low, corruption is going to remain a serious obstacle to
law enforcement.
On the supply side, one of the difficulties that girls face within the family can be a lack of
support for their own needs above those of the family. Our Thai colleagues worry that
traditional attitudes to children, especially girl children, as subordinate to the needs of the
family, make it easier to sacrifice a child to the sex industry. A variety of projects have been
set up, especially in the North, to help persuade parents and provide financial support to
help girls in school beyond the minimum level. That not only keeps the girls out of the
brothels for a couple more years, but it also means that they will have more skills, and more
alternative job opportunities when they leave school.
The question is then: why do families need their children to leave school and bring in
income when they are still so young? The unequal distribution of wealth within Thai society
is an obvious factor. Many families were excluded from the benefits of Thailand's economic
boom, and needed to rely on even the younger family members to contribute to the
household income. As unskilled labor, without influential connections, they have few
alternatives to the sex trade.
The need for cash has also been stimulated by Thailand's wholehearted embrace of
consumerism. Every villager is aware of the televisions, motorcycles, and comfortable
houses, available for money. Selling a daughter often represents the only possible
opportunity to join the "good life."
Child labour is not a new phenomenon. It has existed in one form or the other in all
historical periods. What is new, however, it its perception as a social problem and its being
a matter of social concern.
In older days the child was viewed with a tender feeling and treated with warmth, mercy,
and compassion. But the fund of knowledge about the psychophysical needs and the
environmental influence impinging on his growth and development was rather meager. The
mechanics and dynamics of child development were not adequately and scientifically
understood. Today on scientific grounds it can be asserted that work as a direct fulfilment
of child's natural abilities and creative potentialities is always conducive to healthy growth
but work when taken up as a means for fulfilment of some other needs becomes enslaving
in character of a social problem in as much as it hinders, arrests, or distorts the natural
growth processes and prevents the child from attaining full blown personality.
The lions share of the value generated by it is appropriated by some one else and the child
is left with a fraction that can not meet comfortably even the survival needs.
Child labour is thus defined as work performed by children that either endangers their
health or safety, interferes with or prevents education or keeps them from play and other
activity important to their development. Child labour of this kind is considered a social evil.
The problem of child labour is a multi-dimensional one as the children from a large
segment of the total population. Child prostitution involving both boys and girls is very
common today but female child prostitution is more common than male child prostitution.
Termed as the oldest profession, prostitution has become an integral part of 'all sorts' that
make the world. Women who resort to this rarely get a sympathetic word from the society
and their life is wasted away selling momentary pleasures for a meal and existence in
cubby holes called 'cages'. If their plight is pathetic, worse still is that of the child prostitutes.
Today there is existence of 'kid porn' where children and not adults are chosen for sexual
exploitation.
Ironically child prostitution is a special category of rigorous case of child labour and it
raises more troubling ethical problems than child labour in general.
II. Extent
Many surveys have been conducted to find out the extent of child prostitution. Dr. Gilada's
paper on perspectives and positional problems of social intervention" shows that,
"70% of women are forced into prostitution and 20% of these are child prostitutes."
Statistics of the survey done show:-
City Population Prostitute Population
Bombay 10 million 100,000
After a deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly was escorted from his office in
handcuffs and several days later was accused of the attempted rape of a 16-year-old boy,
the city newspapers were filled with items about (the alleged) "lechers in the Mariinsky
Palace" [the Mariinsky Palace is home to the legislative assembly], their authors savoring
the details of the unsuccessful rape attempt. While in the city’s newspaper printing complex
editions with unproved accusations and the names of victims were coming off the presses,
12-year-old children, as before, were jumping into shiny foreign cars at the Moscow
Station, to emerge half an hour later with bundles of bank notes, and the city’s procuring
agencies continued to supply girls and boys to their proven clientele and, as before, video
cassettes with child pornography were being sold in the city’s marketplaces. On St.
Petersburg’s streets, 11-year-old boys sell their younger sisters to groups of drunken men
for a handful of candy; their peers are engaged in oral sex for two tubes of Moment glue.
Child prostitution is flourishing in St. Petersburg: no one catches non-deputy lechers.
Loitering on the streets in search of diversion, hundreds of children become the victims of
perverts. According to the estimates of social workers, nearly 500 children, aged primarily
12 to 15, live permanently on the streets, spending the nights in basements and attics.
Another 5,000 minors hang around on the streets during the day, leaving to spend the
night not at home, but with relatives and acquaintances, or at one of the few emergency
shelters. In places where children congregate (train stations, near downtown hotels, and
around kiosks near outlying subway stations) people approach them with the most varied
propositions. Child prostitution is well organized: those who become pimps are, as a rule,
minors themselves. They get half of each prostitute’s earnings. Prices for the services of
minors fluctuate from 5,000 to 50,000 rubles for oral sex; "normal" sexual intercourse costs
from 30,000 to 200,000 rubles. [One dollar is worth approximately 6,000 rubles.] The
adolescents spend their earnings on marijuana, alcohol, and pills; their main form of
entertainment are slot machines and video parlors. In the historical center of the city,
children are admitted into porno film showings for free—the children and the parlor guards
enjoy the show together. Underage prostitutes of both sexes toil not only on the streets, but
in any of the city’s 250 procuring agencies as well. It’s impossible to order them up by
telephone: boys and girls are delivered only to tried and true clients—the article of the
criminal code that deals with inducing minors into prostitution is even more severe than the
article which punishes pimping. At night, the city’s bathhouses and saunas function as
sexual entertainment establishments. The unsuccessful attempt by the deputy to rape the
adolescent boy is being investigated by the Regional Commission for Combating Organized
Crime, which usually is occupied with cases of extortion, kidnapping, and racketeering.
Combating the other manifestations of prostitution in this city of five million is entrusted to a
group of some eight police officers referred to by the populace and in the newspapers as
the "vice squad." "What do a naked ass and fascism have in common?" ask these highly
moral police officers. The answer: "Nothing!" It turns out that apart from the battle with
prostitution and pornography, they are also entrusted with the struggle against fascism, the
illegal sale of Soviet decorations and medals, and violations of copyright. The prostitute
procurement agencies rake in multimillion ruble profits—the officers of the vice squad earn
less than a million rubles per month. One of the officers sold his car and bought himself a
mobile telephone so that he could call for backup in dangerous situations. According to
police estimates, the illegal turnover from the sale of sexual services in the northern capital
amounts to 12 to 18 billion rubles per year. The agencies pay out two-thirds of their income
in protection money to criminal "covers." For its part, the state, complaining about holes in
the budget, doesn’t receive even a kopeck from the sale of unlicensed videocassettes and
is in no rush to finance the work of the vice squad officers. Since there is no money for a
cleaning lady, they are obliged to clean the toilets themselves after each night’s detainment
of prostitutes.
Child prostitution, like other forms of child sexual abuse, is not only a cause of death and
high morbidity in millions of children, but also a gross violation of their rights and dignity.
Both boys and girls can be prostituted and, according to the report, some of the children
are as young as 10 years old.
Most of these children are exploited by local men, although some are also prostituted by
pedophiles and foreign tourists.
In their report, the investigators estimate the number of children exploited by prostitution is
highest in India with estimates between 400,000 and 575,000; Brazil is second with
estimates between 100,000 and 500,000; the US is third with 300,000 children; and in
fourth place is Thailand and China with 200,000 children each.
With regard to illnesses, worldwide, millions of children are infected with sexually
transmitted diseases, have abortions, attempt suicide and are raped each year. In parts of
southeast Asia, 50% to 90% of children rescued from brothels are infected with HIV.
A coordinated international campaign is needed to prevent child prostitution, provide
services to children who are prostituted until they can be removed from prostitution, and
implement effective recovery and reintegration programs.
For such a campaign to be successful, it will require global coordination, implementation at
national, regional and community levels, and the leadership of many health professionals.
Sex slavery is deeply rooted in Japan, and this week the U.S. State Department
downgraded its ally to Tier Watch List 2, which means Japan — like Israel, India,
Turkey and 50 other countries — does not fully comply with the Trafficking Victims
Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003, but is making a significant effort to do so.
Countries deemed by the State Department not to be making significant efforts to
comply with the U.S. standard are categorized as Tier 3, and face potential
sanctions. On this year's list they include Bangladesh, Burma, Cuba, Ecuador,
Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, North Korea, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Venezuela.
Like most victims of trafficking in humans, Mia, who wanted to help her family
financially, was told by an acquaintance in Thailand that she could get "a good job"
in Japan.
Once in this country, however, Mia faced something totally unexpected — fictitious
debts that she had to repay by renting her body for sex. She and other foreign
women were kept under rigorous surveillance and never allowed to go out by
themselves; they were shuttled between their apartment and workplaces such as
bars and hotels.
"I wanted to be treated as a human being," Mia told Mrs. Otsu. "I am a human
being," she said before describing the humiliations she had endured.
"I was deeply shocked," said Mrs. Otsu.
Mia's words led Mrs. Otsu to try to help victims of violence and the sex trade. She is
now a director of HELP Asian Women's Shelter, backed by a Christian women's
group. The shelter, one of a few in central Tokyo, has assisted thousands of
battered women over the past 18 years.
During this time, "nothing has changed" in the way victims of sex trafficking are
exploited, Mrs. Otsu said. The women and girls, mainly from other Asian countries,
are forced to work without pay as prostitutes — without condoms or medical
checkups for sexually transmitted diseases. Many are severely beaten.
After the State Department Trafficking in Persons report this week, Japan pledged
to increase its efforts to combat the problem. "We hope to continue efforts to tighten
measures in areas that are insufficient," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki
Hosoda.
Some observers said the Japanese government suddenly introduced legislation on
the subject — but "just for form" — to deflect criticism from Washington.
Yumiko Koyanagi of the Japan Network Against Trafficking in Persons, a
nongovernmental group in Tokyo, said: "While the government is working to stiffen
punishment against offenders, we are asking them to incorporate relief for victims
into the laws."
Even in Tokyo, there are very few places victims can go for help.
Most private shelters in Japan are financially strapped and operated by volunteers
and private donations. They receive very little money from the government.
The usual way Japan deals with victims of human trafficking is to arrest them for
violating immigration laws and deport them to their homeland. Politicians and the
mainstream media have long ignored this.
"It's hard to say that the seriousness of human-trafficking issues is widely
recognized in Japanese society," said Kaname Tsutsumi, a professor who teaches
sex and ethnicity issues at Kyushu International University. "In addition, the society
casts a very cold eye on foreign women involved in prostitution."
In this, Japan is not unique.
Trafficking in humans is "among the fastest-growing criminal activities, occurring
both worldwide and in individual countries," reports the State Department Office to
Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Between 600,000 and 800,000
people, mostly women and children, are transported across borders each year to
work in the worldwide sex trade, the office said.
If the number of victims within countries were included, the number of people
exploited in the paid-sex industry could reach millions every year, other
organizations estimate.
"We're talking about women, and girls as young as 6 years old, trafficked into
commercial sexual exploitation; men trafficked into forced labor; children trafficked
as child soldiers," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Monday.
This year's Trafficking in Persons report estimated that 14,500 to 17,500 people
are sent annually into the United States for prostitution. According to a 2000 CIA
report, while victims have traditionally come from Southeast Asia and Latin
America, more now come from Central and Eastern Europe and the countries of the
former Soviet Union.
The same can be said of Japan, and probably many other countries.
According to Agnes Chan, an ambassador for UNICEF Japan, this is the fourth
wave of child trafficking.
In the first, many children were transported from Southeast Asia, then from South
and Central America, and later from Africa for the sex trade of wealthier countries.
But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, because of the disparity of wealth
between Eastern and Western Europe, traffickers started to buy children from
Eastern European countries to sell in Western Europe, Russia, the United States,
Arab countries and Japan, she said.
Now, "the problem of trafficking in children from Moldova is becoming most
serious," said Ms. Chan, who visited that country, also known as Moldavia, in April.
Sex-Slave Trade Highly Profitable
The head of Iran's Interpol bureau believes that the sex slave trade is one of the
most profitable activities in Iran today, and government officials themselves are
involved in buying, selling and sexually abusing women and girls.
Many of the girls come from impoverished rural areas. Drug addiction is epidemic
throughout Iran, and some addicted parents sell their children to support their
habits. High unemployment--28 percent for youth between 15 and 29 years of age
and 43 percent for women between 15 and 20--is a serious factor in driving restless
youth to accept risky offers for work.
Popular destinations for victims of the sex slave trade are the Arab countries in the
Persian Gulf. According to the head of the Tehran province judiciary, traffickers
target girls between 13 and 17 to send to Arab countries. The number of Iranian
women and girls who are deported from Persian Gulf countries indicates the
magnitude of the trade. Upon their return to Iran, the Islamic fundamentalists blame
the victims and often physically punish and imprison them. The women are
examined to determine if they have engaged in "immoral activity." Based on the
findings, officials can ban them from leaving the country again.
Police have uncovered a number of prostitution and slavery rings operating from
Tehran that have sold girls to France and Britain. In the northeastern Iranian
province of Khorasan, local police report that girls are being sold to Pakistani men
as sex-slaves. The Pakistani men marry the girls, ranging in age from 12 to 20, and
then sell them to brothels in Pakistan.
Street Children and Runaways
One factor contributing to the increase in prostitution and the sex slave trade is the
number of female teens who are running away from home. Sources inside Iran say
the girls are rebelling against fundamentalist imposed restrictions on their freedom,
domestic abuse and parental drug addictions. Unfortunately, in their flight to
freedom, the female teens find more abuse and exploitation. As a result of
runaways, in Tehran alone there are an estimated 25,000 street children, most of
them girls. Pimps prey upon street children, runaways and vulnerable high school
girls in city parks. Indications are that 90 percent of female runaways will end up in
prostitution.
The exposure of sex slave networks in Iran by some arrests that have been made
provide indications that many mullahs and officials are involved in the sexual
exploitation and trade of women and girls. Women who are arrested for prostitution
say they must have sex with the arresting officer. There are reports of police
locating young women for sex for the wealthy and powerful mullahs.
In cities, shelters have been set up to provide assistance for runaways. Some
allege that the officials who run these shelters are often corrupt; they run prostitution
rings using the girls from the shelter.
Sex Trade and Theocracy
Some may think a thriving sex trade in a theocracy with clerics possibly acting as
pimps is a contradiction in a country founded and ruled by Islamic fundamentalists.
In fact, this is not a contradiction.
First, exploitation and repression of women are closely associated. Both exist
where women, individually or collectively, are denied freedom and rights. Second,
the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran are not simply conservative Muslims. Islamic
fundamentalism is a political movement with an ideology that considers women
inherently inferior in intellectual and moral capacity. Fundamentalists hate women's
minds and bodies.
When he took power, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini set up a theocracy based on the
principle of "velayat-e-faqih," or rule by the supreme religious leader under which he
and now his successor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have final say over all decisions in
Iran.
In such a religious dictatorship, one cannot appeal to the rule of law for justice for
women and girls. Women and girls have no guarantees of freedom and rights and
no expectation of respect or dignity from the Islamic fundamentalists.
We believe that only the end of the fundamentalist regime will free women and girls
from all the forms of slavery they suffer. There is a growing movement in Iran to oust
the ruling clergy. Pro-democracy activists are proposing that an internationally
monitored election--a referendum--be held on the form of government that will rule
Iran. There is hope that this will be the first step to establish a secular and
democratic Iran. Women across Iran are risking their safety--and often their lives--to
demonstrate against the Iranian regime and call for the referendum. Democracy in
Iran is their only hope for the future.
In West Africa in the war-ravaged economies of Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sierra
Leone, one industry that thrives is prostitution. Young girls in these three countries,
some as young as 10, become victims of the sex trade and face the dangers of
drugs, AIDS and trafficking.
On the streets in Abidjan, prostitutes are known as serpents because of the hissing
sound they make to hail down men and soldiers, driving or walking by.
Prostitutes in Abidjan
One girl decked out in tight-fitting bell bottom pants and a see-through top stops a
sports car, driven by a U.N. employee, and asks for $30 to share the rest of the
night. That's the equivalent of a monthly salary for most in Abidjan.
The foreigner refuses and drives off. But U.N. and French peacekeepers as well as
Ivorian soldiers who patrol Abidjan can often be seen picking up scantily-clad girls.
Prostitutes say soldiers often rape them without paying and refuse to wear
condoms, putting them at the risk of AIDS.
At a nearby hotel, now used as a brothel, an Ivorian businessman is having a fight
with another prostitute, Christelle. She says she's 16, but looks younger. Most
prostitutes lie about their age.
The customer leaves, accusing her of being drunk. Christelle says she's high to
avoid being scared.
She also says that's what Ivory Coast is about these days. She says she needs to
prostitute herself to buy her daily bread and that maybe it wasn't like that before, but
that now there are just too many problems.
There's a man outside who rents plastic chairs for girls to sit while customers walk
by, but there are always loud arguments here.
In contrast, in Makeni, a town in central Sierra Leone, the mood is peaceful at this
rescue center for street children. Girls are playing board games. But their stories
are just as horrific.
Aid worker Loretta says the prostitutes she saves are sometimes very young.
"The age, 12, 10, there is no fixed age," said Loretta. "They are trying to survive,
just survive. Men can easily take them to bed because of money."
One of the center's councilors says sometimes the girls' own parents force them to
become sex workers.
"The parents haven't got anything," she said. "They will just go into the streets,
whatever they have they will bring it to the parents because of poverty. If you take
your time, nighttime you're going to disco and you see them, they go around and
even in these military barracks they go there because they want money."
Street girls in Monrovia
In Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, in this club called the Africa Palace, across the
street from a $150 a night hotel, prostitutes like Tracy, who giggles while sipping a
coke, give the same reason.
She says the money men give her for sex allows
Girl dreams of marrying a rich foreigner
her to pay her school fees and those of her little sisters. But she also hopes to meet
a foreigner this way, who she says, dreamily, will take her out of Liberia.
There are so many prostitutes that the United Nations and Liberian police do
nothing to stop them, as acknowledged by one disgruntled U.N. employee.
"Prostitution, it's not that I don't care but if a woman is free to sell her body and if she
has a passport and she can go whenever she wants I don't care," she said.
The head of the small United Nations' five-member anti-trafficking team here,
Celhia de Lavarene, says she understands why prostitutes do it, because they are
so poor.
Her job is to make sure they aren't taken into criminal networks and trafficked
across borders. She says being a trafficked prostitute is even worse, because
these girls have their papers taken and owe traffickers huge sums of money.
Peacekeepers in West Africa often look for prostitutes
The French U.N. worker started her job by rescuing 30 white Eastern European girls
who had been brought to Liberia for foreigners who wanted prostitutes but refused
to sleep with African women.
Despite her efforts, she says trafficking in and out of Liberia is still taking place.
"We have noticed trafficking from Liberia to London because I had someone in
London calling me and explaining to me that Liberian girls were trafficked," said
Celhia de Lavarene. "And we had some Sierra Leonean girls being trafficked from
Sierra Leone to Liberia."
Mrs. De Lavarene's job is scheduled to end in July, and after that, she is afraid
trafficking will resume at a much higher level.
"I'm not going to tell you that we're successful," she said. "It's just now it's on hold, it
did not stop. So my fear is that as soon as I leave the traffickers will know I left."
Mrs. De Lavarene who has done most of her work at night in and around the
nightclubs of Monrovia, like here outside the Africa Palace, says it's a question of
offer, demand and impunity. She says there are so many men willing to pay for sex
and so few people really committed to cracking down on the growing trade, to the
detriment of all the girls.
Child prostitution means the use of a child in sexual activities for remuneration or
any other form of consideration, including food, housing, drugs, or other
commodities or intangibles such as approval or care. It is an age old and global
problem that has existed for centuries.
Child prostitution is found in both developed and developing countries despite
attempts to control the practice. The 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
defines a child as someone under age 18 years. Child prostitution, as laid out in the
1990-94 reports of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, involves the
sexual exploitation of a child for remuneration in cash or in kind, usually organized
by an intermediary such as a parent, family member, procurer, or teacher. Child
prostitution is unacceptable because it exploits and victimizes the child. It
undermines development and is detrimental to physical and emotional health.
Although laws against child prostitution exist to some extent in all countries, many
countries set the age of consent for sexual intercourse between 13 and 17 years.
The largest number of child prostitutes can be found in Asia and Central and South
America, although reports indicate an increase in the level of child prostitution in
Africa, North America, Europe, and Australia. Supply and demand being worldwide,
however, child prostitution affects all countries1.
It is estimated that there are 35,000 children working as prostitutes in Colombia,
with between 5,000 and 10,000 of them on the streets of Bogotá. Many of the kids
that live in the streets were displaced from different parts of Colombia by the recent
violence. Many of them end up in prostitution because of domestic problems or are
forced into it by their families to earn money2. In southeast Asian countries such as
Thailand, Malaysia, China and the Philippines, child prostitution has become
pervasive, with recent statistics revealing as many as 800,000 child prostitutes in
Thailand alone, with prostitution for some children beginning as early as age six3.
The definition of child prostitution needs to encompass many circumstances
including young runaways who exchange sex for a bed and a roof over one’s head
for the night, as well as a child exchanging sex for some form of payment such as
money, drink, drugs and other goods of worth. Research overwhelmingly suggests
that children involved in selling sex have experienced damaged and chaotic lives.
Sexual and physical abuse, poverty, rejection, drug dependence and coercion into
prostitution by manipulative and dangerous adults are some of the experiences that
children often report. There is clear evidence that some young girls are “groomed”
into prostitution by pimps or “boyfriends”. Their peers introduce some young people
into prostitution, usually as part of the last chapter in a complex story in which these
young people have suffered collective and systematic abuse of their rights and
dignity. The more difficult the young person’s problems, the more difficult it is for a
young person to exit and recover from prostitution4.
Young people become involved in this sort of exchange or trade either at an
opportunistic level, or else to survive from day to day. Some of these children have
felt forced to leave home because they were being sexually abused and raped by
members within their own extended family. For many, the education system let
them down at an early age and they drop out. A small proportion of these young
people end up becoming professionally involved, engaging in sexual activity with
adults as a full time job. Children should not have to engage in sex for their survival.
The real problem, rarely addressed, is that adults (the majority of whom are men)
are actively seeking out these youngsters to sexually exploit5.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of these children do not enter into prostitution
voluntarily - they are enticed or coerced or are utterly desperate. Vulnerable
children with low self-esteem are identified and targeted by abusers. The problem
is not new but it is a hidden one - it is not known how many children are involved.
Children who are sexually exploited are exposed to abuse and assault, and that
robs them of their childhood, self-esteem, and opportunities for good health,
education and training6. The impact of the abuse can be life-long, often resulting in
emotional and physical problems as well as behavioral problems such: as
prostitution, street youth, crime and homelessness. Survivors often lose a sense of
personal power and have difficulty making good, choices as adults. For the survivor
who was abused as a child by a group of adults there is no safe place. People "out
there" do not offer safety and protection; survivors always feel isolated, powerless
and helpless7. It is important that these youngsters be regarded as victims of
abuse and at risk of significant harm.
It is wrong to exploit any person. It is even more wrong if that person is a child. And
when abuse takes the form of the commercial sexual exploitation of the young, it is
an abhorrent criminal act, and we must put an end to it
Imagine you are a 12-year-old girl who has just been kicked out of her house. You
have nobody to run to and no money to pay for food, clothing or shelter. You are
approached by a middle-aged man who offers you enough money to survive the
next two days by having sex with strangers. What would you do?
Perhaps at first you would refuse and try to find other work. But soon you realize you
don't have enough education or skills for a job that will provide for your basic needs.
You have little or no knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases, although you are
told you should charge the client more for sex without a condom. A fellow child
prostitute tells you things aren’t so bad. She claims she would rather die of a
disease she picked up from being a prostitute than starve.
Of the many atrocities committed against the innocent youth of the world, the
commercial sexual exploitation of children is perhaps the most appalling. Adults
around the world are taking advantage of impoverished children whose desperate
circumstances have caused them to be especially vulnerable to sexual abuse.
Children are forced to be sex slaves for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they are
sold by their parents to brothel owners who pretend to provide legitimate work or
educational opportunities. Other times, children in poor or abusive families wind up
on the streets where they are picked up and forced to work for brothel owners.
The problem is widespread from Africa to Asia. Two important factors that
contribute to the problem of child prostitution are: the impact of AIDS on children
and the thriving sex tourism industry.
AIDS
AIDS creates a vicious cycle of death and loss of innocence, quality of life, and
health. Especially in Africa and South Asia, the virus is spreading at an alarming
rate, disintegrating families and leaving children to fend for themselves.
According to the United Nation's 2004 report on the AIDS epidemic, 39.4 million
people are living with AIDS worldwide, 17.6 million of them women and 2.2 million
of them children under age 15. In 2004, 3.1 million people died from causes related
to AIDS.
When children are orphaned by AIDS, they lose financial support from their parents
as well as moral or financial support from their community. Many AIDS orphans are
forced to live on their own because nobody from the community will help them out of
fear of catching the disease that killed their parents. These children are guilty by
association, regardless if they are infected with AIDS or not.
Children whose parents have died from AIDS are more likely to become involved in
commercial sex than other children. Without anybody to support their basic needs,
orphans are forced to provide for themselves. They drop out of school because they
have no money to pay for school fees, supplies or uniforms. Thus, children as young
as 10 and 11 end up working for brothel owners who provide them with food and
shelter.
The vicious cycle of infection and death continues as these children’s chances of
getting the AIDS virus increases with every sexual encounter they have. It is a gross
injustice that these children are born into a world of sickness that not only takes their
parents but also leads them into lives of abuse and misery.
Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the areas hardest hit by AIDS in the world. This is
partly due to the way women are treated. Young girls in many parts of Africa are
taught at a young age that their job is to please men by becoming obedient wives.
They cannot protect themselves against abuse from relatives or employers. This
mistreatment teaches girls to have little respect for themselves, making them more
vulnerable to exploitation.
When the deadly AIDS virus is combined with poverty, the quality of life for children
decreases and their likelihood of becoming victims of sexual exploitation increases
Santiago, Chile -- An investigation into a suspected pedophile ring headed by a
wealthy businessman has caused this conservative nation to suddenly ponder a
previously ignored social problem -- child prostitution. In October, Claudio Spiniak,
55, and six colleagues, were charged with using a luxury gym he owns for
sadomasochistic orgies with children. He has also been accused of producing and
distributing child pornography. The scandal has linked two right-wing senators of the
Independent Democratic Union party (UDI) to the pedophile ring as well as
prominent businessmen and four police officers, who were arrested last week for
obstruction of justice. Several politicians have accused opposition parties of using
the sordid case for political gain. UDI leaders say it's a smear campaign to weaken
their presidential candidate in the 2005 election. The suspected senators are
Carlos Bombal and Jovino Novoa, the ex-mayor of Santiago and former deputy
minister of the General Secretariat under former dictator Augusto Pinochet,
respectively. Novoa has been accused of raping a 16- year-old girl and hiring her
out as a prostitute. Moreover, Daniel Calvo, a respected judge who had been
investigating the alleged link between politicians and the pedophile ring, was
removed from the case early this month after revealing that he had been a regular
visitor to a gay bathhouse where children were welcome. But behind these high-
profile figures are the thousands of youngsters who sell themselves nightly on
Chilean streets for $1 to $50 a trick. Across the nation, there are 4,000 children
working in the commercial sex trade, according to a recent study by the National
Youth Service (SENAME). Other surveys put the number as high as 15,000.
Francisco, 15, has been a sex worker for half of his life. "I saw other kids doing it,"
he said. "We did it out of need." Francisco said his mother died in childbirth, and
his father was shot to death in Colombia. He bounced from orphanage to
orphanage before escaping at age 7 to live on the streets of this capital city of 5
million inhabitants. Jonathan, a 15-year-old transvestite, entered the sex trade by
choice. "I wanted to buy my own clothes," said the tube-top-clad youngster, who
began selling his body at 12. He recently left the streets after several of his
colleagues disappeared. He counts himself lucky that he escaped danger. He may
be the exception. Francisco has been beaten numerous times by pimps and clients.
Maria San Martín, a former child prostitute, says she was raped by a client and lost
a good friend, who was killed by her pimp. "Thank God I lived to tell this," she said.
"But so many girls have died." Child advocates say the Spiniak case has prompted
many Chileans, who they say are conditioned to ignore child beggars, to finally see
child prostitution as a widespread social problem. "It has gone from being an
absolutely unseen topic to a visible one, thanks, unfortunately, to these horrible
events," said SENAME's Marcela Abarca. "It has shown people that a problem
exists, that this is a crime, and that it damages children. That wasn't recognized
before." Apathy toward street children had been a constant source of frustration for
Claudia Fuentes, founder of Alert and Response Against the Sexual Abuse of
Children, a nongovernmental organization. "We haven't seen the phenomenon that
exists in Thailand, where little boys dance on tables," said Fuentes. "We haven't
reached that level. ... It is still very hidden." But Fuentes says her organization has
identified 65,000 online networks of pedophiles across Chile and charges have
been filed in 30 cases. Fuentes entered the battle against pedophilia for personal
reasons. Her daughter was kidnapped when she was 4, raped, and filmed by child
pornographers. Her assailant has been imprisoned for the past 18 months and is
likely to be released soon for good behavior and time served. As a result, Fuentes
has lobbied for the past two years to change the law, whose maximum sentence for
sex with a minor is five years imprisonment. Currently, pedophilia in Chile means
sex with someone under the age of 12. In September 2002, Chile's lower house
passed a bill to increase the maximum sentence for sex with minors to 15 years in
prison. The proposed sentence for the production of child pornography was
increased to three to five years. Currently, it is 18 months to three years. The bill
lingered in the Senate for more than a year -- until the Spiniak case. A week after
the businessman's arrest, the Senate not only approved the legislation but included
a controversial proposal to reintroduce the death penalty for rape and murder of
children under 12. That provision has since been scrapped, but Congress recently
raised the age of sexual consent. Sex with a child under 14 is now considered rape
and carries a prison sentence of fiveto 15 years. The new law -- which is expected
to take effect sometime next year -- is also the nation's first to make it illegal to pay
a minor for sex. Spiniak was arrested not because he paid children for sexual
favors but because he allegedly used drugs to coerce them into having sex.
Meanwhile, Francisco is living in a youth shelter operated by the Margin
Foundation, a nonprofit group that aids young victims of sexual exploitation.
Margin's counselors include former child prostitutes like 22-year-old Maria San
Martin, who combs the streets offering street children a roof and a job. Francisco
peddles key chains on buses and is learning to make handicrafts out of seashells.
"This foundation made me change," he said. "I'm working as a traveling salesman --
and legally," he said. Margin's founder, José Valdivia, says the Spiniak affair has
caused Chileans to finally ask the hard questions about street children, who he says
are not always products of extreme poverty. "It has to do with unstructured families
where children aren't given affection," said Valdivia. "They look for it in other
people."
COUNTRY REPORT OF DENMARK
PROSTITUTION AND ITS CONTEXT IN DENMARK
Extent, organisation and legal issues
Reliable estimates of the number of prostitutes in Denmark do not exist. But one
estimate from 1990 calculates that 1500 prostitutes were active nationally each
day. Most of these worked in massage parlours (700) or bars (600), while 150 -
primarily drug using prostitutes - worked on the streets.
Another 125 worked as escort prostitutes. These numbers only count women who
offer services to men during the course of one day and the total number of
prostitutes is therefore much higher.
The picture changes if the extent of prostitution is measured by the number of client-
prostitutecontacts. The primary role of massage parlours then becomes obvious:
70% of all contacts takeplace there. Fifteen percent of all customers have contact
with street prostitutes, another 12% with
bar prostitutes and 3% with escort girls.
There have been no major changes in this picture during the last four years though
non-Danishprostitutes now comprise a larger part of the prostitutes in massage
parlours than before. One wayof monitoring changes in the prostitute population is
to follow the changes in the adverts offeringsexual service which are published in
the daily newspaper, Ekstra Bladet.
The ethnic make-up of the prostitutes has changed slightly during the last 14 months
according tothe advertisements. The percentage of adverts that mention Thai
women, 'black'/'brown' womenand other immigrants rose from 8-10 % to 13-15 % of
the total. None of these indicate that they come from the former Soviet Union or
Eastern Europe. A few prostitutes (less than 1 % of all advertisements) claim to
come from other EU countries.
Another change was noticed during the project period. The mobile telephone
became increasingly popular, first within escort bureaux, but lately also among
massage parlours. Mobile phones provide an effective guarantee against
identification of the people involved in the business, especially for escort activity
where the prostitute visits the customer. Also the escort bureau itself becomes
mobile; the bureau is to be found wherever the manager is located at any particular
time. The introduction of mobile phones then is the latest stage of a long process of
withdrawal of the prostitute from public view in a known geographical area /street to
an indoor location.
Danish prostitutes do not travel across the country's border to work, while inside
Denmark the experience of working in different parts of the country varies.
Copenhagen prostitutes have seldom worked in other parts of Denmark, except for
escort girls who might cover most parts of Zealand (Sjælland). But in Jutland
(Jylland) and Funen (Fyn) prostitutes usually have worked in cities other
than their home city. Women in Jutland especially travel a lot to other cities in the
region, partly because many cities are too small to provide anonymity vis-a-vis the
clients, partly because prostitutes who are 'new' to a small area attract more
customers.
Numbers for male prostitutes in Denmark are not available. Researchers and
service providers have been in contact with 30 male prostitutes who have male
clients in Aarhus and with more than 100 in Copenhagen. A recent round table
discussion between the police, social workers in contact with the prostitution milieu,
and the social counsellors for parents and children in crisis, concluded that there
is no child prostitution involving children below the age of consent (15 years) in
Denmark. The flow of teenagers into street prostitution is rather limited, especially
for teenagers under 18. The owners of bars and massage parlours are generally
very careful not to let in persons younger than 21 years, as this is illegal and might
give the police an opportunity to intervene. Thus, most prostitutes start work after
they reach 20 in massage parlours or bars. A relatively small group start at a
younger age and do so on the streets.
Pimping (in the sense of a man who in one way or another forces a person to take
customers and hand over the money to him) is extremely rare in Denmark. The
absence of a large group of very young girls (Lolitas) partly explains this lack of
pimps. Another reason is that sexual transactions as such are legal and the police
do not conduct raids among prostitutes who work indoors. Finally, the very liberal
advertising policy in the sex industry enables individual prostitutes to advertise in
newspapers or magazines without fearing economic reprisals. (In reality, they do
commit social security fraud if they are also claiming welfare but the authorities do
not track them down). It is not illegal in Denmark to provide sexual services for
money or goods as long as this sex work is not the main source of income for the
prostitute. The police otherwise might arrest the person on charges of vagrancy.
This is one good reason for a prostitute to be claiming social welfare. Aside from
this, prostitution is not as lucrative as it might have been earlier. Prices for sexual
services have been stable during the last decade while, for instance, advertising
fees and expenses have increased just as have living expenses in general. Many
prostitutes therefore also claim benefits because they need the money and they
avoid giving any information about their prostitution to the social worker.
The extent of procuring is more difficult to assess. Most bars and massage parlours
are owned by one or a few persons who organize the work, procure the women and
take a larger or smaller part of their earnings. A small part of the growing number of
prostitutes from the Third World have entered Danish bars and massage parlours
through business channels. For instance, this is the case for some of the Thai
women in Aarhus. It is likely to have happened in other major cities too, but no
evidence is available at present. Aside from this, it is a matter of definition whether
one would judge some of the massage parlour owners to be procurers. Unless the
prostitute owns the massage parlour herself/himself (or together with a few
colleagues), the user must pay a fee to the owner for each day's work. This fee
varies greatly, ranging from 300 kr to 1400 kr (40-185 ECU) or even more. An
amount at the upper end of the scale covers more than the expenses of the owner. In
comparison, the price for 'Danish' intercourse (vaginal intercourse) ranges from 300
kr to 400 kr (40-50 ECU) among those working in massage parlours in
Copenhagen. Other intermediaries also claim part of the money earned by the
prostitutes, notably the newspapers which are used by almost all massage parlours
and escort prostitutes in Denmark to advertise their services.
Brothels are not allowed in Denmark, and neither is pimping or procuring. But
except for routine visa checks on immigrant prostitutes the police has not initiated
investigations into possible cases of procuring over the last decade. One bar owner
was prosecuted a few years ago and cases against massage parlour owners
occasionally arise. The police only intervene if a complaint has been received; if
they encounter a prostitute below the age of sexual consent; if they find women
younger than 21 years at the bars or massage parlours; or, if they discover an
immigrant prostitute who has no valid permit to stay in Denmark.
To sum up: at least 5.000 sexual transactions involving female prostitutes take
place in Denmark every 24 hours, corresponding to 1.5 million transactions per
year (+/- 0.3 million; activity level decreases during weekends and holidays). This
results in a total payment far in excess of 525 million kr (70 million ECU; this amount
is arrived at by multiplying the mean price for 'Danish' intercourse by the number of
transactions). Most clients have contact with massage girls, some of whom are
'imported' from the Third World, especially Thailand, but quite a few 'black'/'brown'
women work in the massage parlours, too. Most of these stem from Africa and they
are apparently not controlled by a third party. The organization of prostitution in
Denmark differs from many EU countries in its lack of pimps, a situation partly
caused by the restructuring of prostitution that began back in 1973 after the
prohibition on 'immoral' advertising was repealed.
The international child prostitution ring is a very powerful organization. It deals in
kidnapping, child modelling, child porn, slavery, drugs (to keep the children
pacified) and is loosely connected with black market baby smuggling (kidnapping
babies/children to be sold to wealthy Americans). It uses child modelling agencies
to find exceptionally attractive children, and then seduces them and/or drugs them to
be used as child sex slaves. The children rarely live to see adulthood. When the
child becomes a problem, they kill the child and dump the body. This problem is
very common in eastern European countries, China, Thailand, India, Mexico, South
America and parts of Africa, but can also be found in the United States, Canada,
Britain, France and elsewhere. Approximately 27,000 children disappear every
year. Their bodies turn up all over the world and many are never identified.
Queens prosecutors contend she is a Bloods gang member who helped kidnap
and assault a teenage runaway in an effort to force her into prostitution. The motive?
To earn money to help bail another gang member out of jail.
Karen Lockhart's attorney sees it differently. He says his 18-year-old client was an
underage prostitute who herself had been earning money for the gang, trying to
protect the young girl and keep her from being exploited.
"She's a victim just like the complainant claims to be a victim," the attorney, Dennis
Coppin, said last week.
Lockhart and two male co-defendants, both also alleged Bloods members, are
slated for a court appearance Monday in State Supreme Court in Kew Gardens.
Their case is one of a disturbing number that the Queens district attorney's office is
prosecuting involving child prostitution.
In the past five years alone, 35 people have been arrested for forcing teens under
16 to turn tricks, and even more for pimping for older teens. Each year, about 100
teens are arrested for prostitution or loitering.
In an effort to change that, prosecutors and city officials are relying on a federally
funded effort that targets those who sexually exploit children and helps reunite
runaways -- most of them girls -- with their families.
"I think it's a huge problem in New York City," said Rachel Lloyd, executive director
of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, a Manhattan-based group known as
GEMS formed in 1999 to work with girls and young women ages 12 to 21.
"Each year, we serve 150 girls and I feel like we're still tapping into the tip of the
iceberg," Lloyd said.
Last June, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Queens District Attorney Richard Brown
announced a pilot program designed to reduce the problem.
Bloomberg and Brown said then the initiative, dubbed Operation Guardian, would
crack down on the pimps who exploit children in Queens.
Using a $530,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention, it also was to provide a new group home to
help children arrested for the crime, and a new prosecution team in the borough's
district attorney's office.
Girls who agree to turn in their pimps, or youngsters who agree to enter the
program, can be kept from prosecution.
Their only option
Richard Plansky, a deputy coordinator with the mayor's office of criminal justice,
said the city hopes to have the planned group home up and running at an
undisclosed location outside the city by September. A house is being renovated to
accommodate 12 to 16 girls under one roof. The girls will be 15 years old or
younger and must have been prosecuted in Family Court for sexual exploitation, he
said.
Each girl would stay between four to 12 months in a facility safe from the pimps
seeking to put her back on the street. "You're offering an alternative for them," said
Rita Abadi, a counselor with the Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program,
based at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan, who is assigned to the Queens
district attorney's office as part of Operation Guardian.
"Most of these children, they are already disconnected from their families, or having
huge problems with their families, and you are basically giving them an option
outside the streets," Abadi said.
Through January, Abadi said, she had 16 ongoing cases involving girls younger
than 19 as part of her Queens assignment. In 14 cases, girls spoke to her but never
followed up.
"The biggest surprise was one young girl that was brought in and she had just
turned 12," she said. "She started on the street when she was 11."
Going after the source
Lloyd of GEMS said a major component of reducing what she prefers to call the
commercial sexual exploitation of children should be going after the people who pay
the money the pimps crave so much.
Prosecutors and city officials believe they did just that by shutting down the
Executive Motor Inn on North Conduit Avenue in Springfield Gardens on Dec. 10. In
a predawn raid, authorities arrested a 41-year-old alleged john with a 15-year-old
runaway in one of the motel's rooms.
A week earlier, a 22-year-old man was arrested and accused of recruiting a 15-
year-old runaway from Suffolk County to work as a prostitute after having sex with
her at the motel. And in November, another 22-year-old man was convicted of
endangering the welfare of a child by prostituting a 13-year-old girl inside the motel
in January 2005.
As part of Operation Guardian, Anthony Communiello Jr., chief of the special
proceedings bureau in the Queens district attorney's office, said someone from his
office looks at arrest folders every day for cases possibly involving the sexual
exploitation of children.
Caught under pressure
In the Lockhart case, prosecutors say a 15-year-old Bronx girl suffered physical,
sexual and verbal abuse while the defendants held her captive over four days inside
a house in the Rockaways last year.
When the victim refused to sell herself for sex, prosecutors said, the defendants
took away her clothing and threatened to put her out on the street. Two passersby
helped her call police after she escaped, prosecutors said. She has been reunited
with her parents.
Although she didn't know the specifics of Lockhart's case, Lloyd said girls in that
situation often are pressured by their pimps. "Human beings will do things to other
human beings when there's pressure, when they're scared for their own lives. These
are kids who are trained to really be loyal to their abuser," she said.
In Paraíba, with a population of 3.6 million, 66% live in the cities, 56% live in
poverty, and approx. 50% are under the age of 18. Generally, these children live on
the outskirts of the city or in favelas (shanty towns) and have no option but to earn a
living on the streets.
This hinders their access to schools, damages their family life and, above all, cuts
short their childhood. Their right to health care, food and leisure activities is denied.
This in turn damages the development process of these children and many end up
falling under the influence of criminal gangs, drug dealers and prostitution rings
Child Prostitution a Global Problem
Child prostitution, like other forms of child sexual abuse, is not only a cause of death
and high morbidity in millions of children, but also a gross violation of their rights
and dignity.
Both boys and girls can be prostituted and, according to the report, some of the
children are as young as 10 years old.
Most of these children are exploited by local men, although some are also
prostituted by pedophiles and foreign tourists.
In their report, the investigators estimate the number of children exploited by
prostitution is highest in India with estimates between 400,000 and 575,000; Brazil
is second with estimates between 100,000 and 500,000; the US is third with
300,000 children; and in fourth place is Thailand and China with 200,000 children
each.
With regard to illnesses, worldwide, millions of children are infected with sexually
transmitted diseases, have abortions, attempt suicide and are raped each year. In
parts of southeast Asia, 50% to 90% of children rescued from brothels are infected
with HIV.
A coordinated international campaign is needed to prevent child prostitution,
provide services to children who are prostituted until they can be removed from
prostitution, and implement effective recovery and reintegration programs.
For such a campaign to be successful, it will require global coordination,
implementation at national, regional and community levels, and the leadership of
many health professionals.
Her body was found five years ago along a highway outside Boston.
She had run away from a state-funded group home and, to survive, she had sold the
one possession she had - herself - only to end up dumped like a bag of trash along
the road.
She was only 17 and already a statistic, one of a growing number of child
prostitutes police and social workers began to notice in the Boston area, without
having any protocol for helping them.
Yesterday, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley and representatives from three
dozen law enforcement and social-service agencies changed that by signing a
document agreeing to refer child prostitutes to the state Department of Social
Services for treatment and protection, and the men who prey on them to Conley’s
office for prosecution.
The victim is typically coerced into prostitution between the ages of 13 and 16, said
Joan Wallace Benjamin, president and CEO of the Home for Little Wanderers.
“Prostitution is not a victimless crime,” Conley said at yesterday’s signing at the
Family Justice Center of Boston. “The exploitation of a teenage girl through
prostitution is nothing less than the sexual abuse of a child, and we are committed
to a response that puts her best interests above all else.”
Prostitution is also, he said, “the nation’s least-recognized epidemic.”
Since March 2005, when the center’s Teen Prostitution Prevention Project started a
database of victims, it has identified more than 100 girls who have been sexually
exploited, said project coordinator Kerry Seitz, but there are many more who have
yet to come forward.
“This is an old evil that we never, never, never spoke about, much less did anything
about,” state Social Service Commissioner Harry Spence said. “Sexual abuse is . .
. a horrifically common thing.”
Often, the child prostitute is a runaway who has been abused or neglected, and who
yearns for the kind of attention and “glamour” a pimp promises, Spence said.
For social workers, police and prosecutors, the challenge is to “show her that this
person is not her protector,” he said, “but her destroyer.”
A New York City man who led an interstate prostitution enterprise including
recruiting and prostituting minor girls in several US cites pleaded guilty on Tuesday
in federal court, according to Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the DoJ
Criminal Division and US Attorney Christopher J. Christie of the District of New
Jersey.
Thirty-eight year old Matthew D. Thompkins, a/k/a. "Knowledge," of the Bronx, NY
entered his guilty plea before US District Judge Freda L. Wolfson in US District
Court in Trenton, NJ, to conspiracy to transport minors to engage in prostitution and
conspiracy to engage in money laundering.
In pleading guilty, Thompkins agreed to forfeit $748,243 in funds, three New York
properties, one New Jersey property and eight vehicles all of which were derived
from or used in the prostitution enterprise.
According to the plea agreement and hearing testimony, Thompkins organized and
managed a prostitution ring operating from at least as early as 1999 and continuing
until December of 2005 in various cities, including Atlantic City, NJ; New York City
(including Manhattan and Hunts Point in the Bronx); Las Vegas; Boston; and Miami.
Other members of the conspiracy, including Melissa Ramlakhan, Anna Argyroudis,
Emily Collins-Koslosky, Jacqueline Collins-Koslosky, and Kemyra Jemerson, would
recruit and transport young girls to and from various cities in order to have them
work as prostitutes for him. At Thompkins' direction, members of the conspiracy
would also hide the proceeds of the illegal prostitution enterprise by converting the
proceeds into US postal and Western Union money orders in amounts under the
legal reporting requirement of $3,000.
To date, over $800,000 in US postal and Western Union money orders have been
identified as having been purchased and used by members of the conspiracy.
So far, Ramlakhan, Argyroudis, Emily and Jacqueline Collins-Koslosky, and
Jemerson as well as another pimp involved in the conspiracy, Demetrius Lemus,
have all pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.
Thompkins faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison to a maximum of 30
years and a $250,000 fine for conspiring to transport minors. He also faces up to
20 years in prison and the greater of a $250,000 fine or twice the gross amount of
any financial gain or twice the amount of any pecuniary loss suffered by the victims
for conspiring to commit money laundering. Sentencing is currently scheduled for
March 2, 2007.
The case is part of the "Innocence Lost" initiative, a cooperative effort to prevent
and prosecute cases involving child prostitution between the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and
the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
About 16,000 minors have suffered sexual abuse in Mexico, mostly in urban areas,
the National System for Holistic Family Development (DIF) said.
Speaking at the opening of a conference called the "Sex Trade in Urban Areas:
Origins and Perspectives", DIF President Ana Rosa Paya said on Wednesday that
5,000 cases, or nearly one in three of the reported child abuse cases, took place in
Mexico City.
There is a growing risk of illegal trade in child sex abuse, she added.
"These figures are something we cannot ignore and that demands our protection of
our children."
Mexican police have detected between 72,000 and 100,000 pornographic
websites, the DIF president said.
"We must find ways to make sure that child abusers and prostitution rings are not
tolerated," Paya said.
According to the official, 10 per cent of child prostitution took place in working-class
areas like La Merced, Garibaldi and Centro Historico, where adult prostitution is an
established tradition.
The DIF president said in La Merced -- a sprawling market surrounded by slums --
there are more than 2,000 prostitutes, of whom half are underage.
Paya said 34 hotels in the area have made money from sex trade and that they
typically make 100,000 Mexican pesos ($9,090) a month.
The girl approached me on a desolate stretch of Metropolitan Parkway, about
halfway between the airport and the clustered lights of the downtown skyline. The
night was unusually cold and she was shivering a little. She told me she was 15, but
she didn't look more than 12.
It was bad enough that the child was outside at all at midnight. The fact that she was
turning tricks was heartbreaking. I explained that I was a reporter for The New York
Times and asked if she would wait while I went to get someone to help her. She
looked surprised. "I don't need any help," she said.
I had already spent a night traveling with undercover vice cops, and they had
pointed out the different neighborhoods in which underage prostitutes, some as
young as 10, roamed the streets.
"The girls are exploited in every sense of the word," said Lt. Keith Meadows, who
heads Atlanta's vice unit. "The men are all over them - the pimps, the johns. The
girls get beaten. That's common. They're introduced to drugs. And the pimps take
all the money. It's sad. I would say that in most cases, the girls never knew their
fathers. A lot of them were abused at home and they end up in the clutches of these
pimps, putting their trust in someone they shouldn't have."
Atlanta, for a variety of reasons, has become a hub of child prostitution and other
forms of commercial sexual exploitation of children. The overall market for sex with
kids is booming in many parts of the United States. In Atlanta - a thriving hotel and
convention center with a sophisticated airport and ground transportation network -
pimps and other lowlifes have tapped into that market big time.
Kaffie McCullough, the project director of a federally sponsored intervention
program, said Atlanta's juvenile prostitution problem "is a lot bigger than anybody
would really like to know."
Stephanie Davis, the policy adviser on women's issues for Mayor Shirley Franklin,
agreed. "Sex tourism is coming south, " she told me. "There is advertising that I've
seen on the Internet and other places that actually targets the New York market,
urging men to come to Atlanta for the day and fly back home that night."
The risks for pimps and other exploiters of children are low, and the payoff is often
enormous. Demand is increasing for younger and younger prostitutes, in part
because of the cultural emphasis on the sexual appeal of very young women and
girls, and in part because of the widely held belief among johns that there is less
risk of contracting a disease from younger prostitutes.
For the girls, life on the street can be hellish. A study released last fall by the Atlanta
Women's Agenda, an initiative of the mayor's office, noted that the girls are always
highly vulnerable to rape, assault, robbery and murder, not to mention arrest and
incarceration. Added to that are the psychological risks, which are profound.
The girl who approached me on Metropolitan Parkway had walked alone across an
empty, rundown parking lot. The usual practice, I had been told, was for johns in
cars to pick up the girls and then drive behind an abandoned commercial building.
The girl said she had a "boyfriend, " which is the word the girls use for their pimps.
When I asked if her boyfriend knew what she was doing, she said, "He told me to
do it."
She lifted her chin and proudly showed me a cheap necklace she was wearing. "He
gave me this," she said. "He loves me."
I tried to think of a way to bring the girl to the attention of some social service
agency, or even the police. But taking her into my rented car, even if she had been
willing to go with me, was out of the question. I looked around, hoping to spot a
passing patrol car.
The girl's bangs fluttered as the wind picked up. She looked cold. "I gotta go," she
said.
After a deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly was escorted from his
office in handcuffs and several days later was accused of the attempted rape of a
16-year-old boy, the city newspapers were filled with items about (the alleged)
"lechers in the Mariinsky Palace" [the Mariinsky Palace is home to the legislative
assembly], their authors savoring the details of the unsuccessful rape attempt. While
in the city’s newspaper printing complex editions with unproved accusations and the
names of victims were coming off the presses, 12-year-old children, as before,
were jumping into shiny foreign cars at the Moscow Station, to emerge half an hour
later with bundles of bank notes, and the city’s procuring agencies continued to
supply girls and boys to their proven clientele and, as before, video cassettes with
child pornography were being sold in the city’s marketplaces.
On St. Petersburg’s streets, 11-year-old boys sell their younger sisters to groups of
drunken men for a handful of candy; their peers are engaged in oral sex for two
tubes of Moment glue. Child prostitution is flourishing in St. Petersburg: no one
catches non-deputy lechers.
Loitering on the streets in search of diversion, hundreds of children become the
victims of perverts. According to the estimates of social workers, nearly 500
children, aged primarily 12 to 15, live permanently on the streets, spending the
nights in basements and attics. Another 5,000 minors hang around on the streets
during the day, leaving to spend the night not at home, but with relatives and
acquaintances, or at one of the few emergency shelters. In places where children
congregate (train stations, near downtown hotels, and around kiosks near outlying
subway stations) people approach them with the most varied propositions.
Child prostitution is well organized: those who become pimps are, as a rule, minors
themselves. They get half of each prostitute’s earnings. Prices for the services of
minors fluctuate from 5,000 to 50,000 rubles for oral sex; "normal" sexual
intercourse costs from 30,000 to 200,000 rubles. [One dollar is worth approximately
6,000 rubles.]
The adolescents spend their earnings on marijuana, alcohol, and pills; their main
form of entertainment are slot machines and video parlors. In the historical center of
the city, children are admitted into porno film showings for free—the children and
the parlor guards enjoy the show together.
A GROUP of activists has declared war on the Batam sex trade and one of the first
salvos it's firing next month will be to ask men who frequent young prostitutes: How
would you feel if someone did this to your daughter?
The Singapore chapter of the United Nations Development Fund for Women
(Unifem) feels it is not enough to promote safe sex, which it will do, by placing
condoms in hotels. It also wants to make men think about their role in fuelling the
flesh trade.
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From July, it will put up 'hard-hitting' posters at places like ferry terminals serving the
Riau island, to ask such thought-provoking questions, as well as debunk common
myths among those seeking illicit sex.
Said Ms Saleemah Ismail, manager of Unifem Singapore's End Trafficking Of
Women And Children For Sexual Exploitation project: 'Some men think they are
doing a good deed by paying for sex in Batam, that the girls will starve in their
villages.
'Others think younger girls are cleaner and thus they will be safer from Aids if they
have sex with them.'
Neither is true, she said.
Most of the fee goes to the prostitute's pimp or 'mummy', and to pay for
accommodation, food and laundry. The girl will get, at most, 10 to 15 per cent.
And a young sex worker can 'easily' have slept with a few hundred men by the time
she's 15, making her no safer than the others, said Ms Saleemah.
Unifem's appeal to conscience and good sense is an attempt to curb the demand
side of an equation which has an estimated 600 Singaporean men going to Batam
every Saturday for sex.
Its main concern is the trafficking of minors for prostitution.
Up to 40 per cent of the estimated 19,000 sex workers in Batam are under 18, said
Ms Saleemah. Some are as young as 12.
Many are tricked into leaving rural villages with job offers, but arrive to find
themselves sold to brothels.
Unifem began working with a Batam non-governmental organisation, Partnership
for Health and Humanitarian Foundation (YMKK), last year. It supports YMKK's
outreach activities and the counselling and rehabilitation of prostitutes.
Interviews with men at the World Trade Centre Ferry Terminal who admitted going
to Batam for sex found that most preferred their prostitutes young.
Said a 52-year-old factory worker who declined to be named: 'It's obvious. Every
man wants young girls. Better still if they are virgins.'
But what if the girls are not there by choice?
Said Mr Cher Yong Ngiap, 58, a retired manager who says he has friends who
frequent Batam prostitutes: 'Most of my friends just want to have fun and they only
think about themselves.
'They don't even care about their wives. Why would they bother whether the girls are
tricked into the trade?'
Knowing this, Unifem Singapore is also working to promote the use of condoms.
Initially, three hotels agreed to have one placed in every room but two have pulled
out for undisclosed reasons, said Ms Saleemah. It could be because of a police
raid on brothels last week might, she added.
The remaining hotel declined to be interviewed but its rooms will all have a condom
wrapped in an enticing packet showing a girl saying, 'Don't forget me.'
Inside, the condom will come with a line that goes: 'Have you asked how old she is?'
