Background Paper for the
North American Regional
Consultation
on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of
Children
University of Pennsylvania School of Social
Work
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
December 2-3, 2001
Prepared by Nicole Ives
Introduction
My
friend and I would go to where these gang members hung out. They
gave us free pot, coke, etc., then they said “You owe us.”…I started
trying heroin, but I didn’t understand the price. They would
explain, “This doesn’t come for free. You have to earn money.”
They’d keep me at an apartment all day. I’d just sit there and wait
for the next guy. I hated doing it, wasn’t being good at it, wasn’t
doing my job properly, so he beat me up and threw me out. I had
nowhere to go.
– Female experiential
youth, whose exploitation started at age 12, Canada[i]
Operators of the Hong Kong Spa in Washington, DC, were
arrested in 1995 for purchasing underage immigrant Asian girls, one
only 13 years old, in Atlantic City and transporting them to DC to
work in an indentured sexual servitude arrangement. The girls had
answered ads in local newspapers for restaurant jobs paying $1,000
to $2,700 a week but were picked up at the airport and taken to
massage parlors and brothels and forced to work up 15 hours a
day.
– Report by the
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women[ii]
These stories describe but two of more
than one million children who are trafficked, sold, or forced into
prostitution or pornography each year. In Canada, Mexico, and the
United States, hundreds of thousands of children annually are
sexually abused for profit. In 1996, in response to growing concerns
about the protection of children and evidence of increasingly
heinous violations of children’s rights, the government of Sweden
hosted the First World Congress Against Commercial Sexual
Exploitation of Children in Stockholm. The Congress was planned by
the government of Sweden, UNICEF, End Child Prostitution, Child
Pornography, and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Exploitation
(ECPAT)-International and the NGO Group for the Convention on the
Rights of the Child. The Congress brought together a diverse group
of government leaders and governmental agency representatives from
122 countries, representatives of intergovernmental and
nongovernmental organizations, service providers, researchers and
members of the media to focus on child prostitution, the trafficking
and sale of children for sexual purposes, and child pornography. At
the Congress, all 122 countries accepted the Declaration and Agenda
for Action, committing their national governments to confront the
insidious problem of commercial sexual exploitation of children
(CSEC). The Congress attracted attention to the severity of the
problem.
In preparation for the Second World
Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in
Yokohama, Japan, to be held December 17-20, 2001, ECPAT-USA, NGO
Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child Focal Point on
Sexual Exploitation of Children, UNICEF, and the University of
Pennsylvania School of Social Work will convene a Regional
Consultation on Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in
Canada, Mexico, and the United States, December 2-3, 2001. This
Consultation will be the first of its kind. Concerned participants
from government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, academic
institutions, service providers, and the private sector in these
countries have been invited to lay the foundation for developing
ways to reduce and ultimately end the commercial sexual abuse of
children.
National Plans
of Action
The First World Congress recommended that
delegates draft a National Plan of Action to address the sexual
exploitation of children in their home countries. The National Plans
would contain indicators of progress, with set goals and time frames
for implementation, targeted toward reducing the number of children
vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Canada, Mexico, and the USA all
supported the Declaration and Agenda for Action of the First World
Congress. While Canada does not have an official National Plan of
Action along the lines of the First World Congress, it does have an
integrated national strategy that government officials assert is
more suitable than a formal Plan to Canada’s federal structure.[iii] Explaining
Canada’s opting for a national strategy rather than a National Plan
of Action, officials assert that what is most important is that each
country do what it can according to its own governance structure to
improve the situation of children who are being sexually
exploited.[iv] Canada’s
strategy includes objectives, actions, partners, and key results in
combating CSEC. In addition to the national strategy, Canada has a
Declaration and Agenda for Action of Sexually Exploited Children and
Youth that emerged from an international summit of youth convened in
1998 in Victoria, British Columbia. The summit brought together 54
experiential youth from Canada, the USA, Latin America, and the
Caribbean to provide narratives on their life experiences as
exploited children.
A Plan of Action to Prevent, Attend, and
Eradicate the CSEC in Mexico was proposed by the Sistema Nacional
para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia (national DIF) in 1999.
However, there is currently no formal National Plan of Action for
Mexico. While there are movements against CSEC at the federal level,
the USA does not have a formal National Plan of Action along the
guidelines of the First World Congress.
The purpose of this document is to
provide a background paper for use at the Regional Consultation. A
discussion of the terminology used in the CSEC literature is
necessary before describing the details of the exploitation in
Canada, Mexico, and the USA. There are multiple definitions of the
same terms in the various materials published in the three
countries. Clarifying the definitions that will be used is essential
to a meaningful dialogue at the Consultation.
Forms of CSEC with
Definitions of Terms
The following is a list of key terms used
to discuss the CSEC. For the purposes of this paper, forms of CSEC
and related definitions are taken from international covenants and
declarations and international organizations working in the area of
CSEC.
Child: According to the
definition in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), a
child is any human being under the age of 18.
Child pornography: The
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on
the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography
(2000) offers the following definition: Any representation, by
whatever means, of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit
sexual activities or any representation of the sexual parts of a
child for primarily sexual purposes.
Child prostitution: The
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on
the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography
defines child prostitution as the use of a child in sexual
activities for remuneration or any other form of
consideration.
Commercial sexual exploitation
of children: The World Congress Declaration in Stockholm
defines commercial sexual exploitation of children as sexual abuse
by the adult and remuneration in cash or in kind to the child or
third persons or person. The child is treated as a sexual object and
as a commercial object. The commercial sexual exploitation of
children constitutes a form of coercion and violence against
children and amounts to forced labor and a contemporary form of
slavery. ECPAT and UNICEF estimate that more than 2 million children
worldwide are in the sex trade.
Sex exploiter: “Sex
exploiter” has been defined as “those who take unfair advantage of
some imbalance of power between themselves and a person under the
age of 18 in order to sexually use them for either profit or
personal pleasure”.[v] The
definition is extended to include those third parties who have no
sexual contact with children, but who profit from facilitating or
orchestrating children’s sexual contact with another person or
persons. There are four categories into which most people who
sexually abuse children fall: pedophiles, preferential abusers,
situational abusers, and third-party abusers.
The term “pedophile” is a clinical
diagnosis referring to an adult with a personality disorder that
involves a specific and focused sexual interest in prepubertal
children. While there have been cases of female pedophiles, the
majority of pedophiles are male. All pedophiles do not discharge
their sexual urges in the same way. Some limit their sexual life to
fantasy while others may engage in non-contact abuse (exposure of
genital organs, showing and/or talking about pornographic material)
or contact abuse (genital touching and fondling, attempted or actual
anal, oral, or vaginal penetration).
“Preferential abusers” are those
individuals whose preferred sexual objects are children who have
reached or passed puberty. Children are the envisaged objects of
their sexual desire. They have sex with children not because of
some situational stress or insecurity but because they are sexually
attracted to and prefer children. Such abusers are primarily men,
and their victims are either male or female children.
Situational or opportunistic abusers are
those who exploit children if and when they find themselves in
situations where sex with a child is more convenient or cheaper than
sex with an adult, but whose fulfillment is not contingent on the
physical or emotional immaturity of the person they exploit.[vi] Under this
category also fall men who choose children as sexual partners
primarily on the basis of misconceptions about sexual health or
myths surrounding the sexual contact with virgins.
According to ECPAT, there are five
primary motivating factors for sex exploiters involved in the CSEC[vii]:
1.
Abusers who use prostitutes to satisfy what they imagine to
be a biological or emotional need for a sexual “outlet” or physical
contact;
2.
Abusers who use prostitutes in order to obtain a sense of
camaraderie with male colleagues or friends;
3.
Abusers who use prostitutes in order to obtain a sense of
“true” masculinity;
4.
Abusers who use prostitutes to satisfy a compulsive urge to
perform transgressive acts or to exercise sexual power over
extremely vulnerable, powerless, objectified and/or degraded
individuals; and
5.
Abusers who do not wish to see themselves as prostitute
users.
The motivation of sex exploiters who are
involved as third-party beneficiaries of CSEC is rarely anything
other any profit. These suppliers are rarely fuelled by personal
sexual fixations on children, but rather by the motivation of money.
Suppliers to pedophiles and other abusers justify their actions
because of the demand and the fact that abusers are willing to pay
money for the service. According to a 1996 estimate made by Special
Rapporteur Ofelia Clacetas Santos, the sale of children, child
prostitution, and child pornography net $5 billion annually.[viii]
Sexual solicitation: In
the context of online victimization, sexual solicitation is defined
as a request to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk or to
give personal sexual information that was unwanted or, whether
wanted or not, was made by an adult.
Sex tourism: Child-sex
tourism is an increasingly significant component of the sexual
exploitation of children. It involves individuals, mostly men from
Western countries, traveling to a country with the intention of
seeking out sex with children.[ix] According to
ECPAT, the tourism industry is the largest employer in the
world. While tourism is not the cause of child prostitution, it
does provide easy access to vulnerable children.
The primary motivation behind exploiters
traveling abroad to have sex with children is to experience freedom
from the social constraints of their home countries. Secondarily,
exploiters may see the children of developing countries as
inferior, which may rationalize their behavior, especially if they
believe that there are no social taboos in that country regarding
having sex with children.[x] They may have
the misconception that children are less likely to transmit sexually
transmitted diseases such as HIV. An additional, unfortunate
motivation is also that poor countries are often under strict
economic pressure to develop tourism as a source of income. In
pursuit of that income, sometimes those governments ignore the
sexual exploitation of children.
ECPAT has underscored the important role
that the tourism industry can play in preventing sex tourism.
Airlines such as Lufthansa and Air France have produced in-flight
videos to inform travelers about the laws about child sex
tourism.
Trafficking of children for
commercial sexual exploitation: Trafficking is the
“...recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of
persons...” by improper means, such as force, abduction, fraud, or
coercion, for an improper purpose, such as forced or coerced labour,
servitude, slavery or sexual exploitation. Countries that ratify the
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons,
Optional Protocol to UN Convention Against Transnational Organized
Crime are obliged to enact domestic laws making these activities
criminal offenses, if such laws are not already in place (Article
3). “Trafficking in persons” includes a range of cases where human
beings are exploited by organized crime groups and where there is an
element of force involved. It also includes both domestic
trafficking, where there is exploitation within a country by
domestic or transnational organized crime groups, and international
trafficking where there is the forced movement of people across
borders.
CSEC in Canada, Mexico, and the USA
The three countries involved in the Regional Consultation
have a variety of problems and approaches to the problems of CSEC.
However, there are common themes across the three countries. This
section of the background paper includes a detailed information
profile of the CSEC issues for each of the three countries since the
First World Congress. The subsections are parallel across the three
and include: profiles of the children; profiles of the exploiters;
trafficking; national legislation pertaining to CSEC; law
enforcement; prevention, protection, and recovery programs; child
pornography; and role and involvement of the private
sector.
Canada
Having all the abuse in the family and
all the alcohol, really there was nobody to turn to…when I did it
[turned a trick] I had to cry at least 2 hours each time before I
went out because I was afraid for my life…it’s what I had to do to
survive.
– Experiential youth[xi]
Profiles of
the children
Histories of sexual abuse, poverty, and poor income and
employment are recurring themes in the life experiences of exploited
children, particularly those engaged in prostitution.[xii]
Specifically for children involved in prostitution, evidence
suggests several commonalities in childhood experience: a history of
family dysfunction (including substance abuse, violence, and sexual
abuse), running away from home and surviving on the streets. The
experience of victimization at home or in foster care is frequently
part of the lives of children and youth who live on the streets.
Once on the streets and separated from family, a lack of food and
shelter make them vulnerable to being abused through prostitution.[xiii] Research
studying homeless youth further suggests that there may be a pattern
of increasing involvement in criminal activity (such as drug use,
theft, and prostitution) as the length of time on the street
increases.[xiv] Substantial
research has also demonstrated links between high-risk behavior and
exposure to drugs and violence while on the street.
Some studies
indicate that homeless youth in Ottawa, Saskatoon, Vancouver, and
Toronto who turn to prostitution do so as a means of survival while
on the streets, although it cannot be assumed that all homeless or
runaway children and youth are predictably involved in
prostitution.[xv] There have
been countless cases of homeless or runaway youth who engage in sex
in exchange for food, shelter, or gifts, or to experiment with their
sexuality. Survival sex appears to have gender distinctions, where
it is more of a factor for females than males. A study of Ottawa
street youth found that males are more often able to stay at the
home of an acquaintance while females are frequently forced to
exchange sex for food, shelter, and money.
Issues
particular to certain groups, such as aboriginal youth, need to be
considered separately in discussing the situation of exploited
children. For example, in Saskatoon many of the street youth
self-identify as aboriginal. These youth seem less likely than
non-aboriginal to sever ties with their families after entering the
street culture.[xvi] On the
other hand, others who leave their home communities for urban areas
often end up being exploited. These youth may feel doubly alienated
because they may be both homeless and in a culture that is quite
different from that of their home community. This can make them
particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation by pimps and other
abusers.[xvii] Canadian
consultations have suggested that there is a higher level of
aboriginal youth involved in prostitution in Saskatchewan and
Manitoba than in other areas of the country as well as within
Vancouver in some areas of the city.[xviii]
I was brought up in care, and I was
abused. Care is a very tough way to grow up; they move you from
place to place, you’re owned by them, they can give and they can
take, they choose your clothes, if you don’t like it you can’t
change it. In care I was brought up to think all Indians were bad,
gross, on welfare and then I ended up being that. I’m Metis…[and] I
was made fun of. I was quite young when I started
prostitution.
-Experiential female youth, Saskatoon[xix]
Any attempts to develop a profile of
youth who are involved in prostitution in Canada are difficult
because of lack of information. There is some evidence that many are
runaways and homeless and engage in street prostitution. However,
there also are indications that some engage in prostitution even
though they live at home, and some work in venues run under the
auspices of other businesses such as escort agencies. The majority
of youth involved in prostitution are females, although boys, irrespective of
sexual orientation, are also involved in the sex trade.[xx] Estimates of
the numbers of females and males who are involved in prostitution
vary. It is difficult to calculate the numbers of exploited children
involved in prostitution since young people do not often come to the
attention of the law or appear in official records and statistics as
prostitutes.
Similar
difficulties are encountered when trying to determine the age at
which children and youth become engaged in prostitution. Various
studies and interviews with people involved in prostitution indicate
that there are youth who first have sexual relations for money as
young as 6 years old.[xxi] A Victoria
survey and British Columbia consultations estimate age of entry
between 14 and 15.5 years of age, however findings from interviews
with prostitutes in Vancouver revealed an average age of entry as
16.3 for females and 15.6 for males.[xxii] In other
cities, higher age estimates are found. In Ottawa, the average age
of entry was 17.8 years of age. Surveys in Montreal did not report
an average age of entry, but noted that one third of the 75
prostitutes interviewed had begun prostituting themselves before the
age of 18.[xxiii]
Findings
from consultations support the supposition that approximately 10-15%
of prostitutes on the street are children and youth.[xxiv] Of the
total number of people thought to be involved in street prostitution
in Vancouver in 1996 (estimated to be between 300 and 450), social
agencies and advocates estimate that approximately 30 to 40 at any
point in time were believed to be youth, many of them aboriginal.
Furthermore, a 1987 study of street prostitution in Montreal
obtained estimates of the number of youth involved in prostitution
ranging from 80 to over 5,000. Apparently, these differences are the
result of different definitions of prostitution.[xxv]
It should be noted that there are also
children and youth who become engaged in other facets of
prostitution. In some jurisdictions in Canada, it seem that children
and youth are also becoming caught up in the more serious forms of
prostitution-related offenses, such as procuring and pimping other
children and youth. Estimates of the number of children and youth
involved in these activities is unknown.[xxvi]
I grew up in a very dysfunctional
family: there was always more drugs and booze than food in the
fridge at any given time. I was raped in 1992, and even the police
stated that it was the worst rape of a female they had ever come
across. And my dad said, “You’re damaged goods, you’ve always been
damaged goods, and you’ll never be anything else.” But at least when
I’m out working, I’m not waking up to find my dad in my
bed.
– Female, started prostitution at age 14, Winnipeg[xxvii]
Profiles of the
exploiters
Prostitute users encompass the categories of the sex
exploiter discussed above. There is evidence of pedophiles and
preferential abusers as well as situational abusers and third-party
exploiters. Child sex exploiters in Canada are drawn primarily from
the following groups that are typically prone to prostitute use: the
military, seamen and truckers, temporary farm workers, traveling
businessmen, tourists, expatriates, aid workers, employers of
domestic workers in addition to local prostitute users.[xxviii]
Research in
British Columbia found that there are at least two categories of
pimps: professional pimps and “popcorn” pimps.[xxix] A
professional pimp has control over a number of girls while a
“popcorn” pimp is typically a casual boyfriend or associate on more
equal footing with the female (the girl sells sex, the boy sells
drugs, and they share the earnings.)[xxx]
Exploiters
are skilled in identifying areas in local neighbourhoods,
particularly where youth are unsupervised, to procure children for
the sex trade. Popular recruiting places include malls, video
arcades, fast food restaurants, record stores, community centres,
bus stations, and movie theatres.[xxxi]
Trafficking
Trafficking of children in Canada is a
significant problem, both internationally and domestically,
especially in the larger cities such as Vancouver, British Columbia,
and Toronto, Ontario. According to an American INS agent, a group of
American and Canadian exploiters calling themselves “the West Coast
Players” are actively involved in trafficking Canadian children to
Los Angeles for the sex trade.[xxxii] Canadian
law enforcement officials also believe that American girls are being
trafficked into Canada from the USA. In 1998, an exploiter and his
co-defendants were convicted on eight counts of transporting minors
from Canada across the USA-Canadian border and across state lines
for prostitution.[xxxiii]
Traffickers have flown into Toronto and Vancouver and transported
women and children over land into the USA. Toronto is a popular
transit point with the Russians as there are over 150,000 Russians
living there.[xxxiv]
National
legislation pertaining to CSEC
While prostitution is legal for adults in Canada, selling sex
is illegal for minors under the age of 18. It is a criminal offense
for anyone to profit from prostitution of
another person under the age of 18 years. This includes aiding, abetting, counseling, or compelling
the person under age 18 to engage in prostitution with any person,
and using, threatening, or attempting to use violence, intimidation,
or coercion.
Provincial legislation designed to protect children from
sexual exploitation has made extensive headway. British Columbia’s
Child, Family and Community
Services Act contains a reference to sexual
exploitation as a basis for taking a child into care. It also
provides for the use of restraining orders against adults who are
believed to be exploiting the child, such as a pimp. In Alberta, the
Child Welfare Act defines a child in need of protection as one who
is sexually abused, and defines this abuse as including
prostitution-related activity. Section 1 (3)(c) states that a child
is sexually abused if the child is inappropriately exposed or
subjected to sexual contact, activity or behavior, including
prostitution related activities. Under the Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution
Act (1999), the Alberta Government has introduced programs
and services to help children end their involvement in prostitution,
either voluntarily or involuntarily. A child who wants to end his or
her involvement in prostitution may access community support
programs. A child who does not want to end his or her involvement in
prostitution can be apprehended by police. Police officers then take
the child to a protective safe house, where he or she can be
confined for up to 5 days (under amendments to the Act in March
2001, the length of confinement was increased from 72 hours to 5
days). In particular cases, a child may be confined for up to two
additional periods for a maximum of 21 days each. In a secured
facility, the child receives emergency care, treatment and an
assessment. Additionally, child welfare workers develop a long-term
plan for the child. This legislation also introduces legal penalties
for consumers of prostitution and pimps, who can be charged with
child sexual abuse and fined up to $25,000, jailed for up to 2
years, or both fined and imprisoned.
One legislative hindrance in protecting children has been the
differences in defining age of consent and age of maturity.
Currently, under the Criminal
Code, anyone who is 14 years of age or older can
consent to most forms of non-exploitative sexual conduct without
criminal consequences. However, many who work in this area,
particularly in British Columbia, feel that 14 years is too young
for a person to knowledgeably consent to sexual activity with an
adult.[xxxv] The
Criminal Code
delineates the circumstances under which a child may legally consent
to sexual activity and the defenses that apply to some of these
offenses, such as mistake of fact. For example, consent by
complainants under 14 years of age is not a defense to specified
sexual offenses, including sexual interference (Section 151),
invitation to sexual touching (Section 152), and sexual exploitation
(Section 153). The first two offenses, which apply to persons under
the age of 14, are punishable by no more than 10 years on indictment
or a maximum of 6 months on summary conviction. The offense of
sexual exploitation (Section 153) prohibits the same type of conduct
set out in Sections 151 and 152 in respect of persons from 14 to 17
years of age, where an accused is a person in a position of trust or
authority or where an accused is someone with whom such a
complainant is in a relationship of dependency. However, this
offence is punishable only by a maximum penalty of 5 years
imprisonment on indictment or 6 months on summary conviction. It has
been suggested that the penalty under Section 153 should be raised
to the same level as that available in the case of complainants
under 14 years of age (Sections 151 and 152), such as a maximum
penalty of 10 years imprisonment. It would seem that through
legislation, the worst cases involving complainants between 14 and
18 years of age would not be considered as serious as those
involving complainants under the age of 14.
Another form of CSEC, child pornography, is defined in the
Canadian Criminal Code as (a) a photographic, film, video or other
visual representation, whether or not it was made by electronic or
mechanical means, (i) that shows a person
who is or is depicted as being under the age of 18 years and is
engaged in or is depicted as engaged in explicit sexual activity, or
(ii) the dominant characteristic of which is the depiction, for a
sexual purpose, of a sexual organ or the anal region of a person
under the age of 18 years; or (b) any written material or visual
representation that advocates or counsels sexual activity with a
person under the age of eighteen years that would be an offence
under this Act. Individuals can be prosecuted for producing,
distributing or selling child pornography or for being
possession of child pornography. It is also a criminal offense to
send obscene materials through the mail or over the Internet if they
fall under the auspices of child pornography.
On March
15, 2001, Bill C-15, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to amend
other Acts, was introduced for first reading and debated at second
reading in May, 2001, in the House of Commons. The bill strengthens
the protection of children online by combating cyber crime,
creating a new offence that targets the luring and exploitation of
children for sexual purposes via the Internet; makes it a crime to
transmit, make available, export or access child pornography on the
Internet; allows judges to order the deletion of child pornography
on the Internet and to seize materials or equipment used; enables
judges to keep known sex offenders away from children through
prohibition orders and 1-year peace bonds for offenses relating to
child pornography on the Internet; and amends the sex tourism law
(former C-27) to make it easier to prosecute Canadians who sexually
assault children abroad.[xxxvi]
Law
enforcement
One of the problems in identifying the number of exploited
children involved in prostitution relates to the different ages that
are used to refer to them. The Badgley Committee defined “juvenile
prostitutes” as individuals under 20. The Fraser Commission
addressed those under 18, while still others describe children as
persons under 16, especially when viewing them in the context of
child welfare concerns. These distinctions may account for different
explanations of what is meant by “youth involved in prostitution”
and how much of it exists. The maximum age referred to in the
definition of “young person” included in the Young Offenders
Act is a person under 18 years of age. This is consistent
with Parliament’s view that prostitution of young persons under the
age of 18 represents sexual exploitation. According to Parliament,
these youth should be protected, as signified by the creation of the
offense contained in Section 212(4) of the Criminal Code (i.e.,
obtaining the sexual services from a person under 18 years of age).
There is further disagreement over definitions of whether a youth is
actually involved in prostitution. A Montreal study of street
prostitution reported that police defined “juvenile prostitute” more
narrowly than did social workers, who included youth involved in the
exchange of sex for consideration, including food and shelter.[xxxvii]
Some estimates of youth involvement are made by analyzing
arrest statistics for Section 212 of the Canadian Criminal
Code. Between 1986-1990, approximately 10-15% of prostitutes
arrested under the Communicating Provision of the Criminal Code were in the
young offender age category—the majority were 16 or 17.[xxxviii] There
were a handful of reports of 14- or 15-year olds. The number of
young persons charged continued to decline until 1995, when only 3%
of charges for prostitution offenses were youth from 12 to 17 years
of age. The small numbers of youth who are charged with
prostitution-related offenses most likely reflect police enforcement
patterns as opposed to the real number of youth involved in street
prostitution. Some police departments have asserted that youth
should be treated as victims rather than criminals and in such cases
should not be arrested unless there is no other vehicle for getting
them off the street and out of danger. Thus, unless charges are
brought under Subsection 212(4), youth involved in prostitution
are practically invisible.[xxxix]
A survey of youth in the Victoria, British Columbia, area who
self-identified as working in prostitution revealed an interesting
pattern illustrative of the law enforcement policy there. The
majority of the 75 youth interviewed had been picked up by the
police at some point in their lives (77%); however, of those who had
been picked up, most were either simply taken home (47%), lectured
about the dangers of the sex trade (43%) or taken to a shelter,
social worker or clinic.[xl] Fifteen
percent of the 75 youth in the sample had been arrested for
communicating for the purpose of prostitution; all of them were
under the age of 24. None of the youth who were under 18 when the
interview occurred reported that they had been arrested for this
offense.
I don’t want somebody coming up to me
saying ‘you’re wrong, you’re doing it because you’re stupid’. You
need somebody out there who actually has had experience, somebody to
tell you their story: ‘This is what I did to get out of it; this
worked for me, it might work for you, it might not and it if does
great, and if it doesn’t we’ll find some other way’.
–
Female youth, Vancouver, British Columbia[xli]
Prevention,
protection, and recovery programs
Education programs about the realities of exploitation could
prevent some youth from being lured into this situation as well as
decrease the tolerance for exploiters. In British Columbia, Alberta,
Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia, programs portraying the procurement
of youth for sexual purposes as child sexual abuse have been seen to
be relatively successful in changing public attitudes.[xlii]
One method of protecting exploited children and helping them
recover is the integration of enforcement efforts against exploiters
with social supports for children and youth. In 1996, the Provinces
of Ontario and British Columbia instituted a Provincial Prostitution
Unit (PPU) within their police forces that targets the sexual
exploitation of children.[xliii] British
Columbia’s Provincial Prostitution Unit assists police in
enforcement operations targeting exploiters of children and youth.
The Unit ensures that social supports are available: a social worker
accompanies the police and provides immediate support to the youth,
talks to him or her about options and where possible, ensures that
the child is referred to appropriate services. This immediate
support not only helps ensure that the youth will feel able to
testify in court, but may help him or her to get the supports needed
to leave the sex trade. The PPU has also developed training
strategies for police, Crown, and judges regarding both innovative
enforcement strategies as well as information on the dynamics of the
sex trade and the victimization of youth.
In Victoria, British Columbia, PEERS (Prostitute Empowerment,
Education, and Resource Society) provides peer outreach, support,
advocacy, and education for young people wishing to exit the sex
trade. The Society focuses on prevention, harm reduction, advocacy,
and public awareness. Established by ex-prostitutes and community
supporters, PEERS program objectives include conducting outreach
activities with sex trade workers and providing support where
appropriate to reduce harmful effects of the trade; increasing
public awareness and understanding of the impact of youth and adult
prostitution as part of their prevention strategy; acting as
advocates for current and exited sex workers in legal, housing, and
welfare rights to facilitate access to services and respect for
their rights; and providing information and training programs to
former and current sex trade workers to reduce harmful effects
and/or assist them in exiting the trade.[xliv]
Nova Scotia has developed a successful model for providing
witness protection programs for youth that have assisted many of
them to eventually leave the street. The Nova Scotia Task Force used
a number of intermediate strategies to address the needs of
potential witnesses, rather than enrolling them in a full
witness-protection program. These strategies include police
personally assisting witnesses to find supportive resources,
assisting them in finding and moving to a new apartment, and other
strategies that give the witness added security.[xlv]
Child
pornography
In Ontario, the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police Service
established a High Tech Crime Unit composed of four officers who
deal with child pornography and the enticement and seduction of
children on the Internet. The Unit created a Cyber Investigation
Course for use by Canadian cyber investigators in cooperation with
the National White Collar Crime Centre.[xlvi]
Role and
involvement of the private sector
Even with the advent of the Internet and
the ease of transfer of electronic images downloaded directly from
digital cameras, print photography still plays a major role in the
sexual exploitation of children. The private sector can be very
influential in providing information about incidents of child
pornography. Photo processing shops can help in reporting any
questionable images developed in the shops. A large photo-processing
company in Canada has a policy requiring police reporting where
employees find questionable material in clients’ films.[xlvii]
Status of Women Canada (SWC) partnered with Kids Friendly in
Vancouver to pilot Stolen Innocence: A National Education Campaign
Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, in
cooperation with the travel and tourism industries.[xlviii]
Mexico
A recent study found that over 16,000 children in Mexico are
being sexually exploited[xlix]. The
escalation in CSEC cases has been traced to several factors, the
most salient being (a) poverty, (b) exploitation by family
members/family friends, (c) participation in survival sex, (d)
recruitment by organized crime networks, and (e) trafficking of
children for sexual purposes from underdeveloped countries to
developed countries.[l] While the
correlation between poverty and CSEC is strong and poverty has been
found to explain involvement of substantial numbers of children in
sexually exploitative activities, poverty alone, cannot explain the
large number of children under 16 years of age who are recruited for
these activities.[li] Other
studies show a strong relationship between sexual victimization of
children and adolescent pregnancies, adult prostitution, substance
abuse, violence, and other types of adult criminal behavior. Further
factors that have been proposed to explain CSEC include: pedophilia,
accessibility, ineffectual legislative control, debt bondage,
sadomasochism, intergenerational prostitution, and sex tourism
profits.[lii]
The border towns of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana are both
transit zones and receiver zones. They serve as a way station for
persons who want to cross the frontier legally or illegally and a
receiver zone for individuals who are returned and who, in many
cases, remain in the area in order to make another crossing attempt.
In 1998, approximately 12,365 children were repatriated along the
Mexico/U.S. border. Of that number of children, 1,706 were
repatriated from El Paso to Ciudad Juarez. In 1999, the total number
of repatriated children decreased to 10,740 but the number of those
children repatriated from El Paso to Ciudad Juarez increased to
2,637.[liii] Other
factors come together in border towns to create a welcoming
environment for the local sex trade: (a) the flow of people with no
or few job skills who often arrive without family or resources but
with an urgent need for income, (b) the demand for these services by
local clients and persons who are in transit and have left their
families somewhere else, and (c) tourists who cross the border with
the specific purpose of sexual exploitation.[liv] The
infrastructure of these cities is insufficient to meet the needs of
these children, who often are abandoned and living on the
streets.
Sexually exploited children are at great risk for contracting
sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). In 1999, health officials in
Ciudad Juarez reported that there were 35 new cases of AIDS reported
among young people and minors that prostitute themselves.[lv] In that same
year in Guadalajara, within the group of boys and girls ages 5 to
14, there were a total of 419 cases of STDs which included 2 cases
of AIDS. Sexual exploitation of children occurs in places which
operate under different auspices than adult brothels, which makes it
very difficult for health control officials to track and treat
exploited children. For example, covert prostitution has been found
to take place in massage parlors, beauty parlors, and modeling and
escort agencies, but health officials do not have entrè into those
establishments because they are not registered as places where adult
prostitution occurs. Only children who work in places subject to
obligatory health control receive medical attention; the remainder
of boys and girls who are being sexually exploited receive none.[lvi]
Additionally, when children are rotated around the country by
organized criminal networks, any kind of continuity of care (which
includes treatment as well as immunizations against communicable
disease) becomes impossible, putting the children’s health in even
greater jeopardy.
I have a friend who has a daughter and
she’s only 13 years old. She’s still a baby; I’m still a baby. Every
time I see her, her baby is dirty and crying, looking like it hasn’t
been fed…it’s so scary to see it, it rips me up to see young girls
like that who are out there thinking that they have to do
this.
– Experiential
Youth[lvii]
Profiles of the
children
Boys and girls involved in commercial sexual exploitation
have been found to be as young as 8 years of age, although the
majority is between 12 and 17 years of age.[lviii] In Mexico
City, an NGO study found that 50% of the females involved in
prostitution in the area were minors, and the majority of that group
was 15-16 years old.[lix] The
background and current environment of children who are being
exploited contain several common factors that fall under the
categories of abuse history, familial circumstances, at-risk status,
and socioeconomic status.
A substantial amount of research in many countries has shown
a link between child exploitation and emotional, physical, and/or
sexual abuse by family members.[lx] In
particular, in Guadalajara, a religious organization that cares for
children who are exploited estimated that 70% of the children in
their care were victims of sexual abuse at home.[lxi] In these
cases the boys and girls show an important loss of self-esteem that
makes them susceptible to new outrages since their defenses are weak
and the support they might obtain from the family who has already
subjected them to violence is questionable.
Family abuse history as well as current status contributes to
children’s susceptibility to exploitation. The Observation Centre
for Young Offenders in Guadalajara found the most important factor
to the situation of child exploitation was parents’ or stepfathers’
alcoholism and subsequent violent behavior.[lxii] In many
cases, child prostitution has been found to be promoted by family
members. Familial abuse not only scars children, but also plays a
role in driving children from their homes, which in turn leads to
the children’s rootlessness. Disconnection from one’s familial
network, although perhaps beneficial in that the experience of
family abuse ends, increases the vulnerability of children who are
forced to make their own way. Child exploiters prey on such
children, portraying themselves as protectors and oftentimes
providing children with food and shelter. Particularly if they are
from rural areas, children often move to larger towns and cities.
There they can be forced into prostituting themselves in order to
survive, may get caught by procurers who “sell” them to brothels or
bar owners and entrench them in a world of debt bondage, or try to
crossing a border to find employment that provides a livable
wage.
The existence of drugs has become central to the exploitation
of children in Mexico. Children who may become addicted to drugs
before being exploited often find their way to prostitution to pay
for their addictions. In semi-organized/organized prostitution
settings, exploiters will use drugs purposefully as a tool to ensure
the continuation of their profits from child prostitution.
Exploiters will get children addicted to drugs, thereby ensuring the
children’s need to continue prostituting themselves in order to pay
for their addiction. Azaola (2001) found this occurring in Mexico’s
largest cities. In some cases, children are also used in drug
trafficking.
In Mexico, poverty can play an important role in leading
children into a situation where they are exploited. Rural and urban
poor families struggle with deteriorating living conditions.
However, many children recruited into prostitution also come from
middle-class backgrounds. In many cities throughout Mexico, groups
of girls from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are exploited by
organizations that arrange private parties or arrange for the
adolescents to offer their sexual services in hotels in the tourist
zones.[lxiii] In
Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta, for example, one company organizes
girls, most of whom are students from middle-income families, to
work in area hotels.[lxiv]
Profiles of the
exploiters
In Mexico several factors converge to create an appropriate
atmosphere for the facilitation of the exploitation of children.
Several transit zones in Mexico bring in temporary farm workers,
illegal immigrants, polleros (traffickers of illegal immigrants over
the border), truck drivers, traveling businessmen, military
personnel, and seamen. These groups are characterized as being
predominantly male populations who have no family nor are looking to
establish roots in the transitory communities. This lack of roots
unites them, and historical and contemporary evidence have shown
that this rootlessness is linked to prostitute use. The majority of
men belonging in these groups are situational abusers, whereas they
come to sexually exploit children through their prostitute use,
rather than using prostitution as a means of access to
children.
In addition to the groups that are most often situational
abusers mentioned above, pedophiles and preferential abusers come to
Mexico as tourists with the primary purpose of having sex with
children. The majority of sex tourism exploiters are male. Massage
parlors, escort and modeling agencies, in spite of not being
authorized to provide these sexual services, offer and promote sex
with children openly in the media. The following are some examples
from Acapulco: “School girls and ardent young boys. The best
services you can find. Just dare!” and “All you desire! Beautiful,
precocious young girls. Just what you deserve.” In Puerto Vallarta
and Guadalajara, researchers found evidence of organized sex tourism
with boys.[lxv] In the
border town of Tijuana, sex tourism is something that happens daily
as Americans cross the border with the purpose of having sex with
minors. These “sex tourists,” often relatively affluent compared
with the socioeconomic level of the children they are exploiting,
take advantage of the destitution of these abandoned and neglected
children.
While pedophiles, preferential abusers, and situational
abusers benefit from the sexual exploitation of children directly,
third-party exploiters benefit as well. Taxi drivers play an
important role as middlemen between tourists and the various options
offered by the sex trade in the area. They know girls who work in
the milieu and transport them and, even though they sometimes
consider themselves to be their protectors, can also be their
pimps.
Trafficking
Domestic and international trafficking and the sale of
children are widespread throughout Mexico, and is a lucrative
business. Research has uncovered the recruitment of children as sex
workers by organized crime networks. In one trafficking case,
Mexican traffickers made approximately $2.5 million over 2 years by
forcing Mexican women and girls into prostitution.[lxvi] Sale of
children for sexual purposes can take the form of girls who are
given in marriage to older adults who give economic benefits to the
family in exchange. In other cases, children are also sold by their
parents, bought by middlemen, and sold again to American families.[lxvii] This has
been reported in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana. Second only to Mexico
City, Guadalajara reports the greatest number of stolen children
each year. In that number is included cases of children who have
been in the custody of public and private institutions in the city
and the participation of officials in granting irregular
adoptions.[lxviii] Young
girls from Veracruz are trafficked across the northern border and
forced to have sex with migrant workers in the southeast United
States.[lxix]
In Tapachula, which borders Guatemala, children are
especially prone to abuse. Hundreds of children cross the border
each year from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.[lxx] Some
children, mostly girls, are “bought” by club owners from procurers
who find them in their villages within the state or across the
border and bring them along under duress or under false pretenses
with phony promises of work. The girls begin working in order to pay
the debt the owner paid for them, plus the amount the owner charges
for food and lodging. This system of perpetual debt forces them to
stay in servitude. Other children from El Salvador and Guatemala
reported that they had traveled with adults who had paid for
assistance with illegal migration into the USA and who had used
Mexico as a transit country.[lxxi] According
to the US State Department’s 2001 Trafficking in Persons Report,
children from Central America, China, and Eastern Europe have been
trafficked through Mexico to perform commercial sex work in the USA,
Canada, and Japan.[lxxii]
Additionally, illegal status compounds the children’s problems as
they are much less likely to prosecute their exploiters for the
abuse they have suffered as that could lead to
deportation.
National
legislation pertaining to CSEC
Mexico has various articles of legislation pertaining to
CSEC. The Federal Penal Code does not ban prostitution among persons
over 18 years of age, neither in the case of the person who
practices it or the one who requests it. They do, however, prohibit
exploitation with the objective of profiting from the sexual work
others do, regardless of whether they under or over 18 years of
age.
The Federal Penal Code declares that the procurement,
facilitation, and force of a child under 18 years of age to perform
acts of pornography, prostitution, consumption of narcotics, and/or
commit criminal deeds is a criminal offense punishable by a prison
term at least 5 years in length (Articles 201, 201 bis.). While few
states explicitly delineate child pornography as a crime, the crime
of “corruption of children” can be applied to sanction these
activities. Article 208 states that the person who promotes,
conceals, or permits the carnal intercourse of a child under the age
of 18 will be sentenced to 8 to 12 years in prison. However, each of
the 31 States has its own penal code. In the State of Quintana Roo
in which Cancun, a major tourist destination and site of CSEC, is
located, age of majority for criminal matters is 16 so it is
considered that after that age they are no longer
children.
Trafficking of children was recently characterized as a
crime, although it is not included in the legislation of all the
states and children 16 and older are not included in the
legislation’s protection. According to Article 366 (Trafficking in
children), a sentence of 25 to 50 years in prison will be applied
when liberty is taken away in order to take a child under 16 years
of age out of the national territory with the purpose of obtaining
an unlawful profit from the sale or delivery of the child. This
mismatch between the state and national age of majority leads to
reduced protection for children.
Recently incorporated into the Federal
Penal Code is a law to combat sex tourism. Article 201 bis 3 makes a
criminal offense any person who promotes, advertises, invites,
facilitates, or negotiates, by any means, the movement of a
person(s) inside or outside national territory with the purpose of
having sexual relations with children under 18 years of age. This is
punishable by a sentence of 5 to 14 years in prison.
Law
enforcement
During 1998, the authorities of the Attorney’s Office for
Justice in Guadalajara carried out 186 preliminary investigations
into the corruption of children and 133 in 1999 for different
motives not necessarily linked to sexual exploitation. From a total
of 319 investigations, only one person was remanded for the
corruption of children and two for inciting children to
prostitution.[lxxiii] This
demonstrates the difficulty of prosecuting exploiters, as very few
cases are prosecuted and even fewer end in the trial of the persons
responsible. In Cancun, local police reports demonstrate the lack of
proportion of prostitution cases in the different areas of the city
brought before judges during 1999. Out of a total of 638 cases, only
21 were from the tourist hotel area while 449 corresponded to poorer
areas of the city. This inequality illustrates a situation where
local law enforcement is more interested in controlling the sex
trade in poorer areas as opposed to intervening in the lucrative
hotel zone.[lxxiv]
There are two significant reasons why very few cases of
sexual exploitation of children are prosecuted. First, even in cases
where children press charges, often the children drop the charges
because the exploiters threaten them or their family or pretend that
they are the children’s godfathers or benefactors. Second, the
difficulty of prosecuting exploiters is compounded by the complicity
of some members of local law enforcement in the sexual exploitation
of children. In the border city of Tapachula, local children as well
as children from Central America work in the bars in the red light
district. While there is fear of raids by the police which could
lead to deportation for the undocumented children, Azaola (2001)
through interviews found that raids did not happen very often since
the bar owners buy police protection. Additionally, in some cases,
children working in the district, with or without documents, are
victims of extortion by the police. This was also found in Tijuana,
where children interviewed stated that not only were they victims of
extortion by police officers but some police officers were pimps as
well.[lxxv]
Very few cases are tried and aggressors rarely go to prison.
Even those cases in which children have been raped or suffer sexual
abuse, there is a quite generalized attitude on the part of the
families in the sense of not pressing charges to avoid scandal.[lxxvi]
Additionally, often charges are not pressed against exploiters
because families fear reprisals. Tightening Mexican laws will not be
enough if they are not exercised or their violation is tolerated in
practice. This situation allows exploiters to continue to act with
impunity.
Kids can’t get a job or into school or
collect welfare because they need ID and a place to live, they don’t
have ID because someone wants to find them that they are afraid of –
the public needs to be aware that some people can’t get a job, can’t
get welfare … prostitution is the only job you don’t have to apply
for.
– Male youth,
Toronto[lxxvii]
Prevention,
protection, and recovery programs
In the major Mexican cities where CSEC has been found to be
thriving, there appears to be a lack of programmatic and
institutional responses available to children who have been sexually
exploited. There are few government institutions that provide
shelter for children living in the streets. Most of the shelters
available do not have specific programs to provide specialized care
to the child victims of CSE. Furthermore, there are no adequate
programs for children with addiction problems. In Cancun, which
reports at least 700 boys and girls who are being exploited, there
are only two civil homes for children who have been abandoned or
maltreated and a government home, Casa Filtro, provided by the
municipal Sistema Nacional para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia
(DIF).[lxxviii] This
home receives about 400 children each year, from newborns to 16 year
olds. Although it has at times received girls and boys who work in
the sex trade, they recognize that these cases are beyond their
competence because they would require specialized attention that
they are not a position to provide. Neither are they in a position
to receive adolescents with severe addiction problems. DIF also runs
another home in Tapachula that serves a wide range of people from
small children to the elderly. However, the institution does not
have specific programs for child or adolescent victims of sexual
exploitation. In Guadalajara, there are about 30 homes for children
that have been abandoned or maltreated, most of which are private
institutions run by religious orders. Only one of them, which is run
by nuns, has specialized care programs for the girl and boy victims
of sexual exploitation.
There are several programs that are striving to make a
difference in the lives of exploited children. For example, the
Attorney’s Office for the Defense of the Child, the Woman and the
Family and the Attention Centre for Border Children in Ciudad Juarez
provide legal and psychological services for all child victims of
different types of abuse by request. The Office and the Centre have
collaborated in trying cases and in-following up of exploitation
before the corresponding authorities.[lxxix]
Another example of good practice is found in Mexico City. El
Caracol offers street children and youth an educational alternative
by providing productive workshops where young people can acquire
values, skills, and incomes. Participants include children and youth
aged 15 to 23 living on the streets of the city who have shown
potential for productive lives and successful reintegration into
society. El Caracol’s program focuses on prevention, healing, and
making connections with street children and youth. Program
objectives include providing training to children and youth living
on the streets, giving them the opportunity to develop and
reintegrate into society; supporting youth at risk before they end
up on the streets; and providing and training staff of other
institutions to assist them in working appropriately with homeless
children and youth.[lxxx]
Casa Alianza has a program designed to
meet the particular needs of children living on the streets. The
programs’ four components include: (a) Outreach: Outreach teams
provide children living on the streets with emergency medical care,
counseling, nonformal education, and friendship; (b) Crisis Centers:
As children are encouraged to leave the streets, Casa Alianza offers
a structured, supportive, secure environment providing food,
clothes, medical treatment, and educational and vocational training;
(c) Transition Homes: After the Crisis Centers, children are
transferred to Transition Homes run by staff trained to help
children develop long-term goals; and (d) Group Homes: The last
component of the program replicates a positive family environment
and provides nurturance by a team of counselors. Each group home
accommodates approximately 14 boys and girls.[lxxxi]
Child
pornography
The use of children in producing pornographic material is
widespread throughout Mexico. In most of the major tourist areas,
the victims are often, although not exclusively, children who live
on the streets.[lxxxii] Major
players are expatriates, particularly American and Canadian
nationals, who purposely visit tourist spots in order to exploit
children for pornographic purposes. In Acapulco, there have been
cases of expatriates who have lured children to their houses in the
area and have kept them there locked up for days or weeks while the
pornographic materials were produced.[lxxxiii] These
expatriates collaborate with local exploiters in organized networks
where they buy children from the poorest areas of the country and
then move them around from one place to another. Keeping the
children under the influence of illegal substances inhibits their
running away.
Often progress in combating CSEC is coupled with steps back.
In 1998, a group that was distributing videos and pornographic
images using children over the Internet was shut down.[lxxxiv] However,
in 1999 in Puerto Vallarta, several Mexicans and expatriates who
were involved in procuring children for pornographic purposes were
arrested, but they were allowed to go shortly afterwards.[lxxxv]
The situation is similar in Tijuana. Child pornography
happens frequently, in particular with children who prostitute
themselves and are further exploited by Americans who offer them an
additional payment to let themselves be photographed.[lxxxvi] Although
it is widely known that child pornography is something that happens
often, law enforcement officials emphasize the difficulties they
face in prosecuting these cases since they have not found a
technique for getting the children to agree to prosecute and
collaborate with the investigations. Police officials need to
respond appropriately to the reality that children who prosecute
exploiters are most often jeopardizing food, shelter, and other
subsistence needs.
Role and
involvement of the private sector
Of the three subsectors traditionally associated with CSEC,
travel and tourism, media, and new technologies industries, the most
central to Mexico’s CSEC problem appears to be travel and tourism. A
great deal of the CSEC activity occurs in the tourist areas of
Mexico; the Mexican travel and tourism industries are a logical
source of action. Internationally, 93% of CSEC activities take place
in hotels.[lxxxvii] This
finding is in step with research in Mexican tourist areas where
hotel managers and other employees turn blind eyes toward child
prostitution in their midst. In some cases, exploited children work
and live in hotels, such as those in Cancun’s tourist zone. An
analysis of local police reports in Cancun demonstrates that police
officers focus more on policing poorer areas than the hotel zone,
even though there is substantial visible activity in both areas.[lxxxviii] In
Guadalajara, researchers found that most of the girls, as young as 8
years of age and up to 17, prostituted themselves in the hotels in
the central zone of the city.[lxxxix]
The burgeoning maquiladora industry plays a key role in the
growing number of exploited children in Ciudad Juarez. More than 250
companies operate in the area, preferring to employ young women and
minors. Women and children perform tedious work for low wages.
However, for many who come to this area, the poverty that drove them
from their home villages or towns was worse. The growth of this
sector has attracted important contingents of young women and minors
from both the locality and rural areas of other states who move to
the town with the expectation of obtaining employment and settling
down there, or getting enough money to cross the border. Local firms
could make an important contribution by providing child care
services to employees. Unfortunately, hardly any firms offer these
services, which means that a substantial number of children are left
alone during the day. This is considered to be the origin of the
large number of children who from an early age spend a lot of time
on the streets, leave home, take drugs, and/or join gangs.[xc]
Media involvement is also crucial to making progress in the
elimination of CSEC. As mentioned above, advertisers in the print
media market sex with children overtly. However, there have been
instances of media cooperation. Until a recent crackdown by the
municipal authorities, Cancun was one of the major centers for child
sex tourists and pedophile groups, both foreign and local. Now there
are concrete symbols that tolerance of child sexual exploitation is
decreasing: around the city, billboards and taxis display signs
reading, “No sex with children”.[xci]
To galvanize support from the legal sector, Bruce Harris,
Latin American Regional Director for Casa Alianza, spoke to the
annual conference of the International Bar Association on November
1, 2001, in Cancun. Twenty-five hundred lawyers from 158 countries,
including 500 delegates from the USA, heard Harris’ presentation on
the international trafficking of Central America’s children. He
called for lawyers at the conference to contribute their efforts in
halting the trafficking of infants and children. Additionally,
attendees participated in more than 100 sessions covering a wide
range of business, human rights and professional issues, including
the focus on the trafficking of children.
United
States
The growing number of children involved in commercial sexual
exploitation in the USA has been termed a “silent emergency”.[xcii]
Conservative estimates vary from 100,000 to 300,000 children[xciii]; other
sources calculate that there could be 500,000.[xciv]
Profiles of the
children
There are numerous factors that converge to create a climate
where the sex trade can thrive. In the USA, poverty is a critical
contextual factor in CSEC. Poor children and adults driven by dire
circumstances become caught up in sexually exploitative
activities.[xcv]
Thirty-seven percent of children under 18 are categorized as poor in
the USA even though they make up only about 26% of the total
population.[xcvi] In
addition to poverty, research findings support the assertion that
children with histories of family dysfunction, familial or personal
drug addiction, and recurrent school and other social failures are
more vulnerable to CSEC.[xcvii]
For a substantial number of children, sexual exploitation
begins with sexual assaults by family members. Numerous studies have
shown a link between child exploitation and emotional, physical,
and/or sexual abuse by family members.[xcviii]
Researchers analyzing reports filed with the National Child Abuse
and Neglect Data System found that there are 105,000 new cases of
child sexual abuse confirmed to occur each year in the USA. Estes
and Weiner (2001) found that up to 40% of girls and up to 30% of
boys who are victims of sexual exploitation have been victims of
physical or sexual abuse at home. Estimates of the prevalence of
incest among prostitutes range from 65% to 90%. The Council for
Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, Oregon Annual Report in 1991
stated that: 85% of prostitute/clients reported history of sexual
abuse in childhood; 70% reported incest.[xcix] Although
child prostitutes are not always runaways, there is a close link
between the two. Runaway children often see prostitution as the only
option to make money while living on the streets. Since child
prostitution is so closely connected to the issue of runaway
children, preventative measures for both should be explored. The
probability that homeless children will engage in survival sex is increased for those who have been
victimized.[c] One youth
shelter in a large, urban northwestern city reported that 60% of
homeless girls they served had been sexually abused. |