Статья: Детская проституция

focus in the new agendas was on the depraved 'foreigner' who preyed on the

innocence of children in developing countries.; As one media commentator

summarized, "The child prostitute has become a potent symbol of touristic

excess: the ultimate commodification of humanity in its most vulnerable and

innocent form" (Black, 1995: 13)

Local demand

As campaigns to prevent child prostitution and exploitation matured, several

agencies, including ECPAT began to recognize that not all problems could be

attributed to debauched outside influences. In Olongapo City in the

Philippines much of the market for very young prostitutes had been connected

to US servicemen, but further research concluded that 50% of customers of the

estimated 1000 child prostitutes were locals. Research into the Thai sex

industry estimated that Western tourists mainly patronized women above age 18

and that 90% of the demand for 'underage girls' came from locals. NGOs began

to develop more sophisticated analyses of what had previous been considered a

pedophile problem. The lives of street children emerged as a theme especially

in Latin American countries such as Brazil where estimates climbed into

100,000s for the number of children living on the streets or insecure homes.

Local demand for young sexual partners of either gender was viewed as the

problem for these youngsters rather than necessarily the demands of foreign

tourists. Other forms of societal violence and the actions of corrupt

officials, the military and the police were also listed as problems by NGOs

and journalists. The abduction and murder of street kids in Guatemala,

Colombia and Brazil were cited in the media as key examples of what was to

become an international scandal. One study into the lives of 143 street

children in Guatemala City carried out by Casa Alianza found that commercial

sex was a reality for almost all of these young people as a form of survival

(Harris 1996). The consequences of life on the street and sexual activity

with numerous partners were severe-100 percent of the children reported being

sexual abused and 93 percent had previously contracted sexually transmitted

diseases including genital herpes, gonorrhea, and scabies. All of the

children reported drug use featuring the sniffing of glue and solvents as the

drug of choice.

Trafficking in children

Most recently I believe that the hot topic for NGO intervention, media focus

and international action lias shifted away from the actions of pedophiles and

child prostitution per se to the notion of'trafficking in children'. This

trend is best represented by the 1997 name change of ECPAT from End Child

Prostitution in Asian Tourism to End Child Prostitution,

Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes,

Trafficking in persons is an ill-defined concept at best but may be

considered the brokered movement of persons across state lines or borders

(refer to GAATW definition). However, most of the documents and studies that

consider the problem of'sexual trafficking in children' define this very

broadly to encompass the transportation of children from one place to

another. This means that very diverse examples are bundled together under one

label obscuring fundamentally different legal concerns. Instances where young

Brazilian women are taken to remote villages in the Amazonian mining

districts to 'work' in canteens and bars and provide sexual services for

local laborers raise different legal, health and human rights concerns than

the cases of young Burmese women and girls who are sold by their parents to

work in Thai brothels (see Beyer, 1996 and Human Rights Watch, 1993 for case

examples)

Recently attention has focused on the fate of young women from Nepal who are

tricked into travelling to Indian with the promise of'legitimate' employment.

ECPAT has estimated that 200,000 Nepalese women under 16 years of age are to

be found in Indian brothels and of these approximately 40,000 are hired

against their will. ECPAT contends that entire villages are involved in the

trade. Young women are abducted or persuaded to go with brokers by their

parents, husbands, relatives and friends. A broker makes approximately $800US

when he sells the women to a brothel, an amount that is more than three times

the average yearly income in Nepal. The young women work until the brothel

owners have recouped the outlay wages and it may takes three years to pay

back the debt. If the brothel owner provides food, health case or clothing

they expect remuneration. According to a 1995 Asia Watch Report about half of

Bombay's 100,000 girl prostitutes are Nepalese girls who are routinely raped,

beaten, exposed to HIV/ATDS and kept in brothels against their will as

virtual 'sex slaves'. ECPAT also contends that the demand for virgin girls is

increasing and the age of girls being trafficked to India is decreasing. The

average age in the last decade is said to have fallen from 14-16 years to the

present 10-14 years.

Looking at the problem from different perspectives

I have used this brief history of recent ways of speaking about and

contextualizing child prostitution and sexual trafficking in children as a

way of introducing the debates and some regional concerns including the

concept of trafficking. However, some of the reports I have quoted and the

figures I have presented are for me problematic and may obscure more than

they reveal. Terms such as 'sexual slavery' and 'child prostitution' may

initially appear to describe the lives of some of the young women and men I

have mentioned) but a closer examination reveals that many of the subjects in

the reports do not consider themselves child prostitutes. Several times when

researching for this seminar I read that "It is estimated that 1 million

children are sold into prostitution around the world' but at no point was I

ever fully informed how this figure was calculated.

In order to elucidate my point I would like to share with my own research

experience in Australia and to draw on some other examples from research in

Peru and Thailand. Before I proceed let me assure you it is not my intention

to somehow dismiss abuses to which children and young people are subjected.

It is my intention, however, to promote accuracy in reporting and research

and to encourage everyone when writing articles about 'child sex' to question

right from the start, how is it that we know what we supposedly know to be a

fact. I have photocopied some publications and made a short bibliography for

follow up about some of the issues I will discuss here.

a. Child prostitution?

In 1995 and 19961 oversaw a research project in Adelaide, South Australia. At

that time I was directing a division at the AIDS Council of South Australia

which included a sex worker health and rights program. Our research project

focused on young homeless people in South Australia with an aim to finding out

about the kinds of sexual health risks they faced and how we might improve our

HIV prevention work with this group. Many other youth health agencies in South

Australia were very concerned that young homeless people were being abused by

pedophiles, selling sex to survive on the streets and, as the local

newspaper put it that there was a 'child prostitution ring' operating in inner

city Adelaide.

We decided to put aside rumor and anecdotal information and investigate the

nature and extent of the problem. Rea Tschirren, a project officer at the

AIDS Council, interviewed 106 young homeless people using a survey which

guaranteed their confidentiality and provided them with a way of indicating

whether or not they had had sex for favors which included accommodation,

food, clothing, safety, drugs or transport. We deliberately did not refer to

this as 'prostitution' in our survey because we felt that this would be

prejudging the data. We wanted to let the young people describe themselves

and to reveal what their needs were rather than imposing our own values and

judgements about their behavior. Our research revealed that one third of the

young people interviewed had engaged in sex for favors and another 10 percent

said that they would consider doing so in the future. The young people who

had engaged in sex for favors exhibited some specific health problems

relating to drugs and alcohol and depression. Attempts at suicide were common

for all the young people interviewed, but young people who had engaged in sex

for favors were twice as likely to have attempted suicide than those who had

not engage in this behavior.

An important elements that emerged from our research was that young people

who engaged in sex for favors rarely defined themselves as 'prostitutes' or

linked their activities to work in the sex industry per se. The term

prostitution, for all but one person interviewed, was not a way a describing

their reality. Rea and I published about this in the National AIDS Bulletin

in Australia where we subtitled our article "Prostitution is something other

kids do." Heather Montgomery in her case study of a small village next to a

tourist resort in Thailand had a similar research experience (see Montgomery,

1998). She discovered that the children and young people who engaged in what

could be termed 'prostitution' with tourists as a way of supporting their

families, considered it a deep insult to be called a 'child prostitute.' They

would refer to their activities in other ways including 'going out for fan

with foreigners', 'catching a foreigner' or even 'having guests.'

If young people are uncomfortable with the term 'child prostitution' and are

therefore likely to avoid speaking to service providers if this term is used,

then its usefulness in NGO program work should be questioned. Clearly many of

the young people interviewed in our study required assistance from service

providers, especially in relation to attempts at self-harm and suicide, It

was not conducive to our work to use terms which further alienated young

people and made them reluctant to seek help. Our term 'sex for favors' has

been accepted by service providers in South Australia as a neutral and non-

judgmental way of speaking about the sensitive issues associated with young

people having sex with adults for some kind of gain. ECPAT Australia has also

recently acknowledged the term 'sex for favors' as a way of describing the

experiences of some young people (ECPAT 1997),

Sexual exploration and sexual identity

The second point that emerged from our research in Adelaide was that the

exchanges of sex for favors may sometimes associated with young people's

search for sexual identity. In a few instances indications were that some

young men exchanged sex for favors with other men not only as a survival

tactic but also as a way of exploring bisexuality and homosexuality. Carlos

Caceres research in Lima, Peru explores the nuances of young men's sexual

negotiations with older men in greater detail. Some young men who identify as

'fletes' (young men in this study who were 16 to 19 years old and who went to

areas that we might call 'beats' to have sex with other men for money or some

other kind of remuneration) strongly identify as heterosexual and deny that

they are sexually interested in their clients or homosexuality. Other young

men in this study acknowledged that they might be bisexual or even part of

the gay community in Peru (Caceres ana Jimenez, forthcoming}. In both of

these instances in Australia and in Peru to employ the term 'child

prostitute' or to deny that some element of exploration exists in some

instances would misrepresent the experiences of these young people. At times

it is necessary to look past the framework of prostitution or pedophilia and

focus on the words and experiences of children and young people without

making immediate value judgements,

c. Age matters

The final point, which may be relevant from our research experience in

Adelaide, is that age matters. It is crucial to specify the age groups with

which one is working or to which one refers in research and the media, We

interviewed young people aged 12 to 23 years old and it was clear that the

experience of life on the street was significantly different for very young

interviewees. For example, some very young people interviewed had not had sex

yet but knew about opportunities to exchange sex for favors and considered it

something that they might do in the future. Clearly the health and education

needs of these young people differ from older teenagers who are already

involved in sex for favors. Initially this subtlety was one of the most

difficult to convey to the media when I spoke to journalists about our

research and findings. The desire to provide simple summaries for maximum

'reader impact' is strong, but it is essential to be clear about the ages of

the 'children' involved in studies or who are served by NGO programs.

Our research findings have been confirmed by other studies. The International

Labor Organization (ILO) has been at the forefront of research into child and

youth involvement in sex work. The 1996 report "In the Twilight Zone"

concluded from four country studies that most "child prostitutes" are in fact

better described as youth or young people. The report which focuses on child

and youth workers in the hotel, tourism and catering industries in the

Philippines, Sri Lanka, Kenya and Mexico found no individual who sold sex on

a regular basis was younger than 15 nor had any interviewee begun this work

younger than 14 years old. Once again I hasten to add that this does not mean

that abuse of very young or prepubescent children never occurs. All too sadly

it does. However, I am in agreement with the ILO that cases which involve

very young children or clearly involve physical and sexual abuse are more

accurately described as "commercialized child sexual abuse" rather than

prostitution, sex work or 'sex for favors'. In summary, I suggest that

reporting about the lives of children, and young people use terms which

accurately and sensitively describe their lives or even reflect what they

might say about themselves,

4. Concluding comments

The issues surrounding the commercialization of child sexual abuse, sex for

favors, young people who work in the sex industry and the forced trafficking

in children and youth across state and national lines present us with a

plethora of health and legal concerns. We may wish to discuss strategies

which can help all these categories of children and youth including the

different needs of boys and girls, homeless youth as opposed to young people

who still live at home, and very young children as opposed to young реэр1е

over 15 or 16 years. One successful strategy in my experience has been

bringing together youth workers and agencies with diverse perspectives.

Bibliography

"A Modern Form of Slaverу: Trafficking of Burmese Women and Girls into Brothels

m Thailand." Asia Watch, HRW, 1993.

Beyer, D, 1996, "Child prostitution in Latin America." In Forced Labor: The

Prostitution of Children, Papers from a symposium co-sponsored by US

Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Affairs, the Women's Bureau, and the US

Dept of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Sept 29, 1995, DC.

Black, M, 1995, In the Twilight Zone: Child Workers in the Hotel, Tourism

and Catering Industry, Geneva, ILO

Caceres, C. and Jiminez, 0., "The Flete experience in Parque Kennedy: Sexual

cultures among young men who sell sex to other men in Lima," (chapter to be

published in Aggleton, P, Men Who Sell Sex - International Perspectives on

Male Prostitution and AIDS. London: UCL Press).

ECPAT-Australia, 1997, Youth For Sale, ECPAT-Ausiralia.

Harris, B, "All they have left to sell is themselves: Sexual Exploitation of

Children Increasing Worldwide," 20 August 1996 (Internet news article).

Interpol, 1996, "The International Law Enforcement Response Against Child Sexual

Exploitation." In Forced Labor: The Prostitution of Children, Papers

from a symposium co-sponsored by US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor

Affairs, the Women's Bureau, and the US Depi of State, Bureau of Democracy,

Human Rights and Labor, September 29, 1995, DC.

Montgomery, H, 1988, "Children, prostitution and identity: A case study from a

tourist resort in Thailand." In Global Sex Workers edited by K.

Kempadoo and J. Doczema, Routledge, New York: 139-150.

Resources, documents and follow-up information

Aggleton, P.J. Men Who Sell Sex - International Perspectives on Male

Prostitution and AIDS. London: UCL Press. (Simultaneously Philadelphia:

Temple University Press).

"A Modem Form of Slavery: Trafficking of Burmese Women and Girls into Brothels

in Thailand," Asia Watch, HRW. 1993.

Black, M, In the Twighlight Zone: Child Workers in the Hotel, Tourism and

Catering Industries, Geneva, ILO. 1996.

Conceptual Clarity on Trafficking. Proceedings of the workshop organised by the