Penelope Saunders
Presentation at a Journalists' Seminar,
New York City, Thursday, October 29, 1998
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Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 00:23:23 -0500
From: penelope.saunders@usa.net
I am forwarding you my notes from the journalist seminar in NYC. Many of
you helped me collect information and some of you asked for my notes.
If you recall the topic was 'child prostitution/trafficking.' I did my
best to present a balanced view about young people who are involved in
the sex industry and to explain the current ways of speaking about
'trafficking in children.' In my paper I raised three points regarding
self-definition, sexual exploration and age in relation to a labor
framework. I only had 15 minutes so I could not cover much ground. One
good outcome was that I made friends with many of the journalists and
may have future email contact with them.
Any feedback welcome. This is not intended to be a polished article,
just my notes. The second half consists of some resources I distributed
to the audience.
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Sexual Trafficking and Forced Prostitution of Children
1. Introduction.
Let me begin by clarifying that today I have been asked to speak about
sexual trafficking and forced prostitution in children and youth rather
than to consider the concerns of adults who work, either voluntarily or
involuntarily, in the sex industry. However, I do currently participate
in a NGO networking group that focuses on 'trafficking in persons' and I
am therefore in touch with many organizations working in this area. I am
also aware of many of the controversies surrounding migration for the
purpose of working in the sex industry. If anyone would like to ask
about adults who work in the sex industry then I would be happy to
answer questions now or later during discussion.
Recently when I was telling a friend in the NGO sector that I was going
to give a seminar on 'child prostitution' she commented, "Policy related
to Child Prostitution. That's such a no-brainer." I suppose that she
meant that children's presence in sex-related work of any kind is
abhorent and that our efforts should focus on saving children involved in prostitution. Of course in many respects I agree with the sentiments
she expressed. The sexual abuse, including the commercialization, of
children is abhorrent and nobody, an adult, a young person or a child,
should be forced to work in prostitution against his or her will.
However, my own experiences working with young people in Australia and
in Latin America and my research to prepare for this presentation, have
convinced me that understanding 'child prostitution' is not a
'no-brainer.' Far from it.
In fact the complex issues which are packed into that one short phrase
could probably keep us all here for the rest of the week if we wished to
examine them in detail. What I will try to achieve here by way of
introduction to the topic is to clarify some key concepts and raise some
discussion points, a strategy which may help everyone, especially those
of us who are journalists, to form our own questions and approaches to
the issue.
2. Development of the Agenda-NGO and Media
a. Sex tourism and 'foreign pedophiles'
General consensus on what constitutes the problem for children and youth
has been evolving over the last 20 years. The recent international
concern with child prostitution emerged in the 1980s as a direct result
of campaigns by activist NGOs. One of the first organizations was Terre
De Hommes an NGO which in 1981 drew attention to first world 'pedophile
tourism' to Sri Lanka. In the same period the Preda Human Development
Center highlighted similar stories of large numbers of child prostitutes
in Olongapo City in the Philippines. In 1989 Norwegian Save the Children
published a comprehensive report entitled, The Sexual Exploitation of
Children in Developing Countries. In 1990 ECPAT, End Child Prostitution
in Asian Tourism, was established Thailand. (Refer to website for more
information about activities of ECPAT, publications etc.)
The initial impetus for this organization was concern about 'sex
tourism' which catered to the tastes of 'pedophiles' from countries in
Europe, North America and Australasia. In the words of INTERPOL the
problem of sex tourism is "the growing numbers of pedophiles, pretending
to be tourists, who travel from western countries to developing
countries whose aim is to engage in illicit sexual activity with easily
available and cheap, young, prostituted children" (INTERPOL, 1996: 87).
Specialty sex tours for men to the Philippines and Sri Lanka gained
special notoriety in the media and the bar, massage parlor and
night-club life of Bangkok as well as the presence of young girls in the
sex industry in Thailand were described by documentary makers and the
press. The initial 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)
b.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.
c.Trafficking in children
Most recently I believe that the hot topic for NGO intervention, media
focus and international action has 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 traveling 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/AIDS 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.
3. 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 1996 I 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
fun 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).
b.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 and 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 people 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 Slavery: Trafficking of Burmese Women and Girls into
Brothels in 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.
