The sexual enslavement of children is part of the general exploitation of children in impoverished parts of the world. Indeed, sex slaves are captured in much the same way as Haitian cane cutters, India's carpet weavers, and Persian Gulf camel jockeys. They are lured with false promises of decent employment, caught in debt bondage, kidnapped, or simply sold outright by parents, friends, or people they know. Debt bondage in particular continues to enslave millions today in Asia. They are trapped by an obligation that may be passed from generation to generation; indeed, because of incredibly low wages, high interest charges, and cheating, it may never be repaid. Armies of debt-bonded slaves -- including little children -- work in rock quarries, as housemaids, building roads, weaving carpets, or as forced prostitutes. With no social safety net, a bad harvest or serious illness might mean starvation; bondage is better than death. Who are the tragic victims in the pornography business? It is women and young girls and boys. Why do they go for this type of work? We may find if we study the facts that it is mainly for economic reasons that women go into this work. The need to survive is an overwhelming, dominating need in all women. However, in hundreds of thousands of cases, there are young 8, 10 and 12 year old innocent girls and boys who are simply kidnapped, and if given a choice would rather die than go through the horrible process of starting life in a brothel. One cannot even begin to imagine their trauma and sufferings. In third world countries like India, Nepal, Thailand and Latin America we have rampant prostitution. Where do all those prostitutes come from? Very few of them voluntarily become prostitutes. The vast majority are kidnapped as young kids from their villages. Their parents let them go because the ‘buyer’ of the girl pays money to the parents. So great is the poverty in some areas of the world that parents will sell their little girls for a small price as that money will provide food for the rest of the family members for a few more weeks. Often the little girls and boys and even the parents think that their daughters and sons are going to a fine place and will lead a fine life. But, the girls and boys are taken to filthy brothels in Bombay or Bangkok where they are brutalized and violated in the worst possible ways, to prepare them for their new life and job as prostitute. They become slaves. Normally, they never escape from this new life. If they go to the police, usually in those countries the police will rape them and send them back to the brothel. So why are we telling this? Because somebody owns the brothel. That owner is a capitalist. It is all about private ownership and making huge money, huge profit. This is what drives some human beings to treat other human beings as worse than animals. There are well known people who are aware of the effects brought about by child prostitution. On the other hand a newspaper in Brazil published an article which leaves a lot to be said: “Countries where child prostitution is frequently practiced and tolerated and accepted, in fact it is promoted because of the money it generates, troubling and devastating results from this problem are greatly perceived.” According to the book Rape for Profit, published by Human Rights Watch / Asia in 1995, more than a million women and children (girls as young as 7 and 8 years old) are kept in Indian brothels. Many of them are from Nepal and Bangla Desh. In Latin American countries, a civic organization informed that there are five hundred thousand girl prostitutes. While in a neighboring country there are three hundred thousand children prostitutes on the streets, especially in neighborhoods where there is drug traffic. Taking into account the high incidence of sexually transmitted disease, including HIV (human immunodeficiency virus or better known as AIDS) and HPV (human papiloma virus), clients are willing and spare no expense to have sexual contact with children, since they assume they have a better chance of being virgins and there by not be infected. These women and girls are not prostitutes in the traditional sense of being free to come and go, free to quit if they like. They are slaves. Many come without realizing at all what will happen to them. They are sold by their parents to intermediaries who bring them to the brothels. Once there, it is a living nightmare. They are gang-raped, beaten, starved, tortured in unspeakable ways until finally they ‘adjust’ and become compliant and obedient, which means they begin servicing more than 25 customers (men) per day. It is explained to the girls that they are not to go out. That they are in eternal debt to their bosses. It is always an amount that they can never repay. It is rare that a girl can miraculously escape the brothel and search for the police to help her. The police sometimes help her to return back to her home. Other times the police themselves begin raping her and/or return her to her brothel madam. This is happening not only in India. It is a world-wide phenomenon. With the collapse of the eastern European countries and consequent impoverization and imminent starvation, many young girls succumb to promises of a beautiful carefree life and money in foreign lands. There are girls from China, Thailand, South Korea, Albania, Romania, Russia, Latin America, Brasil and Mexico all working as sex slaves in America and Europe. Foreign sex tourists, who for years have preyed on youngsters all over the world, are believed to be active everywhere in the world with the burgeoning success of child pornography on the Internet because of lax laws, cheap and abundant child prostitutes and a reportedly lower incidence of AIDS. Statistically it's an underestimation to say that there are millions of children being abused in the illegal sex business of minors. Sex tourists are generally men from Europe, North America, Japan, England, Latin America, Australia, and all over the world. But most offenders escape prosecution. Bail is easy to obtain in many cases, and bribe-taking among police officers is common. According to 1994 ECPAT statistics, the numbers of children in the sex industry are: 500,000 in Brazil, 400,000 in India, 200-85-,000 in Thailand, 100,000 in Taiwan, 200,000 in Nepal. UNICEF estimates there are 100-300,000 children involved in U.S. Lets stop child sex slavery! And end child exploitation!
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