'Is it possible to be born again?': A child prostitute

By Lela E. Madjiah

Sexual exploitation of children, both commercial and otherwise, has been going on since the dawn of time. In recent years, however, there has been growing concern about the commercial aspect of the abuse. It is estimated that around a million children enter the sex industry worldwide every year.

Thanks to the efforts of End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT), Unicef, and the NGO Group on the Rights of the Child, the issue has received more serious attention from concerned governments, NGOs and individuals. The campaigns against commercial sexual exploitation of children culminated in Stockholm from Aug. 27 to 31 at the first "World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children".

The Jakarta Post's reporter Lela E. Madjiah attended the congress, at which the story of Rosario Baluyot, a street child from the Philippines, was brought to the world's attention again. She also had the chance to visit Radda Barnen's Boys' Clinic in Stockholm which provides treatment for boys who have been sexually abused. The following are her report from the congress and an account of her visit to the clinic.

JAKARTA (JP): ...Something white exploded before her eyes.

A torch. He was pulling a torch through her body.

She gurgled, opened her hands and clenched them again.

The Unusual One did not let go of the light blue thing. He continued to push it in and out; it ruptured large and small blood vessels, exposed a thousand nerves and finally ripped a muscle. He forced it a centimeter deeper, in against a glistening membrane deep inside her...

She did not make a sound. Her body was broken and burnt, but the question which occupied every one of her cells caused her even more pain.

Why, why?

Why did this stranger hate Rosario Baluyot?

Rosario died on May 20, 1987, after seven months of unbearable pain and 18 hours after a belated operation to remove a broken vibrator from her womb. She was 11 years and five months old.

The Unusual One, a newly qualified physician from Austria named Heinrich Ritter, was sentenced to life imprisonment in April 1988 although he continued to deny the charges against him.

Rosario's painful story, written by Majgull Axelsson, shocked the world when it became public in 1990, not only because of the grief it evoked in those who read it, but also because it accused the whole world of ignoring the spreading problem of sexual exploitation of children.

Rosario is Dead, a documentary novel, was originally published in Stockholm under the title Rosario ar dod. Part of the book, whose Swedish edition includes two further stories of Filipino children who have fallen victim to the child sex trade, was translated into English for the first World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Stockholm from Aug. 27 to 31.

Similar stories emerged during the congress, forcing everyone to ask: What have we adults done to cause such suffering to our children? What kind of a world have we created for them?

There is no simple answer to this question.

According to a Unicef report, an estimated one million children enter the multi-billion dollar sex market each year. Many are coerced, kidnapped, sold, or deceived into enforced sexual encounters.

Some may be pushed into prostitution by circumstances, as a way of surviving on the streets, helping to support their families, or pay for clothes. Others are seduced by the bombardment of consumer images in the adverts.

The low status of girls and women in many countries and the related sexual abuse of children in families are critical precipitating factors. Girls and women are especially vulnerable to family abuse and violence, including incest and neglect, and are often viewed as commodities to be bought and sold.

Nora, Rosario's street buddy, described home as hell.

"... He (her father) beat me up and fucked me so that I couldn't move for a week. And then he sent me out to get money," she told social worker Salvador Caluyo.

Many such stories are found in Latin America.

"Many of the girls who end up as child prostitutes have chosen a sexually exploitative life on the streets rather than suffer continued violence and incest in their own homes," says Dorian Beyer, former director of Defense for Children International, USA.

Damaging

The circumstances may vary, but commercial sexual exploitation -- the selling of children for sex -- is always illegal, and always damaging to the child.

Its dangers are multiple. The children's sense of dignity, identity and self-esteem is undermined and their capacity to trust dulled. Their physical and emotional health is put at risk, their rights violated and their futures jeopardized. Painful injuries, disfigurement, disease and social ostracism often await those forced or lured into sexual contact with adults.

Children are robbed of their natural sexual development. Violence, mistrust, shame and rejection become the norm, and the children may become dependent on their exploiters for emotional stability and support.

It is hard to imagine the extent of the emotional, physical and psychological damages an abused street child suffer, until one talks to such a child in person and hears it from her or him directly.

"Is it possible to be born again?" asked an 11-year-old child prostitute in Recife, a city in the north-east of Brazil.

Her question was born of anguish. Traumatized by being raped by her step-father and a policeman and by a life of prostitution, she was contemplating suicide, writes Brazilian foreign correspondent Gilberto Dimenstein in his report Silent Scars: the law of social cowardice, published in this month's issue of Crosslines.

"The secret life of the child prostitute is written on her body. One can read it by following the line of her scars, tracing a history of violence. Collecting their stories over the past six years, traveling through favelas (slums), prisons, hospitals, brothels, and the far corners of cites, I learned that these lines reveal a perverse law: the law of cowardice. The more vulnerable one is, the less attention and, therefore, protection one receives," writes Dimenstein.

In Brazil, people have been told that wealth will solve their social problems. Yet, when Dimenstein arrived in Washington D.C., he learned that the U.S. capital has a higher level of violence than Rio de Janeiro, whose income per capita is 20 times lower.

In New York, a high number of drug-addicted children turns to prostitution to support the habit. Figures released by NGOs indicate that there are 30,000 young prostitutes across the U.S., a situation far worse than in many developing countries.

"The U.S. public reaction to violence, drugs and prostitution is exclusion. Social cowardice is also the law in the U.S. We see politicians present the unmarried mother as a terrible public enemy," Dimenstein further reports.

That is also how many governments treat their street children and child prostitutes.

Imelda Marcos was very angry when, in spring 1987, she learned about a French report concerning child prostitution in Manila. She sent for a boy prostitute from Ermita and scolded him for bringing his country into disrepute.

"It is easy to imagine the small barefooted child, frightened and astounded as he walked through the majesty of the newly renovated Malacanang Palace and into the president's pastel colored salon. There she sat like a 20th century Marie Antoinette drumming her fingernails on the table. And then the scolding...," writes Majgull Axelsson in Rosario is Dead.

There are two common government attitudes represented at the Stockholm congress, one is pretending they don't have the problem, the other is blaming the children for causing it.

"It's an eye-opener," confessed one of the six officials from Indonesia to the congress, when asked for their opinion on the problem. She seemed to forget that at that time the Indonesian media were focusing their attention on pedophilia and child prostitution following the arrest of a pedophile who admitted to killing 10 of his victims. Or maybe she never read the paper or watched the news on television.

Worse, all overt pedophiles seem to view themselves as the children's only friends, their benefactors.

"The real problem for children who agree to have sex in order to be cuddled is not sexual. Their problem is getting the affection they so desperately need and which, characteristically, has been denied them by their parents. For these children, the paedophile represents a solution, not a problem. In the eyes of these children, the paedophiles succeed where their parents have failed," writes Paedophile Information Exchange leader Tom O'Carroll, in his book Paedophilia -- a radical case.

Voodoo logic

Increasingly, children are sought out by sexual exploiters in the mistaken belief that they are less likely to be HIV-positive or even that sex with a child can cure the infection. In reality, children are most vulnerable to HIV infection, being physically unready for sex and with little power to refuse unsafe sex or multiple clients.

Although the prostitution of children occurs in nearly all societies, and is tacitly accepted (even at times protected by layers of complicity), it remains an illegal and covert activity, making comprehensive and reliable data difficult to obtain.

Poverty and economic injustice are common factors, and children from poor communities, where economic prospects or opportunities are bleak or non-existent, are obviously most at risk. But poverty is a contributing factor, not the cause. Most poor people do not sell their children. Poverty, combined with a closing of options and a devalued image of the child as chattel that can be sold in the marketplace can increase the likelihood of sexual exploitation. And the marketplace is ready: with clients, traders, distribution routes, outlets and all the trappings of an organized industry.

Although it may be easy to place the blame on criminal syndicates, to reduce exploiters to pimps and perverts, to disparage the children themselves as promiscuous or sexually irresponsible, no social sector can escape responsibility for the sexual exploitation of children.

Ignorance plays a role, and consumerism is a major factor. The push to own, buy, rent -- fueled by advertising, magazines and the entertainment media -- encourages those who do not value their children and respect their rights to simply trade them for something they want more.

That is what happened to "Lin Lin", as reported by Asia Watch and quoted by Dr. William F. Vendley in his paper Values and the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children presented at the congress.

Lin Lin was 13 years old when she was recruited by an agent in Thailand. Her father took US$480 from the agent on the understanding that his daughter would pay the loan back out of her earnings.

The agent took her to Bangkok, and three days later she was taken to the Ran Dee Prom brothel. Lin Lin did not know what was going on until a man came into her room and forced her to have sex.

Lin Lin's clients paid the owner $4 each. If she refused a client's demands, she was slapped and threatened by the owner. On Jan 18, 1993 the Thai police raided the brothel, and Lin Lin was taken to a shelter. She was 15 years old, had spent over two years of her life in compulsory prostitution, and tested positive for HIV.

"Every child is entitled to full protection from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. This is reaffirmed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international legal instrument of universal significance," reads the Declaration and Agenda for Action of the first World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children.

It is a promising pledge. It also says that "States are required to protect the child from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse and promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of the child victim."

The problem is complex, and many of the existing laws in member states are flawed, but there is hope that many of the world's children will be saved from a doomed life. The Stockholm congress was a start. For the first time the world saw governments and NGOs work together hand in hand to face this challenge, although not without disagreements.

But that's not so important. The most important thing is to prevent more Rosarios from being plunged into the darkest recess of life, where nothing can rescue them but death itself.