February 2004
Lost Innocence:
Children and adolescents suffer commercial sex exploitation
Karla's story begins here, with childhood sexual abuse, and continues through years of commercial sex exploitation. She was only five years old when she was first abused; now she is 16 and has spent her life on the streets of Tegucigalpa.
Still, Karla is a special case because she escaped that life, something few young girls are able to do. She is now with the Cherub Home, a program of Covenant House.
In Honduras, the commercial sexual exploitation of minors is a serious problem. These children are forgotten and stigmatized, and the country does not have a law to seriously punish this kind of crime. However, now the Inter-American Commission for Women, together with other organizations, is preparing a project to reform the Honduran Penal Code.
Only one word
Only one word can describe the situations that exploited girls and boys suffer: horrifying.
The International Program for the Erradication of Childhood Labor (IPEC) of the International Office of Labor (OIT) and the Honduran Center for Women's Studies presented a study last year entitled, "Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Boys, Girls and Adolescents in Honduras." Considered a modern form of slavery, commercial sex exploitation is one of the worst forms of child labor, according to criteria established by Agreement 182 of the International Office of Labor. It is also the third most profitable activity in the world, after drug and arms sales.
It is only recently that any numbers have been available for the children in this condition in the country. According to a recent Covenant House investigation, there are 10,000 children being commercially exploited for sex in the country.
The investigation was able to establish that dozens of locations where at least 1,019 minors were involved in commercial sex expoitation, including bars, nightclubs, dance clubs, private homes, restaurants, massage parlours, beauty salons and even the capital city's crematorium.
In places like Seventh Avenue in Comayagüela in the capital city, sexual exploitation is crude. There, girls and women who are hungry, dirty and high wait for "dates" with their clients. It is an underworld of small hotels and businesses where girls as young as seven years of age are pushed into the abysmal business of sexual exploitation.
Nearby, a small hotel
called "Los Chorritos" also operates a store selling hats and
clothes. In reality it is an old site for prostitution where the biggest
business are the roomes rented by clients of the women and teenagers,
who also sell various products in their spare time.
"This form of sexual slavery depends on numerous mechanisms of reproduction
and sustenance. Within every market in Tegucigalpa and Comayagüela
there are rooms to rent that are used by clients purchasing sex,"
says the IPEC/OIT study.
The study found that the children spend long shifts on the streets, day and night for an average of four days a week. They have at a minimum three daily contacts with clients and are exposed to all the dangers of being raped, empregnated or infected with AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases. Some report being physically abused-beaten, shot, kidnapped or gang raped-and others tell of receiving death threats, of being forced to perform acts they regarded as obscene or shameful and of being forced to ingest alcohol or drugs.
The trauma and terror suffered by children on the streets is summed up perfectly in the words of 16-year-old Elena: "I am afraid for my life," she told IPEC/OIT investigators. She had good reason to be. She died in 2002, finally succombing to the violence of the commercial sex trade.
These children are absolutely unprotectd. The study found that 81 percent of those interviewed do not use birth control. Six of the girls interviewed reported having been pregnant, and they said a constant concer was trying to know exactly who the fathers of their children are.
The route to sexual exploitation
Extreme poverty, family disintegration, abandonment, physical and sexual abuse and early pregnancies are common factors among children suffering sexual exploitation in Honduras. In fact, the route to sexual exploitation begins at home. Many of these children are victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse; they have been abandoned, left with few economic or emotional resources. In their places at the bottom of society, they are exposed to every kind of risk-threats and abuse from family and people they know-that drives them to the streets where they find friends and even relatives who steer them towards sexual exploitation.
Once on the street, children use drugs to fight hunger pangs and go without sleep, to resist contact with clients and to distance themselves from fear and pain.
The crises of families in extreme poverty and the lack of social safety net policies mean that many boys and girls in the most populous cities are pushed onto the streets. In Honduras there is a high rate of child labor; statistics estimate that about half a million boys and girls work. This is happening in a country where the majority of the population is young. Fourty-two percent of child workers are under 15 years of age and 48 percent of these are girls.
At the same time, Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Latin America. Seven in 10 Honduran families live below the poverty line and have of those homes are in extreme poverty.
IPEC/OIT establishes that commercial sexual exploitation of boys and girls is linked to organized crime, which is increasingly maintaining sites for illegal prostitution, drug trafficking, trafficking of people and pornography. In Honduras, these activities are part of an international business funded through the illegal trafficking of minors to countries like Guatemala, the United States, the Carribbean, Canada, Japan and Europe.
"This is a very lucrative, global activity that operates in secret and illegally," says the study. "It is sometimes operated by large business corporations connected to industries like tourism who make profits similar to arms dealing."
Commercial sex on the internet
This problem is only worsening in the age of technology and globalization. Organized crime operates through the internet and clients navigate "cyberspace," easily avoiding detection or prosecution. The internet has been a revolutionary tool in the last years, and one of its great attractions is its openness. Anyone, without restriction, can use it positively or negatively.
Investigations have found that the most visited web sites are related to sex or are pornagraphic. One survey of cyber cafés in San Pedro Sula, the second largest city in Honduras, found that seven out of ten pages opened offered sex or pornography.
Another aspect of the problem is sex tourism, although most sexual exploitation is committed by Hondurans. Exploitation by foreignors is more harmful because they take the children on beautiful vacations and give them gifts and the girls imagine that these men will treat them honorably, says María Esther Artiles of Save the Children UK.
Covenant House reported that foreigners were offering children and adolescents on the internet to foreign tourists. Subsequent investigation uncovered two site for this activity, one in San Pedro Sula and another in Trujillo, and the foreigners were prosecuted, explains Covenant House lawyer Gustavo Zelaya.
Mike Wyatt and Randy Jeorgensen were charged with offering sex tourism and pornography on the internet that abused Honduran minors under the guise of running a photography studio in Trujjillo. However, they escaped from prison.
Reports that at least four internet sites were using Honduran women and girls were entered with the Attorney General. One of the problems, though, is that the police do not have the technology or preparation to investigate these kinds of crimes.
"We have been
investigating pornography on the internet, and in the majority of cases
adults are taking advantage of naïve children," explains lawyer
Gerardo Sánchez of the Special Investigation Services.
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