Stop Child Sex Trafficking
CHILDREN FOR SALE -- Asian Childhoods Sacrificed to Prosperity's Lust
A13-year-old girl, all sparkling eyes and white teeth, her laughter washing over the grunts from a pornographic video playing a few feet away. Then the brothel owner strutted over.
The owner, a hearty, friendly woman in her late 20's who paid good money to buy the girl, named Sriy, cheerfully and explicitly recommended her anatomical features and said the $10 fee was not so great because "she only just lost her virginity."
In fact, that is a lie. Sriy was sold into prostitution two years ago.
As if to prove her point, the owner of the brothel, in this town 50 miles northwest of the capital, reached out and tugged down on the girl's dress to display her left breast. If Sriy survives to maturity. "You like?" the owner asked in broken English. "You take girl?"
Sriy endures these indignities, along with up to 10 customers a night, because she is considered the brothel owner's property. Sold by her stepfather to another brothel, which then sold her to this one, the girl must work until the debt is deemed to be repaid. Or until she gets AIDS.
If she tries to escape, she will be caught, severely beaten, perhaps starved, and locked inside her room, while still being forced to have sex with many customers a night. A neighboring brothel burned down in mid-March, and the bodies of two girls were found in the wreckage. They had been locked inside, forced to have sex with customers in their rooms, and never allowed out because they showed signs of wanting to escape.
Sriy is one of tens of thousands of children who are slaves working in the plantations of the 1990's: the brothels of Cambodia, India, China, Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan and other countries.
Americans and other Westerners helped build the child prostitution trade in Asia, and many of the brothel districts date from R&R breaks from the Vietnam War, or surround former American military bases. Now they sustain the trade with an appetite for what at home would be child molestation and rape. One result is a partnership between local people who run the brothels and Westerners like the one who posted an item on the Internet informing sex tourists that in Cambodia "a six-year-old is available for US$3."
Family Mother and Sister Pimp for Young Ones
In the seedy Maleta district of Manila, near the waterfront and virtually in the shadow of a large church, lives a family with four daughters ranging from 8 to 18. Until a few months ago, the mother and oldest daughter procured for the 8-year-old and a 12-year-old among foreigners, social workers say. When a customer was found, the oldest daughter would go to school to bring her sisters home early, telling the teachers that they had some family business.
The 8-year-old was raped by American, Australian and Japanese men. When the 12-year-old tried to resist, her sister held her arms and another pimp held her legs so the men could rape her more easily.
Three factors seem to be aggravating the problem: rising economic development, which initially seems to increase the appetite for children more quickly than it reduces the supply; the rise of capitalism, so markets emerge not just for rice and pork but also for virgin girls; and, perhaps most important, the fear of AIDS, driving customers to younger girls and boys who are regarded as more likely to be disease-free.
All three factors merge in the person of a shy 14-year-old Vietnamese girl, Miss Nguyen, who one day recently was sitting in a brothel here in Svay Pak, waiting to be sold for the very first time. Her brothel is one of dozens in Svay Pak, all nice two-story brick buildings that contrast with the rutted dirt streets and open sewers of the surrounding neighborhood.
Miss Nguyen was wearing a long purple dress, and the other girls in Svay Pak were also dressed lavishly and adorned with cosmetics and jewelry that looked out of place on their tiny figures. Miss Nguyen's story emerged slowly, because the brothel owners often beat girls for telling anyone about their backgrounds and because this brothel owner was paying particular attention to Miss Nguyen to make sure she does not escape.
The owner, a dour woman in her 30's, had bought Miss Nguyen three days earlier and was holding her off the market until she found a foreigner willing to pay $500 for her virginity. "It's not so expensive," the brothel owner said. "After all, she only loses her virginity once. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
Miss Nguyen was smuggled across the border from Vietnam where, as in Cambodia, the collapse of strict Communist ideology has been accompanied by the rise of a huge flesh trade. The buyer of Miss Nguyen's virginity will probably be a foreigner, the owner said, most likely a newly prosperous ethnic Chinese from Taiwan, China or Singapore. A Chinese superstition holds that sex with a virgin helps makes a man young again, or that it can cure venereal disease.
A13-year-old girl, all sparkling eyes and white teeth, her laughter washing over the grunts from a pornographic video playing a few feet away. Then the brothel owner strutted over.
The owner, a hearty, friendly woman in her late 20's who paid good money to buy the girl, named Sriy, cheerfully and explicitly recommended her anatomical features and said the $10 fee was not so great because "she only just lost her virginity."
In fact, that is a lie. Sriy was sold into prostitution two years ago.
As if to prove her point, the owner of the brothel, in this town 50 miles northwest of the capital, reached out and tugged down on the girl's dress to display her left breast. If Sriy survives to maturity. "You like?" the owner asked in broken English. "You take girl?"
Sriy endures these indignities, along with up to 10 customers a night, because she is considered the brothel owner's property. Sold by her stepfather to another brothel, which then sold her to this one, the girl must work until the debt is deemed to be repaid. Or until she gets AIDS.
If she tries to escape, she will be caught, severely beaten, perhaps starved, and locked inside her room, while still being forced to have sex with many customers a night. A neighboring brothel burned down in mid-March, and the bodies of two girls were found in the wreckage. They had been locked inside, forced to have sex with customers in their rooms, and never allowed out because they showed signs of wanting to escape.
Sriy is one of tens of thousands of children who are slaves working in the plantations of the 1990's: the brothels of Cambodia, India, China, Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan and other countries.
Americans and other Westerners helped build the child prostitution trade in Asia, and many of the brothel districts date from R&R breaks from the Vietnam War, or surround former American military bases. Now they sustain the trade with an appetite for what at home would be child molestation and rape. One result is a partnership between local people who run the brothels and Westerners like the one who posted an item on the Internet informing sex tourists that in Cambodia "a six-year-old is available for US$3."
Family Mother and Sister Pimp for Young Ones
In the seedy Maleta district of Manila, near the waterfront and virtually in the shadow of a large church, lives a family with four daughters ranging from 8 to 18. Until a few months ago, the mother and oldest daughter procured for the 8-year-old and a 12-year-old among foreigners, social workers say. When a customer was found, the oldest daughter would go to school to bring her sisters home early, telling the teachers that they had some family business.
The 8-year-old was raped by American, Australian and Japanese men. When the 12-year-old tried to resist, her sister held her arms and another pimp held her legs so the men could rape her more easily.
Three factors seem to be aggravating the problem: rising economic development, which initially seems to increase the appetite for children more quickly than it reduces the supply; the rise of capitalism, so markets emerge not just for rice and pork but also for virgin girls; and, perhaps most important, the fear of AIDS, driving customers to younger girls and boys who are regarded as more likely to be disease-free.
All three factors merge in the person of a shy 14-year-old Vietnamese girl, Miss Nguyen, who one day recently was sitting in a brothel here in Svay Pak, waiting to be sold for the very first time. Her brothel is one of dozens in Svay Pak, all nice two-story brick buildings that contrast with the rutted dirt streets and open sewers of the surrounding neighborhood.
Miss Nguyen was wearing a long purple dress, and the other girls in Svay Pak were also dressed lavishly and adorned with cosmetics and jewelry that looked out of place on their tiny figures. Miss Nguyen's story emerged slowly, because the brothel owners often beat girls for telling anyone about their backgrounds and because this brothel owner was paying particular attention to Miss Nguyen to make sure she does not escape.
The owner, a dour woman in her 30's, had bought Miss Nguyen three days earlier and was holding her off the market until she found a foreigner willing to pay $500 for her virginity. "It's not so expensive," the brothel owner said. "After all, she only loses her virginity once. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
Miss Nguyen was smuggled across the border from Vietnam where, as in Cambodia, the collapse of strict Communist ideology has been accompanied by the rise of a huge flesh trade. The buyer of Miss Nguyen's virginity will probably be a foreigner, the owner said, most likely a newly prosperous ethnic Chinese from Taiwan, China or Singapore. A Chinese superstition holds that sex with a virgin helps makes a man young again, or that it can cure venereal disease.