Child Prostitution

The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children

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Anecdotes

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A 15-Year-Old's Story of Prostitution

Tambudzai, age 15, grew up on a farm in Mazowe, northeast of Harare. Her mother died in a bus accident when she was barely six. Her father was a farm laborer, and after the farm was sold to new owners they were forced to leave. Her father died a few months later after succumbing to a bout of malaria.

Following his death, poverty was unavoidable. Tambudzai was expelled from school for non-payment of fees, and none of her father's relatives offered to help. Her dream of becoming a nurse had been shattered. Left to fend for herself, she was lured into the venality of city life and found herself in Harare.  There she met other girls of her age who were already into prostitution, and she gave in to irresistible temptation.

Child Abuse Cape Town South Africa

ABDUCTION 1996: AUGUST CAPE TOWN CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT - Alicia, fourteen years old, on Thursday afternoon 8 August 1996: “I was walking with Arlene and Shelley on the Parade, after school. Four men we didn't know approached us.  They appeared, as if from nowhere and grabbed all three of us …”

Media Sensationalism A ‘Disservice’ To Youth Sex Workers

When they found her in February 2001, she was cold, beaten and pumped full of stimulants.  She was an out-of-towner—originally from Oregon—and had worked the streets for four days, earning nearly $1000 before Vancouver Police apprehended her.  But as much as she fit in working on Vancouver’s downtown eastside, she was different.  At 11, she was the youngest street prostitute police had ever encountered.

Tulasa and the Horrors of Child Prostitution

Eleven years ago, in 1982, at the age of 13, Tulasa Thapa was rescued from the brothels of Bombay, her tiny body broken into little pieces by three venereal diseases and tuberculosis. After treatment she was sent back home to Nepal. Today, her crushed body is wheelchair bound and she spends her last years with only nightmares of a life of abuse and exploitation for company.

Philippines-Children: Scourge Of Child Prostitution

Sharon, a 13 years-old schoolgirl was forever cutting classes at her village school and, fearful of her parents wrath, took a bus from her village and headed for the big city - Manila.  She wound up in Luneta Park, where a kindly stranger befriended her - and then her real troubles began.

Forced Child Prostitution in Brazil

Twelve girls--among them, Ana Meire Lima da Silva, age 15, and Miriam Ferreira dos Santos, 14--make up part of the cargo. They were persuaded to go with promises of work in a restaurant or luncheonette.

Child Prostitution in India

13-year-old Mira of Nepal was offered a job as a domestic worker in Bombay, India. She arrived at a brothel on Bombay's Falkland Road, where tens of thousands of young women are displayed in row after row of zoo-like animal cages. Her father had been duped into giving her to a trafficker.

Meena was married off at 12. Soon after she was taken to Delhi by her husband, where she found out that he was a pimp. In the last three years, she has serviced up to six clients a night.

Maya, 10, was taken to Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh by her aunt who was paid Rs 3000. When she refused to have sex with a client, she was locked in a room for two days, scared with snakes and beaten unconscious.

A New Life for a Child Victim of Prostitution - Tanzania

Only 13 at that time, she decided to drop out of school and leave home, like many of her friends before her, to escape difficult living conditions. It happened one day when she was going to school and met a boy from a nearby village who persuaded her to escort him to the town where he lived. The boy would bring home two or three of his friends and force Wanyenda to sleep with all of them for cash payment. She was tortured, sexually abused and sometimes beaten by the boy if she refused to provide the services. Whenever the boy was away, she received customers on her own in order to earn some money for food. Life became unbearable. After 18 months she decided to leave. Not knowing where to go, she began wandering the streets. There she met other girls her age who took her to a brothel.

Real Lives - Fighting Sexual Exploitation And Trafficking In Indonesia

Yani was 15 when her boyfriend lured her away from home with false promises of a lucrative job and a chance to continue her education.  "My pimp stopped giving me money and just supplied me with drugs," says Dewi. "I got worse and worse. I lived from hotel room to hotel room, and worked wherever a client wanted me, here in Surakarta, Yogyakarta or Jakarta."  Intimidated, ashamed and deeply disturbed, Yani and Dewi became two of the million of young girls and boys that go into the multi-billion-dollar sex trade across the globe.

Flesh trade of Sumatra

BOX: 'AUNT MERRY IS A DEVIL'  My name is Dewi. I am now 16, but this happened to me when I was 15. I am the oldest in my family, and have three brothers, all still at primary school. I only finished grade five and do not go to school anymore, because I was lazy and wanted money.

Out Of The Shadows: Child Prostitutes Speak Out

She turned her first trick when she was 13 and worked in a brothel with other girls as young as 11.  They sold their bodies in the back of a knick-knack shop in Vancouver's Gastown tourist district.  Lewis felt she was making big bucks when she finished a night's work with $30 in her pocket.

Child Prostitution in Victorian Singapore

TESTIMONY OF JANET LIM – CIRCA 1920 - Janet Lim, was not sold as a prostitute, but in the early part of the Twentieth Century she was sold a seven year bonded servant, or mui tsai.  She later became an educated writer (Lim, 1958).  If not herself a prostitute, she did witness the trade and gave the following testimony.

Maeley and Evetta1

When Maeley was 15 she was manipulated into going to the city to work in a brothel for her destitute family.  When Evetta was 14, she was forced to work as a housemaid to provide food and necessities for her family. Approximately a year later she was led to work in a brothel where she met Maeley.

Rescuing Prostituted Children- A Personal Account by Fr. Shay Cullen

Within minutes, a neatly dressed woman approached and offered us two 11 year-old children for sex. She named her price, one hundred dollars for each child, plus an additional payment for the brothel operator called the mamasan where the children were being kept.

Testimonies

No study or statistics can capture the horror of trafficking and modern-day slavery like the words of its survivors. HumanTrafficking.com has brought together one of the largest collections of testimonies of survivors to help the world hear their voices.

Sex Workers in the City of Joy

ONE WOMAN’S STORY - At 14, Pandey was married off to a man 20 years her senior who had designs on inheriting her ailing father’s government job and a cut of his pension. When another sister’s husband got the position instead, the abuse began.

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