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| Child Prostitution A few years ago, I came across a book titled “Batman: The ultimate Evil” while I was working for the Memphis/Shelby County Library. Knowing that I had about an hour long commute home, I located an audio book version to listen to. The story was terrible enough, Batman had discovered a ring of people who provided child prostitutes to tourists of Asian countries and was determined to break up the ring. Of course we all know that Batman is a fictional piece of the imaginations of the people at DC Comics. However, at the end of the audio book, there was an all too real report on child prostitution written by David Hechler. In his report, Hechler states that 60,000 children in the Philippines, 200,000 in Thailand, one million worldwide were being prostituted as of 1995. These are children drugged, chained and enslaved against their will to be prostitutes to drug lords and pedophiles. Hechler also stated that as of 1993, Child prostitution was bringing in $1.5 Billion every year. To research the statistics of this crime is nearly impossible for me. I attempted to look for more recent stats than those provided by Hechler in his article and in a matter of seconds, I calculated over 73,000 children. Most of who where taken from their countries and across borders so their families could not find them. Here are some statistics I came across: Between 1999 and 2002 over 36,336 reports of child porn, child prostitution and child molestation were reported to the NCMEC website alone. 1998 Afghanistan reports indicate children as young as 8 years old were being prostituted to support Taliban activities. February 2001 US Dept of State report indicates 4,000 children in Greece work as prostitutes. February 2000 US Dept of State report says that prior to 1999, of the 2,500 child street prostitutes in Italy, an estimated 2,000 of those were abducted from Albania and Nigeria. A CATW fact book challenges the numbers and says that more than 8,000 Albanian girls work as prostitutes in Italy. In 1998, Ashgate Publishing released a report stating that 5,000 children are sold for sex on the streets of the Angolan capital Luanda. ECPAT says that another 3000 prostitute themselves for survival. The Ashgate report also says Argentina has a well-documented child sex trade related with the thriving sex-tourism sector. The CATW fact book says Argentina is one of the favoured destinations of pedophile sex tourists from Europe and the United States. ECPAT says that as of the year 2000 There were 3,000 children, some younger than 10, in the Australian sex industry. The International Save the Children Alliance says that as of 1999, 3,733 children under the age of 18 are were in commercial sexual activities from the states of Victoria, New South Wales and south Australia. 59 of 2,992 Australian prostitutes studied for a report conducted by ECPAT were between 10 and 12 years old. 15 were under 10 years old. I came across dozens of these statistics. This means that in spite of the efforts of groups such as ECPAT (End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism) and Child Alliance, Pedophiles are winning the war on child prostitution. I can not, with any more of my heart beg everyone and anyone to report any suspicious activity online or offline that may seem related to pedophiles or child prostitution. Write your representatives in congress and tell them to support legeslation forbidding the import of products from countries and banning US funding for countries who do not pass laws to eliminate child prostitution. If we do not take a stand to end the sale of the worlds children to grown adults for sexual gratification, then who will? And if we can not tell the children that help is on the way, then who can? ~Shadow Villanueva~
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