asia9

Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - Thousands of Australians are involved in the
commercial child sex industry, according to a comprehensive new survey, published as
delegates prepare Monday for an international congress in Japan on the sexual
exploitation of children.
The report's release also coincides with a controversial new advertising campaign in
Australia aimed at heightening awareness about child sex, a drive some campaigners fear
may do more harm than good.
Published by the local charity Childwise, the report comes after a 10-year study, and says
there is an alarming rise in the number of Australian men traveling abroad to have sex with
children. Child pornography - particularly on the Internet - child prostitution and trafficking
are also growing problems, it says
Many Australian serial abusers are going abroad, particularly to Asian destinations, for
child sex tours, according to Bernadette McMenamin, Childwise director and the report's
author
Most children involved in the commercial sex trade are aged 12-15, although many are
under 10, she said.
The problem is not just found abroad, McMenamin said. In Australia, girls as young as 12
and 13 have been found selling sex on city streets.

Childwise is calling on the Australian government to re-establish a police unit which was set
up to tackle child sex crimes, but shut down by the government last year.

The Australian Federal Police say the investigations are continuing, but are being carried
out by other police units.

Before it was shut down the unit, codenamed Operation Morocco, tracked down some 250
Australian pedophiles operating in 22 countries, many of them in Asia.

Meanwhile a series of adverts are running on Australian public broadcaster television this
week to highlight the issue of child sex exploitation.

In one, a man in a hotel room wearing only a towel is depicted speaking to his wife and
daughter on the phone, before hanging up and turning to a slight, Asian girl sitting at the
foot of the bed.

Another points to the dangers of Internet chatrooms, showing a teenage boy being fooled
into thinking he's communicating with a girl when it's actually an older man he's chatting to.

Childwise is concerned about the commercials, which were designed by Saatchi & Saatchi
in New York for the international aid organization, World Vision.

McMenamin said that in the group's experience, people tend to be put off by the sort of
approach taken by the ads.

But World Vision defended the campaign, with Australia chief executive Lyn Arnold saying
the organization was not apologizing for its confrontational nature.

"This is not artificial, this is not fiction," he said. "This is real life. The alternative is to say
nothing, and where does saying nothing get these children?"

Both Arnold and McMenamin are attending the second world congress against the
commercial sexual exploitation of children, beginning in Yokohama, Japan on Monday.

Representatives of at least 119 governments, 21 U.N. agencies and more than one
hundred non-governmental organizations will participate in the event, which is a follow-up
to a 1996 conference in Stockholm, where delegates agreed to create national plans of
action and to build databases of offenders and children at risk..

The congress organizers, the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), said last week about
one million children worldwide were being sold into the child sex trade each year.

In the Philippines, an especially grave case, there are around 100,000 child prostitutes,
five times more than there were 15 years ago.

Unicef called for a global approach of zero tolerance, and tough criminal penalties for
convicted abusers.

Japan, the host country, has more than its fair share of problems relating to child sex.
Although it has changed its once liberal laws to ban child pornography, Japan is still
believed to be the world's largest distributor of the material.