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Real Lives

Nigeria: Using voodoo to frighten trafficked children
To protect individuals, names have been changed in this case study.
Joy is 21 years old and living near Benin City, in Southern Nigeria. Benin City lies within
Edo State and has emerged as one of the most prolific trafficking hotspots in the country.

Sexual Violence in the DRC
“My name is Safi*. I come from Uvira, South Kivu Province, DRC, near the Burundi border. I
am 17 years old.”
“It was April 2002 when they came to our house. It was about 6 p.m. They knocked on the
door of our home and we opened it up because we thought it must be the neighbors
stopping by to say hello. But it wasn’t the neighbors. It was six armed men. They pushed
their way into our home with their guns.

The story of Tuk and Tik In early 2000 Tuk and Tik were trafficked to the south of Thailand
to work.
Although Tuk was bright and doing well at school, she left at the end of the 4th year when
she was nine years old to bring in extra income for the family. She worked as a flower seller,

Alezeta: Last to bed and first to rise
Early every morning at about 5:30 a.m., 13-year old Alezeta wakes up in the darkness of
her small, mud-brick home in a poor, outlying 'quartier' of Ouagadougou, Burkina-Faso and
begins her long, lonely and tiring day.
It starts by collecting firewood piled up on one side of the house, then building a fire to heat
water.

Cifuentes Gets 50 Years To Life For Molestations
INDIO, Calif. -- A Palm Springs man was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison for
molesting two neighbor girls, including an 11-year-old convinced by a phony doctor letter
that sex would be healthy for her.

Child prostitution, especially in the Third World, is an emotive issue.
But is the information we get being distorted or exaggerated?
Maggie Black looks behind the sensationalism.
Ofelia is a tall, pretty 15-year-old waitress in a club in Metro Manila. (All accounts of child
prostitution begin with a gut-wrenching personal story, so here it is.) She and a friend ran
away to Manila from her village in southern Luzon because home life was miserable and
her father said he could not afford to keep her in school.
The two girls soon ran out of money and began to look for a job. They spotted a notice,
‘Waitresses Wanted’, and 10 minutes in the manager’s office was all it took. They reported
the following evening at 6pm, worked until 4am and were given lodgings nearby. For the
first few days Ofelia’s job was to take orders and serve drinks. Then the manager told her
to sit with customers and entertain them. Her pay was based on the number of beers or
‘ladies’ drinks’ she consumed. She soon found she was getting drunk every night.

She is thirteen years-old. Her name is Rina. She has a pair of worn-out flip-flops on her
feet. On her head she wears a large straw hat with the traditional Khmer headscarf. Under
a leaden sky, she sorts through rubbish in a huge, stinking tip on the outskirts of Phnom
Penh. In a haze of acrid smoke, a swarm of flies buzzes noisily over the garbage. Around
this teenage girl, a group of other children, some no more than five years old, is also
sorting through the piles of plastic, glass, lead and bones. They strip out anything that can
be recovered and sold to the scrap dealers operating nearby. Rina’s income from her day’s
work will be no more than thirty pence, but this will be enough for her and her sick mother
to live on.
This kind of work, which is traditional in many third world countries (for instance India and
the Philippines), is relatively new to Cambodia. The massive growth of its capital accounts
for the huge size of this tip, and the extreme poverty of its new "citizens" accounts for the
presence of these hundreds of children.

TRIAL OPENS FOR TRIO ACCUSED OF FORCING 11-YEAR-OLD INTO SEX TRADE
Lindsay Kines
On the police videotape, the 11-year-old Portland girl tells a dramatic story.
She claims that in February of this year, she drove to Vancouver with two men, a woman
and a child. She says she was put out to work as a prostitute almost immediately, working
for 12-hour stretches with breaks of only 60 or 90 minutes, when she was expected to
service her alleged pimp.
She claims to have stayed at a series of hotels, slept only four hours in four days, while
being force-fed pills to keep her awake, and to have made up to $800 before she was
picked up by Vancouver police, who arrested the two men and the woman.










A videotaped statement by an 11-year-old American girl played in court yesterday
described how she was drugged and forced to work on Vancouver's notorious kiddie
hooker stroll.
In the tape, played at the provincial court trial of three Americans, the girl from Portland,
Ore., said she was made to work as a prostitute up to 12 hours a day.
She told the police she crossed the border with two men, a woman and the woman's 2-year-
old son last February under the guise of attending a wedding in Richmond, a Vancouver
suburb.
However, she said she had been told previously by the three adults that there was easy
money to be made in prostitution in Vancouver
She agreed to go along because she was a runaway and had already worked the streets,
she stated to police.
Jabari McCrory, 26, David Martin Walker, 25, and Mistenda Mae Carter, 24, all of Portland,
are charged with abduction of a minor under the age of 14, living off the avails of
prostitution, sexual interference and assault.

THEIR NAMES are Chandrika, Hamida, Amod, Madhuri, Maria or Jenny. And as varied as
these children's names are their nationalities: Indian, Bangladeshi, Nepalese, Nicaraguan
or North American. What unites them is that they have been made to work as prostitutes
and, in the process, have endangered their lives and well-being and seriously
compromised their future. It is estimated that 4 million women and girls worldwide are
bought and sold each year -- either into marriage, prostitution or slavery. Approximately 1
million children enter the sex trade every year. (Although most are girls; boys are also
involved.)
As many as 50,000 women and children from Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe are
brought to the United States and forced to work as prostitutes or servants. In the United
States during the past two years, the government has prosecuted cases involving fewer
than 300 victims. In other countries where this problem is frequent, the prosecution rate is
even lower.

ASHA'S STORY

She should have been playing with dolls. Instead, the bright-eyed little girl was sold by her
father and became a "doll" in a Mumbai brothel. Asha was only nine when her father sold
her to a procurer. She came from a very poor family. Seven children had been born to
Asha's parents. They certainly could not afford a girl.
The bright-eyed little girl had no idea what was going on or how her life was about to
change forever. She only knew that the lady named Kala had told her she was going on a
trip to a very special place, that she would have new clothes, and that she would be
working for a nice family who lived in a big house. The lady asked Asha if she was willing to
work hard. Asha nodded. "Will you do anything that is asked of you?" Asha said she would
try. Asha wanted her family to be proud of her. The adventure began at the bus station in
Katmandu. Asha had never ridden a bus before. Asha wondered how many other girls
would be fortunate enough to go to a big city like Mumbai. Perhaps this was what her father
meant when he talked about good karma. She couldn't wait to say her pujas (daily
prayers), as her father and mother had taught her to give thanks for such good fortune.
Asha looked excitedly out the window as the Nepali hills rolled by. The bus trip lasted much
longer than she expected - 14 hours just to get to the border town of Nepalgunj. Once
there, they walked across the border where they boarded another bus for the trip to Delhi.
Asha asked Kala if they were almost there. Kala told her that Mumbai was very far away
and they wouldn't be there for several days. After what seemed like forever, Asha asked
again. Kala glowered at the little girl. Asha decided that perhaps she should not ask such
questions. The stifling heat and the exhaust fumes made Asha sick to her stomach. She
wondered if Mumbai would be like this. All that day the bus bumped and swayed over the
dusty roads of North India. Asha began to realize that wherever Mumbai was, it was a long
way from home. She wondered if her parents would come to see her.













Tina, a teenager from a rural Indonesian village, incurred hundreds of dollars in debt for
four months of domestic service training and board over four months at an Indonesian
migrant labor center. From there Tina, like many other Indonesian girls, was transported to
Malaysia, believing she would work as a maid for a Malaysian couple. Forced to work up to
15 hours a day in a family business where she slept on the floor, Tina was told her salary
would be withheld until she finished her two-year contract. After many instances of physical
abuse, she sought refuge at a victims' shelter of a Malaysian NGO. Tina has filed a
complaint with the police against her employer and has been given an extension of her
immigration visa in order to pursue her case in Malaysia.
Victims of human trafficking pay a horrible price. Physical and psychological harm,
including disease and stunted growth, often has permanent effects, ostracizing trafficking
victims from their families and communities. Trafficking victims often miss critical
opportunities for social, moral, and spiritual development. In many cases the exploitation of
trafficking victims is progressive: a child trafficked into one form of labor may be further
abused in another. In Nepal, girls recruited to work in carpet factories, hotels, and
restaurants have been forced later into the sex industry in India. In the Philippines, and in
many other countries, children who initially migrate or are recruited for the hotel and
tourism industry, often end up trapped in brothels. A brutal reality of the modern-day slave
trade is that its victims are all too often bought and sold many times over.
Victims forced into sex slavery are often subdued with drugs and suffer extreme violence.
Victims trafficked for sexual exploitation suffer physical and emotional damage from
premature sexual activity, forced substance abuse, and exposure to sexually transmitted
diseases including HIV/AIDS. Some victims suffer permanent damage to their reproductive
organs.

In September 2001, a young Vietnamese woman died in Villawood Immigration Detention
Centre in Sydney. She is believed to have been brought to Australia when she was 12
years old on a family reunion migration application which was possibly fraudulent. It is
understood that upon arrival in Australia she was placed in a brothel and that she worked
continuously as a prostitute until her incarceration in Villawood after authorities detected
her as an "illegal immigrant". There was evidence of drug use on her body, with injection
scars on both arms. She was locked in solitary confinement in Villawood. Her dead body
was found lying face down in a pool of vomit.
In January 2002, there was a second death of a trafficked Vietnamese woman in Villawood.
This woman had made at least one previous suicide attempt. It is believed that she died in
hospital from injuries caused when she jumped out of a window from the first floor of the
women’s dormitory. To date, there has been no coronial inquest into the deaths.
When asked about these deaths and the possibility of giving trafficked women permanent
residency in return for testifying against people traffickers, a spokesman for the Minister for
Immigration, Mr Phillip Ruddock, said that if this were done "eventually you would find
instead of people claiming to be refugees, they would claim to be prostitutes who fear going
home" and besides "while there were genuine cases, most will not provide you with the
level of co-operation that will get prosecutions of the Mr Bigs. They are afraid of reprisals."
(1)
Women who are trafficked have much in common with women who seek asylum as
refugees. Because asylum seekers are vulnerable, they can be forced to rely on, or be
abducted by, traffickers. …Trafficked women may also have grounds to seek asylum
because they have suffered gender based persecution. Refugee and asylum seeker
arrivals have been politicised, which has lead to the criminalisation of illegal migration at
the expense of approaches which would protect victims of trafficking. This politicisation has
decreased the willingness of governments to attempt to solve the problem of people
trafficking and caused a consequent failure to protect the victims of the international crime
of trafficking. Although both refugees and trafficked women may have minimal control over
their choice to travel to Australia, as a group they are subject to detention, stigmatisation
and possible expulsion because they have broken Australia’s border laws.



As an example a juvinile prostitute in Thailand: already at the age of 14 years she started
to work in a brothel. Her parents had debts and had to sell the house. They worked for one
year in order to pay back their debts. When she was 17 she left the brothel. Now she is
living again at home.
Not all girls are so "lucky". Most of them are forced to sell their bodies in the streets for very
little money . There are also some girls who stay a whole week with a socalled sex tourist
and in the end are not paied at all.

These men say: They have nourised their rented women and had given them a place to
stay. But what were the conditions? Many of the young girls are beaten and mistreated.
They were exploited and people take advantage of them. But they have no choice because
for them it is a fight for survival.
The men boats believing that they have helped the prostitutes by giving them money. With
htis income the girls and their families are able to survive for a while. From the
psychological point of view the girls are hurt, because they feel exploited and dirty. For the
outside they are hard and don’t show their tears.Are these children doing something bad ?


Rehabilitation of child soldiers in Democratic Republic of Congo in desperate need of
resources from international community Emmanuel was seven when he was forcibly
recruited by one of the factions involved in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC, formerly Zaire). He had become separated from his parents when they fled the
fighting in Mambasa, Ituri, and joined a group who told him they were fighting to defend
former President Mobutu. In fact the group were fighting forces loyal to President Mobutu.
He was taken to the Nyaleke military training camp in North-Kivu province where he learned
military discipline and how to strip down a gun. Emmanuel had not had a chance to start
school before the fighting took away a large part of his childhood. Five years later he told
an AI delegate how the soldiers would shoot live rounds in the children's presence so that
they would get used to it and overcome their fear. He described how he had served on the
frontlines and seen one of his commanders beheaded and how he had carried a gun so
heavy he had to kneel down to fire it. Eventually he was wounded in the arm. He says that
once he has recovered he wants to go to school. Tragically Emmanuel's story is far from
unique. Many of the demobilized children interviewed by AI delegates in the DRC in 2003
also wanted to recapture some of their stolen childhoods and return to school.
Unfortunately the majority of these children, many of whom have been orphaned or no
longer even know if their families are dead or alive, can scarcely keep themselves
sheltered and fed, let alone find the means to pay for their education. Faced with
homelessness and destitution, many of the children can see no other option but the army,
despite the terrible hardships and trauma they endured as soldiers. Since the latest conflict
erupted in 1998, more than 3 million people are estimated to have been killed or to have
died from the effects of war in eastern DRC. As many as 2 million people have been
internally displaced, including some 400,000 children. Agriculture has been devastated,
resulting in malnutrition and death. The breakdown of the political, social and economic
infrastructures - including the break-up of families and communities and the closure of
schools and health facilities - has weakened or destroyed those structures which should
provide children with their immediate source of care and protection. As a result they have
become an easy target for recruitment into the armed forces of the various warring
factions. In July 2003 a transitional government, led by President Joseph Kabila, was set
up. However for many Congolese, peace remains a distant dream.



Normal Life Within Victims' Grasp Despite Childhood Trauma of Abuse

By Kendall Anderson and Mark Wrolstad
Originally published in The Dallas Morning News, June 16, 2001
Paul McLaughlin is a survivor, which is not to say that he is unscathed.
But something within his soul gave him the strength and determination to survive what he
calls 18 years of physical and emotional punishment at the hands of his mother, and then
to overcome it with a self-made crusade against child abuse.
"The darn thing is, I lived," Mr. McLaughlin, 52, said Friday from his home in Eugene, Ore.
"I lived to tell about it, and I'm doing something about it."
The victims of severe child abuse and neglect, such as the 8-year-old girl who was
imprisoned in a Hutchins trailer home, often need years of therapy and attentive care—
immediately and then later in life—to overcome the damage done to their young lives.
Some of their scars can only be covered, not erased.
But many abused and neglected children possess a resilience that allows them to recover
enough of their hope and their identities to live normal, rewarding lives, according to
mental-health professionals.
Among the severely abused, "the ones who do better had found some kind of healthy
family or friendship outside the abusive relationship," said Dr. Barbara Rila, a Dallas
psychologist who specializes in child trauma cases. Children also have a better chance of
recovering if the neglect occurs when they're older, and if they're removed from their
abusive home and given the chance to develop new family relationships, usually through
adoption, Dr. Rila said.
"That's what really predicts a good outcome in cases of severe neglect," she said.
Those factors may indicate a particular reason for hopefulness in the case of Lauren
Calhoun, who was rescued this week from a filthy closet where she was kept for months at
a time, authorities say. For the first eight months of her life, the girl lived with a couple who
wanted to adopt her, but the adoption fell through.
She was removed from her home Monday and has been hospitalized. The girl's mother and
stepfather have been charged with injury to a child.
Although some people triumph over extreme neglect or abuse, most suffer lifelong physical
or emotional problems, experts said.
"If a child has been repeatedly abused or neglected and you find them alive at the end of it,
then they had to survive. They acquired a separate set of skills which helped them get
through the abuse," said Dr. Donna Persaud, pediatrician at Children's Medical Center and
associate professor of pediatrics at UT Southwestern.
Studies show that an emotionally nurturing environment in infancy is crucial to a child's
developing communication skills and the ability to form relationships—to receive and return
affection.
Neglect, defined as the absence of appropriate experiences at a time when a child needs
them, can be more destructive than the effects of physical—and even sexual—abuse,
experts said.
"Even bad interaction may be better than no interaction," said Dr. Peter Stavinoha,
pediatric neuropsychologist at Children's Medical Center and assistant professor of
psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
Neglect, such as the kind that police say Lauren endured, can compromise a child's
development, including learning, language, attention, judgment and social skills.
The chances for full recovery drop if brain damage has occurred. Significant brain
development occurs in infancy and childhood.
"If there is malnutrition or physical abuse harming brain development, that compounds the
cards against the child," Dr. Stavinoha said. "If there aren't brain-based limitations, that
child's potential for resilience is substantially greater, though still unpredictable."
"Neglect, especially emotionally, can be just as deadly as the other forms of abuse," said
Cindy Alexander, clinical supervisor at the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center, which
counsels survivors in cases that are extreme, but not rare.
One child and his brother were beaten by their father three years ago. The brother was
killed.











A 4-year-old boy, one side of his face swathed in bandages and his arms covered with
cigarette burns, asks the lawyer who has been introduced to him by social workers, "Are
you going to hurt me too?"
I was that lawyer. This young boy, and hundreds of thousands of children like him, has
learned to fear the world of adults. The child who asks, "Are you going to hurt me too?" is
really speaking to all of us—to society at large. And if we face the hard realities, the truthful
answer may well be "yes."
Today, most Americans know that child abuse has become a virtual epidemic. Still, the
rhetoric of outrage has run far ahead of the reality of change. We have laws that mandate
the reporting of suspected child abuse; we have 24-hour "hot lines" that promise immediate
investigation; we have courts specially designed to deal with this issue; and we have more
programs and caseworkers than ever before. Yet children continue to be physically
maltreated, sexually abused and even murdered in record numbers. Obviously, we're not
doing enough.
Child abuse isn't a new phenomenon—it didn't start when the newspapers started reporting
the horror stories to the public. But those who believe that the "discovery" of child abuse
means all our efforts must now go into "understanding" and rehabilitating the abusers are
condemning future generations to attack. Discovering the existence of a killer shark may be
important—but studying why the shark kills isn't as important as staying out of the water.
The victim, not the abuser, must be our priority.    
The truth is that, for many of our children, the family continues to be the most dangerous
place in America. Many of these abusive families are nothing more than physical and
emotional free-fire zones. But, for the most part, children can expect little genuine
protection from the system. The protection of children is still regarded as the province of
"do-gooders," and many people still oppose government intervention into what they believe
is a "family affair." In fact, child abuse is the most rarely discovered of crimes and among
the least likely to be prosecuted.
Our society eventually pays the price for its passivity. The survivors of child abuse grow up
to haunt us with juvenile crime, drug and alcohol abuse, juvenile prostitution and suicide.
It can't get better until we take a hard look at the situation:
Child abuse cuts across all social, economic, cultural and ethnic lines. Investigative and
protective efforts confined to the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum are doomed to
failure.


Work Load, Hours of Work, and Rest
No one wants to be a domestic, but due to financial reasons some have no choice.  But this
does not mean that employers should take advantage of us.  We are human too.
—Atin, a twenty-one–year-old former domestic worker who started working as a domestic
when she was eleven, Yogyakarta, December 1, 2004.
The child domestics Human Rights Watch interviewed typically worked fourteen to eighteen
hours a day.  These children worked seven days a week, with no holiday, although some
were allowed an annual one-week leave at Eid-ul-Fitr.  Human Rights Watch also
interviewed five children who were allowed to visit their families more than just for Eid
holidays, such as once in six months or once a month.  The girls we interviewed were
typically required to clean the house, launder the entire household’s clothes by hand, iron
the clothes, prepare the family’s meals, and take care of the employer’s children.  All of the
children Human Rights Watch interviewed lived with their employers, and none had a
written contract specifying wages, types of work, rest, or vacation.  Rather, we learned that
oral agreements regarding wages, hours of work, and tasks were fluid—changing based on
the whim of the employer.  
Dewi, who began working when she was sixteen, explained, “My employer was from the
same village and he asked me to work for his family in Jakarta.  I was told that I would be
babysitting.  When I got to Jakarta I initially began taking care of the three-month-old baby.  
But then I was told to clean the house, wash dishes, wash the clothes, and cook food.  I
didn’t like my employer—they never let me go out or allowed me to take rest during the
day.”78  Dewi began crying during the interview, she said, “I did not know that I had to do
everything.  I was their slave told to do whatever and whenever they wanted.”79
Nearly every domestic worker Human Rights Watch spoke with told us that they cared for
their employer’s children, in addition to other duties.  For example, Kartika began domestic
service when she was fourteen.  She described her nineteen-hour workday:
There were four adults and three children aged five, three, and two.  I woke up at 4:00 a.m.
. . . cooked, cleaned, washed clothes, and swept the floor.  When the children would wake
up, I would bathe the children.  After bathing them, I would sing a lullaby so the baby would
sleep.  When the baby was asleep, I helped the grandmother to bathe because she was
too old.  I then finished cooking and took care of the children.  When the parents came
home from the office, the children would be with them.  I would then iron the clothes and get
dinner ready.  I would go to sleep by 11:00 p.m.  I had no day off.  I worked 7 days a week .
80
Titin had a similar workday:
I woke up at 5:00 a.m.  I washed clothes, cooked food for the husband, wife, and their three
children.  I cleaned the house.  I also took care of the children.  I would go to sleep at 9:00
p.m.  The work was tiring and there was a lot of work to take care of the children.  The baby
would wake up in the middle of the night, so I had to wake up and feed the baby and
change her diaper.  I was always tired.  I was only twelve then.  I had no day off.81
Domestic workers sometimes also help with their employers’ small businesses.  Vina, who
began working when she was thirteen, described her long workday:
I helped sell noodles in the street and did housework.  I would start selling noodles at 5:30
a.m. until 12:00 p.m.  After that I would shop for groceries and then return home to prepare
noodles to sell the next day.  I cooked more than five kilos of noodles a day.  After that I
would wash clothes.  I was paid Rp.200,000 [U.S.$22.22] per month.  I was exhausted and
had no time to rest.  I would go to sleep at 12:00 a.m.82
Most child domestic workers said that they had no time to rest, but some said they were
able to take a one-hour break during the workday.  In describing her seventeen-hour
workday, Ria recalled, “I would often get tired, but I was able to rest for an hour when the
child was resting.” 83
Young children may not be suited to the tasks they are asked to perform because they lack
the necessary experience or because they lack the strength and endurance for such
tasks.  When Kartika was fourteen she said she worked nineteen hours a day.  She told us,
“The two-year-old child would sometimes hit me.  I was tired and he kept hitting me so I hit
him back.  I did not know what to do





Fifteen-year-old Amy* had been hounding her mother to sign up for Internet service
at home. “I kind of had a fear of it,” said her mother Sara. “I’d come home with
newspaper articles I’d read about kids being lured by adults they’d met online.” But
Amy was already using the Internet at the public library and school anyway. “She set
up her own...account [with a password and free E-mail].”
Sara found out that Amy had been sharing many personal conversations with Bill,
whom she had “met” in an online chatroom. They discussed her desire to live her
life differently. Bill was “sympathetic” to Amy’s dreams and desires. By getting to
know and sympathizing with her concerns or fears, Bill was able to break down her
inhibitions.
When Amy didn’t come home one night, Sara knew something was wrong. So she
began a search of Amy’s room. “I found a note [Amy] wrote saying she was 98
percent sure she was going to do this [trip]. The note said she’d be getting on a
bus.” At this same time, Amy was at the bus station on the telephone with Bill. He
was saying, “You can’t go home now, because I’ll get caught.” Amy felt compelled to
keep him from getting apprehended.
Sara said, “I went to my local police station and tried to get them to go and get her.
At that point they really didn’t want to do anything. They were thinking she had run
away. [We had] the [man’s] real name and address...though at that time I wasn’t
sure it was the real name. I couldn’t get anyone to go and see if this was a
legitimate address. I found out that in our state runaways don’t have to return home
if they don’t want to.”
Sara called the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). Sara
said it was that call that got the police to check out the address on the ticket and
“find out whether...this person actually existed.”
A detective had called to say the man’s address was a computer dating service. “It
turned out this is where that man worked, and he lived upstairs,” Sara said. The
police said they’d watch the location.
About midnight an officer called in and said, “A taxi just pulled up, a guy and a girl
got out of it, we think it’s them.” He said, “We need to find out [from Amy] if she
wants to stay. In order to get her [without her consent], we’d have to get a court
order showing the reason why we wanted her out.” Sara had to talk to Amy on the
telephone and promise not to press charges before Amy would agree to go home.
“We had a 36-hour bus ride back [home].... At first she was really upset. She
definitely wanted to be with this man. He’d been telling her, ‘I’m in love with you, you’
re the only one I’ve ever done this with, you just have to come with me and when I put
you up it’s going to be great.’ We learned a lot. I learned a lot. I thought I knew a lot
about my child.”
But something told Sara the ordeal wasn’t over. She said, “Three weeks later this
man came to our home. [Amy] slipped out...with him. He had continued to contact
her, and it wasn’t until this meeting that the man assaulted [Amy], in a motel in our
own town.”
NCMEC contacted the police department who sent a detective to intercept Amy
and Bill before they boarded a bus. It wasn’t until police approached them in the bus
station that Bill told Amy she was not the first girl he’d contacted on the Internet and
lured into meeting him in person. This was the turning point for Amy, what she’d
needed to hear. Not until then could she tell her mother, “I can’t believe I got
suckered into this.” Bill was convicted and sentenced to a year-and-a-day term in
federal prison. Bill was released in April 2001 to the United States Probation Office
where he was placed on probation for three years.1 Sara told us they still get calls
with no one at the other end of the line.
We asked Marsha Gilmer-Tullis, who is the NCMEC family services advocate and
familiar with Amy’s case, why she thought Amy succumbed to this predator — the
death of a close step-grandfather, feeling sorry for Bill, adventure-seeking, fears
about the new millennium? Marsha said, “All of the above. There are lots of issues,
usually. Being a teenager is a very difficult time, and there are issues and concerns
that teens are struggling with. It’s often so much easier to get online, where you’re
anonymous and the other person is anonymous, and talk. You’re feeling dejected
and unattractive, and someone’s telling you how wonderful and beautiful you are.
They’re a teen and immature, and the adult knows that and takes advantage of it.”
It’s still difficult for Sara to tell this story. She’s doing so, “To keep other families
from going through what we went through. [Amy]’s feeling is the same as ours. She
wants to help other kids. [Predators] catch [teenagers] at their weakest moment,
and they prey on that.”
We asked Sara what advice she’d give other parents of online kids. “Know who
your kids are with. I would say, watch them when they’re online, but you can’t always
do that. Don’t give out any addresses, don’t agree to meet anyone, don’t believe
everything you hear and see — they may be telling you that they’re 15, 14, or 12, but
they’re actually probably 30, 40, or 50 years old.... Don’t think that they can’t come
to your house, because they can! Listen to your feelings. Make sure you know
where else your child might be using a computer; at a friend’s house, library, or
school.”






A 12-year-old girl who vanished from her home in the United Kingdom to meet up
with a 31-year-old man she first met online is back home with her parents. Before
she disappeared she was just a schoolgirl living in an ordinary suburban home. She
liked punk and heavy rock music and football and spent hours surfing the Internet.1
By all accounts the child's parents had been aware of the risks their daughter could
face while using the Internet. They "had their concerns about the time she spent
online, but were not unduly worried."2 The child's parents seemed more worried
about being labeled "heavy-handed" parents and urged her to spend a little less
time on the Internet — and not to give out personal details when chatting online."3
They even followed an important NetSmartz safety tip of keeping the computer in a
common area of the home by having it in their kitchen.4
The child had talked about her "American Internet boyfriend," but still her parents
passed it off as nothing more than a figment of their young daughter's imagination.5
The child was a quiet girl, and her parents never imagined that her long hours spent
in chatrooms would lead to an international search.
Considering that the girl is back home and seemingly unharmed, the child's story
turned out happily, unlike many other stories reported about young people who have
face-to-face encounters with people they first meet online. But now that the ordeal is
over, new details have surfaced about the life of the man with whom the child had
been E-mailing for five hours a day and planning a romantic weekend in Paris.6
Toby Studabaker has emerged as an alleged predator.7 During their investigation
to find the pair, law enforcement allegedly discovered sexually exploitive images of
children on his computer and sexual allegations involving two underage girls in the
U.S.8 The Federal Bureau of Investigation is continuing their investigation into
claims that Studabaker assaulted his 12-year-old niece and a complaint that he
gave a 9-year-old girl some "sex lotion" 5 years ago.9 Studabaker claimed that the
child had lied about her age, saying she was 19, but records found on his computer
suggested that he knew her real age.10
In a sense, this ordeal could be a reality check for parents who think they are doing
enough to prevent their children from becoming prey to online sexual predators.
Keeping the computer in a common area and instructing your children to not give
out personal information on the Internet are good approaches to the problem, but
not always going to be completely effective. In this case, the 12-year-old girl was
spending hour after hour on the Internet. The Internet is like any other public place
and should be treated as such.








Keabetswe cruises down the noisy streets of Kanye, Botswana, faking a casual
confidence and trying to play the tough guy. Orphaned for as long as he can
remember, Keabetswe is only 12 and does not know why his mother died.
After his mother's death, Keabetswe's grandmother took him in along with his 16-
year-old brother. "My grandmother says my brother and I irritate her, and then she
beats us," says Keabetswe. "She threatens my brother and me and often throws us
out and tells us that she isn't responsible for our mother's death."
To escape his grandmother's abuse, Keabetswe lives mostly on the streets and is
able to attend school only once in a while. But he knows that the streets are no
place for a young boy.
He has found a day care centre for orphans called “Bona Lesedi”, which means
“See Hope” in the Setswana language. At the centre, he can stop pretending that he
is okay on the streets.
"Since the outbreak of HIV/AIDS, the basic needs of many children like Keabetswe
have not been met," says Nono, who works at the centre. "They need education,
love, food and sometimes shelter. We give them clothes, we help them with school
work, and they go home just to sleep."
But there are nearly 2,000 orphans in Kanye alone, and only 200 come to the
centre. The increasing number of orphaned children in Botswana is a direct result of
the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has hit sub-Saharan Africa harder than anywhere
else. Over 12 million children in the region have been left without parents and
without a childhood as a result of the epidemic.
These days, for children like Keabetswe, centers like Bona Lesedi are the only
hope for a better future.


Keabetswe cruises down the noisy streets of Kanye, Botswana, faking a casual
confidence and trying to play the tough guy. Orphaned for as long as he can
remember, Keabetswe is only 12 and does not know why his mother died.
After his mother's death, Keabetswe's grandmother took him in along with his 16-
year-old brother. "My grandmother says my brother and I irritate her, and then she
beats us," says Keabetswe. "She threatens my brother and me and often throws us
out and tells us that she isn't responsible for our mother's death."
To escape his grandmother's abuse, Keabetswe lives mostly on the streets and is
able to attend school only once in a while. But he knows that the streets are no
place for a young boy.
He has found a day care centre for orphans called “Bona Lesedi”, which means
“See Hope” in the Setswana language. At the centre, he can stop pretending that he
is okay on the streets.
"Since the outbreak of HIV/AIDS, the basic needs of many children like Keabetswe
have not been met," says Nono, who works at the centre. "They need education,
love, food and sometimes shelter. We give them clothes, we help them with school
work, and they go home just to sleep."
But there are nearly 2,000 orphans in Kanye alone, and only 200 come to the
centre. The increasing number of orphaned children in Botswana is a direct result of
the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has hit sub-Saharan Africa harder than anywhere
else. Over 12 million children in the region have been left without parents and
without a childhood as a result of the epidemic.
These days, for children like Keabetswe, centers like Bona Lesedi are the only
hope for a better future.








Yuleini lives in Barrio Petare, one of the many slums perched perilously on the hills
around Caracas, the capital of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

The home that she shares with her mother, her stepfather and her four brothers and
sisters is made out of scraps of metal, slabs of wood and a few bricks.
During the day, when Yuleini's mother and stepfather are at work, it is up to the 13-
year-old to care for the four children: cook their meals in an old stove, wash their
clothes and hang them on the metal sheets that double as walls and play with them
amidst the rubble that surrounds their home.
Since 2004, however, Yuleini has been able to do something she had never done
before: go to school. "Going to school has changed my life, I've learnt many things
and made friends," says Yuleini. "But what I like most is my teacher, because she
listens to me and is very loving."
Having access to school was not easy for Yuleini. Her mother gave birth to the girl
when she herself was only 16. She never registered Yuleini's birth and left her with
her own mother, Yuleini's grandmother, in Colombia while she looked for work.
Following the grandmother's death in 2002 Yuleini's mother brought her to live with
her, her new husband and their four children. Having no birth registration, however,
meant that Yuleini could not go to school and so her mother decided to say that
Yuleini had no documents because she had no parents.
The many difficulties that Yuleini has faced in her short life have made her wise
beyond her years. "I've seen what happens to other kids in my neighbourhood who
don't go to school," she says. "They spend their days sniffing glue, begging for
money and getting into trouble. I feel sorry for them."
She is especially mindful of what can happen to young girls who live in poverty and
have little access to education. "I don't want to get married and have children, at
least not anytime soon," she declares. "I want to work and study. I don't want to be
like another girl I know who is 13 years old and already pregnant."





Leeda lives in Lpeach, a small village in the province of Prey Veng, Cambodia.
When Leeda was eight, her father died and the family's situation, already bad, got
much worse. Her mother had no support and could not find a job that would allow
her to take care of Leeda and her two younger brothers. In the end, she left her
children behind to look for work.
Since her mother left, Leeda, who is now 14, has been in charge of the household.
Every day she cooks, cleans and takes care of her brothers. A phone number to
contact her mother in case of emergency is carved on one of the house's wooden
beams.
Leeda is now in the seventh grade at the Dey Thoy School with the help of a
scholarship. Despite her family's poverty and her responsibilities as her brothers'
caretaker, she dreams of attending university and becoming a health worker.






Ali, who is 16, lives in Souf Camp, one of six emergency camps built for the over
1.8 Palestinian refugees that have arrived in Jordan since 1948. Every day, he
works at a falafel restaurant frying chickpea patties, making sandwiches and
cleaning up. He works for six hours a day during the school year and for 12 during
his summer break.
While Ali works, he can see his friends kicking a soccer ball on the dusty streets
and laughing. He wants to join them, but he knows that he must work to help his
family make ends meet since his father is unemployed as a result of severe back
and eyesight problems.
For Ali, working long hours every day has not just meant less time to play and be
young. It has literally endangered his health: two years ago he nearly lost his hand
when he dozed off grinding chickpeas. Luckily, he was rushed to the hospital and
his hand was saved.
The situation of the 17,000 people living in Souf is bleak, so when a project
designed to teach young people about filmmaking was launched at Souf Camp to
encourage self expression and youth participation, everyone got involved.
The participants decided to make a film about the plight of children who have to
work to support their families and chose Ali as the main character.
"This documentary is a personal scream,” says Ali. “We wanted to reach out, make
people living outside the camps know what our lives are like. It's tough, but what's
even tougher is having young people my age pass by and stare because I am not
doing the same things that they are doing."











Himal grew up in Udayapur, at the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains in Nepal. For
years, he worked as a porter alongside his father through the mountains' ragged
footpaths and dangerous drops.
When Himal was 14, his father sent him to Biratnagar, the second largest city in
Nepal, to escape being recruited into the Maoist rebel army. There, Himal became
a domestic worker, taking care of his employer's cows and cleaning his house for
US$7 a month.
While Himal was able to escape recruitment by the rebels, going to school seemed
like an impossible dream until a representative from the Forum for Human Rights
and Environment convinced his employer to send him to an urban out-of-school
programme.
Now 16, Himal manages all his cow-hand duties, goes to class and also attends
club activities. He has just completed his first 10 months of education and is already
reading and writing and doing basic addition and subtraction. He is looking forward
to studying more and joining a regular school, and dreams of becoming a banker.
Himal is also a performer. A play that he and other children from the child workers'
club prepared for the International Day Against Child Labour won them first place in
a competition organized by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in
Biratnagar. Last summer, he was selected to be one of five young people
representing Nepal in the Young People's Festival in South Korea, where he
performed traditional Nepali dances and met other young people from 32 countries.














Benjamin’s story of being abducted and subsequently fighting in South Kivu is
symbolic of the child soldiers’ plight. When he was 15 or 16, he was forced to join a
local militia. Although he is unsure of his birth date, he remembers the date when he
was taken: 12 July 2004.
‘I was playing soccer with four of my friends, when some men in uniforms came up
to us with guns and sacks. They took all of us and told us to carry their sacks to their
camp. They taught us how to use Kalashnikovs and revolvers.
‘I was involved in several combats. In one, we fought the [rebel group] RCD-Goma
and we killed a good number of them. I was able to kill two. And I managed to take
two people that came from this area and I held them hostage. They were fighters. I
shot them both in the stomach. Since it was under my commander’s order, I didn’t
have a problem with it. I was supposed to kill them, so I accepted this.’
These experiences took their toll. ‘There was too much suffering. During the night,
we would never sleep. We would drink and dance, since we feared that the enemy
would come at any moment.’
Eventually, Benjamin was able to leave. After time in a demobilisation and
reorientation centre, he returned to civilian life, but not without side-effects. ‘Today,
when I see a gun, I can’t tolerate it. I would like weapons to stay away and the guns
to protect the population instead of kill them.’
Those affected by the violence are often the most vulnerable. Men, women, and,
most notably, girls and boys were forcibly recruited into the war in DRC. All the
Congolese armed political groups continued to use child soldiers, many of them
under the age of 15.
Numerous children were abducted or coerced into joining, but others volunteered,
particularly in Ituri district. Almost all girls and some boys were reported to have
been raped or sexually exploited by their commanders or other soldiers. Children in
all the armed groups witnessed and often participated in serious human rights
abuses against civilians, as well as undertaking frontline duties.














Definition of Refugee and Internally-Displaced Person

According to Article One of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees,
a refugee is a person who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for
reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or
political opinion is outside the country of his [her] nationality and is unable or… is
unwilling to avail himself [herself] of the protection of that country.”[1] Internally-
displaced persons have had to flee their homes and cities of residence in order to
avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of
human rights or natural or human-made disasters. Internally-displaced persons, by
definition, have not crossed an internationally recognized state border.[2]


How many children are refugees or internally-displaced, and where are they?

There are approximately 20.5 million people worldwide who the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) classifies as refugees and another 25
million classified as internally-displaced (people of concern). These individuals are
in more than 50 countries worldwide, and the demographic breakdown of refugees
(protected under UNHCR mandate – 1951 Refugee Convention) is as follows: Asia,
9.4 million; Europe, 4.4 million; Africa, 4.6 million; North America, 1.1 million; and
Latin America and the Caribbean, 1 million.[3] In these areas, refugees are driven
from their countries by war, civil conflict and political strife. A list of the ten largest
groups and origins of major refugee populations in 2002 are as follows:
Afghanistan, 2,481,000; Burundi, 574,000; Sudan, 505,000; Angola, 433,000;
Somalia, 429,000; Democratic Republic of Congo, 415,000; Iraq, 401,000; Bosnia,
372,000; Vietnam, 348,000; and Eritrea, 316,000.[4] Children under the age of 18
make up 45 percent of the worldwide refugee population.[5] According to the
UNHCR, nearly 25 million children are currently displaced from their homes as
refugees, asylees, or internally-displaced children.


Vulnerability to Refugee or Internally-displaced Status

People may become internally-displaced persons or refugees because they are
persecuted due to their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social
group or political opinion. Children are especially vulnerable because they depend
on the protection of their parents or guardians from whom they are often separated
during moves, in large refugee camps, or while being held in detention camps.
Many who flee their homes are evading civil wars, ethnic, tribal and religious
violence. Children and their families become caught in conflicts between
governments and rebels or opposition groups. Refugees flee to neighboring
countries; internally-displaced people flee their homes but remain in their respective
countries.[6]


Impact on Children

About half of the world's refugees are children and adolescents. Whereas children
experience many types of abuse as refugees and internally-displaced people,
research shows that adolescents affected by armed conflict are more likely than
younger children to be victimized and to lack support.[7] They are in danger of being
exploited in the worst forms of child labor and often are denied basic education and
protection. These youth often are abused physically and become victims of sexual
violence and exploitation. Both boys and girls are at risk of being recruited into
armed forces as combatants and forced laborers. Child soldiers are forced to kill,
serve as sexual slaves, absorb the first wave of attacks, and commit atrocities
against their own community. Children are also highly vulnerable to cross-border
attacks. These children are extremely vulnerable.



One month before her 14th birthday Aliyah Ismail was found dead in a grubby flat in
Camden Town, London, in her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend's bed. She had taken twice
the amount of methadone needed to kill her and had been working as a prostitute in
nearby King's Cross.


Shocking but not unusual, according to Andy Bates of children's charity Barnardo's.
'It's not a long-term career option,' he says of child prostitution. 'That lifestyle is
extremely violent and dangerous. Some children do die.' At Barnardo's they don't
use the term 'child prostitution': 'We call it abuse through prostitution,' Andy Bates
says. 'It's child abuse.'


how does it happen?

Children end up as prostitutes as the result of a complex process involving
manipulation, violence, sexual abuse, drugs, alcohol and poverty. Barnardo's gives
an example of how it could happen: A girl, who has run away from home or is being
abused at home, meets a young man, probably aged between 18 and 25. He gives
her the love and affection she is missing. He pretends to be her boyfriend,
impressing her with his maturity and lifestyle, his money and car. She falls in love
with him and they start to have sex.
Then he becomes possessive and demands proof of the girl's love. Often this
includes breaking off with friends and family. If she is still living with her parents he
may help her put herself into care. Soon he controls her life – what she wears, what
she eats, where she goes. He becomes violent and she becomes frightened, but
she still hopes that one more proof of her love will restore their relationship. Once
the man totally dominates her he demands she has sex with one of his 'friends', and
then with other men. He uses violence and threats to control her. He has now
become not her boyfriend but her pimp (someone who takes a share of a
prostitute's money in exchange for 'protection' from punters – men who buy sex).
Another charity, the Children's Society, which has campaigned for tougher laws
against pimps and punters since 1994, says there are other ways girls, and
sometimes boys, become prostitutes. It says that many child prostitutes say 'it is an
easy transition' from being sexually abused at home to selling sex to strangers.


what do prostitutes say?

The charity interviewed 50 young people – four of whom were boys. Some had
stopped being prostitutes, others were still selling sex. It found nearly half (42%) had
been abused at home – a quarter (26%) before they were 10-years-old. Just under
half (48%) had experienced violence from pimps or punters. Children in care were
most likely to end up as prostitutes, the charity says.
One girl they interviewed, Louise, started selling sex aged 11. Her mother was
spending all the family money on alcohol and she needed to feed herself and her
siblings. 'I didn't like it but I knew it was the only way I could get money without going
thieving,' she said. One of the boys had run away from home because he was gay
and his father wouldn't accept that. Some children may become addicted to drugs
after running away from home and have to sell sex to pay for them. Others become
addicted to drugs once they become prostitutes, to numb the bad feelings. Then
they needed money to pay for drugs.
Some children and teenagers have phoned ChildLine, the telephone help and
counselling service for children. Caroline, 14, told them she had run away from her
foster carer. 'My pimp has got me a flat to live in, but I want to leave because he hits
me a lot,' she said. 'I can't leave though. I've nowhere else to go.'
No-one knows exactly how widespread child prostitution is but between 1989 and
1995 4,000 children (under 18) were cautioned or convicted for selling sex. Child
prostitution is spread throughout the country and is as common in rural areas as it is
in towns. It was only in May this year that the Government told the police they should
treat child prostitutes as victims of abuse, and treat the pimps and clients as child
abusers. Before then, men were charged with lesser crimes, such as living off the
earnings of a prostitute, and the children were treated like criminals.


how can it be stopped?

It is very difficult for children to stop being prostitutes, children's charities say. They
have no self-esteem, may not trust authority and have lost out on their education.
'When you get out of it it's not just a lifestyle change for you,' a former child prostitute
from Middlesbrough said. 'You change your friends, you change the places where
you go, you change the places where you live, the people you associate with.'
Everyone agrees that what is needed is safe houses for child runaways to go to,
before they find themselves locked in to drugs and prostitution. Once children are
identified as prostitutes, they need support, counselling, education and careers
advice. 'I've still got people coming up to me now saying "you're a smackhead,
you're a prostitute",' said a former prostitute. 'They don't give you a second chance.
It's not all money in your pocket. You do get beaten up, you do get raped, I've had
friends who have been killed through it.'



BEIRUT: At a glance, Nadine (not her real name) is an innocent, 16-year-old girl, but
a conversation with her soon reveals the shocking details of the hard life she
endured as a child. "I didn't choose to work as a prostitute," she said. "It's just my
luck in life." Explaining how she was raped at the age of 9 by a neighbor, and
therefore "had nothing to lose" when she accepted money for the first time in
exchange for sex with an older man, Nadine blamed her situation on her family's
financial needs. "My parents needed money so they sent me to work as a
housemaid at the age of 12. Do you know how much I had to put up with in my
situation?" Nadine asked. "All men want is one thing - your body! So I decided to
ask for money in exchange for what I was offering."Now in her fourth year of working
in the sex trade, Nadine talks about the abuses she suffered from men she has
slept with. "I've been beaten up, forced to have unprotected sex, thrown out in the
middle of the night without getting paid. But life goes on," she said. There is no
safety net for sex workers in Lebanon, where prostitution is illegal. Even though
some amendments in the law have been made to encourage exploited children to
come forward, they often remain reluctant. The official age of adulthood in Lebanon
is 18."I can't go to the authorities and file a complaint. What would I say? 'I slept with
this man and he refused to pay me my money'?" asked Nadine. Although not a
widespread phenomena in Lebanese society, child prostitution does exist. But
there are no official statistics on the numbers or nationalities of minors working, or
forced to work, in the illicit industry."There's no way of telling the number of children
working as prostitutes," said Rania Mansour, a social worker with Dar al-Amal, a
local NGO that helps sex workers."We work with a lot of sex workers, many of whom
are minors," said Mansour. "But there are many obstacles, such as the lack of funds
and prevailing social norms, which stand in the way of a solid study specifying the
numbers." Even though Lebanon is considered one of the more liberal Arab
countries, the sex trade - as in other countries in the region - remains a taboo
subject.According to Mansour, most prostitutes start as young as 9 years old, when
they are most easily influenced. While most children in the trade here are
Lebanese, there are also Palestinian, Syrian and Jordanian prostitutes, she said.
Reasons for working the trade
Most of the girls who visit Dar al-Amal come from broken homes or very poor,
underprivileged backgrounds. "Many girls we've helped have slept with men for very
basic needs, like food or shelter - sometimes even a cigarette," she explained.
Zeina (not her real name), 21, said she was sold to a man for sex by her mother
when she was just 9 years old. She has since continued to sell herself."People are
very judgmental, but at that age, if your own parents don't want you, how are you
supposed to survive? Tell me if there is any other way," she said. Others, according
to Mansour, confess to also doing it because they want to feel that someone cares
about them, even if for a short while. "They're minors, and at this age they need
affection, which for them comes in sexual form," Mansour said. Psychological
support is one of the most important services provided by Dar al-Amal. "We notice
that most of these girls lack self esteem and any sense of values, so we work with
them on strengthening their personalities," the social worker said. "It's a hard job,
since many of them have a problem trusting people."












Phnom Penh, Cambodia
We drove two hours into the countryside to meet some of the young girls who,
somehow, have escaped trafficking and effectively saved their own lives. Today,
they live in a simple two story house run by the aid group AFESIP (a French
acronym that translates as Acting for Women in Distressing Situations -- seeing the
children and hearing their stories I now find the word 'distressing' a huge
understatement).
You wouldn't believe how young they are. 13, 10, 9 and these are girls who spent
several years already as prostitutes. They manage to smile and play, though as they
reached out for hugs and attention, I could sense how desperate they were for
caring. At the neighboring school, where about a third of the kids are from the
shelter, the best performers in class -- amazingly -- are the rescued children. They
are working incredibly hard for a decent life.
We met one 13-year-old Vietnamese girl who told how her step mother sold her to
Thai traffickers at the age of 6. She spent six years on the Thai-Cambodian border
-- beaten and sometimes electrocuted by her captors -- until one day she ran to the
local prison. She didn't think much about it -- it was the only institution of authority
she knew of in the town. Police there got her to a Thai shelter, which then
transferred her on to AFESIP. A lucky escape. Now, she gets high marks in school
and hopes to help get clean water to rural villages when she grows up. A young,
troubled girl with big, altruistic dreams. There are 1000s like them here.







- Every evening after sunset, 17-year-old Gulwaits for clients at the bustling Pir
Wadhai bus station in Rawalpindi,the twin city of the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
There is hardly any day without a customer. His usual clients aretravellers changing
buses at Rawalpindi or policemen and bus drivers.He may even have three clients
in one evening. ''I never approachanybody, they always come to me. Then we go to
one of the many hotelsaround the bus station,'' he says.His work is usually over by
midnight, when he goes home with at least100 rupees (less than two U.S. dollars) in
his pocket.Selling his body is not the only way he earns for his family. He hasthree
sisters, a mother and a father, who is addicted to narcotics andliquor and stays at
home. The family lives in a crowded, low- incomelocality of tent houses.Gul does not
go to school and spends his mornings carrying crates offruits and vegetables at the
fruit market in Islamabad. But this fetcheshim just 30 to 40 rupees a day.''I don't
want to sell my body, but have no choice,'' says Gul, who isthe family's main bread-
earner. His mother and a sister work as low-paidhouse cleaners in an upper
income neighbourhood.Gul is one of the thousands of Pakistani children who have
been driveninto prostitution by poverty, say child rights groups. Although not
veryvisible, the commercial sexual exploitation of children is growing inPakistan,
they say.''Due to cultural and religious factors, commercial sexual activity iskept
underground, but its existence is well known and acknowledged bymany sectors of
society including law enforcers,'' says a report by theNational Commission for Child
Welfare and Development (NCCWD).The first official admission of the existence of
child prostitution inPakistan, the NCCWD survey came up with shocking findings.
Out of sampleof 233 children interviewed in the country's four provinces,
159admitted being engaged in commercial sex.Of these, 98 were boys, who found
business near hotels, restaurants,video shops, cinema halls and public parks.Child
rights activists link the high rate of male child prostitution inPakistan to social
attitudes. ''...homosexuality and homo-affectionalism are socially tolerated unlike
male-female physicalaffection,'' says a report published by the Islamabad-based
Society forthe Protection of the Rights of the Child.Male prostitution is most
prevalent in the highly conservative NorthWest Frontier Province (NWFP), which
borders Afghanistan.''Male prostitution seems to be a particular customary behavior
of theNWFP where elder, wealthy people keep young attractive boys with themfor
sexual pleasures,'' notes the NCCWD report.A study by the National Coalition of
Child Rights and the U.N.Children's Fund (UNICEF), found that a third of the men in
the NWFP wereproud of being paedophiles. Another 11 percent did not think this
waswrong.''Against the backdrop of such attitudes, child prostitution continuesto
rise with little or no resistance from society, though a thick veilof secrecy shrouds it
only because it is a sin under the Islamic laws,''says child rights expert Zarghon
Shah.Child rights groups accuse the government of ignoring the evidence oflarge-
scale commercial sexual exploitation of children in Pakistan.According to the
NCCWD study, girls from the poorest areas of thecountry are being taken by
''organized rings'' to big city brothels.''In Punjab, most of the girl prostitutes belong to
either the NWFPprovince or Afghan refugee camps there,'' says the NCCWD report.
Girls are usually forced into prostitution when they are about 11 yearsold because
their young age fetches a good price to the traffickers,notes the report.The NWFP
newspaper 'Frontier Post' reported some time ago that more than200,000 women,
most of them under 18 years old were trafficked intoPakistan in the past
decade.''Many (Pakistani) women and children are also trafficked to the MiddleEast
and pushed into the sex trade,'' the newspaper added.Rights activists point to the
lax implementation of strict penaltiesfor those who promote child prostitution. Under
the law, transporting orimporting a girl under 18 years of age for the purpose of
prostitution,is punishable with a 10-year jail term.''Similarly, sodomy is punishable
under Section 377 of the PakistanPenal Code with imprisonment that may extend
up to life,'' says A. N.Bhutta, an Islamabad-based lawyer.The Islamabad-based
child rights group SAHIL, accuses law enforcers ofpatronising the commercial sex
business. A SAHIL survey on childprostitution in northern Punjab province, found
that most clients ofchild prostitutes are either policemen or army soldiers.''As a
result, the hotels running child prostitution business enjoypolice protection and
continue to thrive,'' the group notes in itssurvey report.An official with the NCCWD
told IPS that the centre has recommended tothe federal government that ending the
''deafening silence around therampant commercial exploitation of children, should
be the first step.''''While there is need for raising public awareness about
childprostitution and also for rehabilitation programmes for childprostitutes, equally
important are effective poverty eradication plansespecially targeted at people living
in poor, semi-urban slums,'' theofficial said.






BEIRUT, 6 Mar 2006 (IRIN) - At a glance, Nadine (not her real name) is an innocent,
16 year-old-girl, but a conversation with her soon reveals the shocking details of the
hard life she endured as a child. "I didn't choose to work as a prostitute," she said.
"It's just my luck in life."

Explaining how she was raped at the age of nine by a neighbour, and therefore “had
nothing to lose” when she accepted money for the first time in exchange for sex with
an older man, Nadine blamed her situation on her family's financial needs.

"My parents needed money so they sent me to work as a housemaid at the age of
12. Do you know how much I had to put up with in my situation?" Nadine asked
rhetorically. “All men want is one thing – your body! So I decided to ask for money in
exchange for what I was offering.”

Now in her fourth year of working in the sex trade, Nadine talks about the abuses
she suffered by men she has slept with. "I’ve been beaten up, forced to have
unprotected sex, thrown out in the middle of the night without getting paid… but life
goes on," she said.

There is little protection for sex workers in Lebanon, where prostitution is illegal.
Even though some amendments in the law have been made to encourage exploited
children to come forward, they often remain reluctant. The official age of adulthood
in Lebanon is 18.

“I can’t go to the authorities and file a complaint. What would I say? ‘I slept with this
man and he refused to pay me my money’?” said Nadine, refusing to say how much
she usually charged customers.

Although not a widespread phenomena in Lebanese society, child prostitution does
exist. But there are no official statistics on the numbers or nationalities of minors
working, or forced to work, in the illicit industry. “There’s no way of telling the number
of children working as prostitutes,” said Rania Mansour, a social worker with Dar Al-
Amal, a local NGO that helps sex workers.

"We work with a lot of sex workers, many of whom are minors,” said Mansour. “But
there are many obstacles, such as the lack of funds and prevailing social norms,
which stand in the way of a solid study specifying the numbers.” Even though
Lebanon is considered one of the more liberal Arab countries, the sex trade – as in
other countries in the region – remains a taboo subject.

According to Mansour, most prostitutes start at as young as nine years old, when
they are most easily influenced. While most children in the trade here are
Lebanese, there are also Palestinian, Syrian and Jordanian prostitutes, she said.



A mother by 16 and an x-con by 18, Jazmin was raised by her alcoholic father for
the first eight years of her life and foster parents until she was 12 years old.
She ran away from foster care to escape a foster father who was violent.


Living on the streets using whatever drugs or alcohol she could get her hands on to
escape her pain, Jazmin was using heavily when she became pregnant at 15 years
old. After giving birth as a 16 year old girl, Jazmin's new bub was taken into care by
the department.
This was a lot for a young girl to try and cope with… things were about to go from
bad to an absolute nightmare.
The drug binge lasted about two weeks before it happened; the drug binge was
funded by a crime spree. She was 'off her dial' as she says, 24/7 with only one
night's sleep each week.
Thursday night she was robbing a convenience store, screaming at the girl to give
her the money as she staggered around barely able to stand up. Jazmin was so
drugged that the cashier thought she had a chance to call the Police. Not so, Jazz
realized as the girl went for the phone and jumped the counter to stop her.
In the struggle, the girl behind the counter hit her head and later
died of a brain injury in the Ambulance on the way to hospital.


Manslaughter.


As a child she was sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment at the state's
institution for juvenile offenders. "It wasn't long enough, nothing could have been
long enough," she said. "It weighs on my heart every moment of every day of my life
that I killed someone. I will never forgive myself."
The day she was released, Jazmin stole again and caught the first bus inter-state.
At eighteen, and only a couple of days out of prison Jazmin met Rebecca and was
soon introduced to me.
While she was living on the street, between the ages of 12 and 16, Jazmin kept
herself in school. Not only was it important to her to eventually grow up into an adult
and have a future but it provided a sense of normality.
"Kids go to school, she said - so that's what I did, I went to school and kept
going to school every day despite how hard it was being homeless."
Jazmin was alive when she sang. We would sit around in a group and just sing. She
knew all the words of all the cool songs, having printed them off the internet at the
local drop-in centre. It brought us all to life really, sitting there together singing and
chatting, talking and listening to each other.
Sniffing paint was a very cheep way for her to get high, $3.50. Prolonged use lead
to a very mature decision to go into rehab. They scanned her brain and showed her
the damage she had done.
"My brain is only half as big as it should be, she said. The paint has just eaten it
away, I've been sniffing since I was a little kid and this is what has happened."









Sylvia* in Tanzania worked as a domestic. Despite only being a young teenager,
she worked long hours cooking, cleaning and doing the majority of household
chores. She was made to sleep on the floor, was only given leftovers to eat and was
not paid for her labour. When one of the men in the household severely beat her for
refusing his sexual advances, she fled. A neighbour referred her to the local
organisation Kivulini which provided her with safe shelter and compensation from
her 'employer'.



The exploitation of children is layered with prostitution, drugs, guns, toxic waste, and
tobacco smuggling. Ten-year-olds are selling drugs. Simultaneously, child
prostitution is on the rise. Child pornography on the Internet features more recently
taken pictures. There is an overwhelming increase in chat rooms for child sex
solicitation. The volume of chat rooms and child pornography websites is at an all
time high. Sex tourism is a booming business.

It is not limited to Europe. Many western African girls — Nigeria, Sierra Leone,
Senegal, and Ghana are prostitutes throughout Europe. I also encountered children
from Kenya, Nepal and India. Not all of them are prostituting by choice. Many
thought that they were getting legitimate jobs. Many have had their passports and
documentation taken away by their traffickers. All but one girl I interviewed had been
gang-raped by traffickers and pimps and their buddies. Their pimps or traffickers
told them that they could not go to the local police because the local police were
involved. Many believed these statements because in their homelands, some of the
traffickers were the police or involved with the police. One girl said she was actually
sold by a Chief of Police — not once, but twice. She attempted suicide.



Robert Noel Clemens was a member of the Ontario Roaming Bares nudist club
when he befriended a couple who shared his enthusiasm for naturism.
But after winning their trust, he sexually assaulted their 4-year-old daughter on
sleepovers. And he took secret digital pictures of the tot as she slept in the nude,
later swapping them for other images on the Web.
A tip from British police and sleuthing by Toronto cops led to his conviction for child
pornography and sexual assault.
On Friday, Justice Edward Then sentenced the 39-year-old Toronto man to 4 1/2
years in prison, citing an "egregious breach of trust."
The little girl, now 6, could suffer years of trauma, the judge said.
Using information from a 2003 FBI bust of an online child pornography-trading
newsgroup, police in Staffordshire, England, arrested a man swapping images with
Clemens in Toronto.
Clemens had been peddling the girl's pictures, claiming she was his child. The
British only knew his alias, which they passed on to Toronto police.
Using sophisticated software, Sgt. Mary Vruna and colleagues tracked the victim
down to Ohio, where the nudist family had moved from Toronto.
It turned out the girl had once complained to her parents about indecent actions by
"Bob," but the family had failed to inform police for fear of repercussions with
children's aid officials, the judge said.
In 2004, police executed a warrant on Clemens's home and found 3,500 child porn
images showing adults committing every imaginable sexual act with children, and
kids having sex among themselves.
Police also found 150 videos, DVDs and CD-ROMs with suggestive titles. They
found close-up pictures he had taken of the nudist couple's daughter.
He was charged with sexual assault and possessing, making and distributing child
porn.
In 2005, while on bail he was picked up for breaching his release terms.
After pre-trial custody is deducted from Clemens's sentence, he must serve two
more years, followed by three years' probation.
The judge ordered him to comply with treatment.
After the sentencing, Nancy Embry, of Beyond Borders, a child exploitation
watchdog group, praised police success in rescuing the girl from danger.


Tracie smiled slightly as she talked about the sexual abuse that dominated her life
as a child. It was the smile of a woman who was finally at peace.
She suffered sexual molestation at the hands of her father, starting when she was
12 years old and continuing until she was 18. Tracie is not her real name. She
agreed to speak with The Tribune only after being reassured that her identity would
be kept confidential.
Her story of being attacked as a child by an adult isn't one of victory, but one of pain,
tragedy and finally triumph and forgiveness. And sadly, it's the kind of story to which
far too many Blacks in the Philadelphia area can attest.
How could he?
"The first time my dad forced himself on me was confusing," Tracie said. "He came
into my bedroom late at night and did oral sex on me. At first, I didn't know what was
happening. I mean, I was 12 years old at the time. I knew about oral sex but I had
never had sex at that age."
Tracie said after the attack she cried herself to sleep.
The next day, she pretended she was sick, to avoid going to school. She stayed in
bed all day, thinking about what had happened to her. She didn't know whom to talk
to or even how to describe what her father had done.
The one thing Tracie was sure of was that her father had done wrong.
"I tried to tell my mother eventually," she said. "I didn't really know how to describe it,
so I said that a friend at school had told me that her father had done something bad
to her. That he had done a bad sexual thing to her. My mother became angry and
said, 'Well, things like that don't happen in our family.' I wanted to tell her how wrong
she was. Later on, I realized she knew about it all along."
But that first night became other nights, Tracie said.
"I didn't know it then, but now I know that a person who sexually abuses their own
child doesn't do it just once and that's it," she said. "That would be bad enough, but
it happens over and over. It ain't a one-time thing, you hear me?"
Tracie said as she grew older, her father took advantage of her in more intimate
ways, eventually copulating with her. She said whenever the family was around other
people, her father acted like a model citizen - the loving father and doting husband.
"What a hypocrite he was, my mother too," she said. "When I was little, I used to
want a sister to play with. Now, I'm glad that I was an only child, because if I had
sisters, my father would have abused them all, you know what I mean?
"For the longest time after I moved out, I hated them both. I hated my father for what
he did to me and my mother for not stopping him. I was a devastated person."
According to Tracie, when she moved from her parents' home at age 18, she began
having a series of abusive sexual relationships. She allowed men to use her
sexually in any way they wanted, eventually entering a life of prostitution.
"You wouldn't know it to look at me now, but when I was younger, I was hot stuff and I
knew it," she said. "I decided that I would exploit men the way I had been exploited.
But really, I was exploiting myself, allowing myself to be used like that."
Tracie said that for years, she blamed herself for what her father had done. She
believed, in some way, she had been responsible for the abuse, displaying a
disposition that sex-abuse experts suggest is a common feeling of accountability
characterizing sexually abused individuals.
Tracie said her life as a prostitute continued off and on for almost ten years. Then, a
girl friend of hers contracted AIDS and she watched her slowly die.
"I didn't want the same thing to happen to me," she said. "I remember just walking
down the street one night, thinking about how she looked, all emaciated in the
hospital bed. The life just drained out of her. She was just waiting to die."
Tracie said she went for a walk one night, thinking and crying. It was at a park near
Lancaster Avenue in West Philadelphia where she met a group that would later help
turn her life around.
"One of them handed me a Bible pamphlet," she said. "I looked at it and looked at
them and they were looking at me. 'Jesus can help you, sister,' said this one
woman. She looked like how I wanted to be. She looked clean and confident and
you know what else? She looked peaceful."
Tracie began asking questions. She later became involved in the church across the
street from the park where she met the group.
"They were having a deliverance service," she said. "You know what deliverance
is? It's freedom from slavery. I gave my life to Christ that night. That's when
everything changed."



The part-time nude model who amassed Alberta's largest collection of kiddie porn
was jailed yesterday by a judge who rejected his claim the photos were used to
study poses.

Provincial court Judge Bruce Millar said Edward Boers' explanation showed he was
in denial.

"Your version of events (was) ... your intent was to save them until you retired from
your employment and became more involved in your modelling career," Miller said.

"While I believe that you believe this is what you were doing, I cannot accept this as
your motive and I reject this argument," the judge said in handing Boers a six-month
jail term.

"You knew what you were purchasing," the judge said.

Boers, 59, was convicted earlier this year of possession of child pornography and
accessing such smut on the web.

A police investigation found 1,375,054 pornographic images on Boers computer,
and estimated 70%to 75% were kiddie porn.


Officers found more than 8,000 videos and written works on child pornography.












The shocking case of a man accused of sexually assaulting a young child live on the
Internet is thought to be one of Canada's first, but it won't be the last of its type, a
Toronto police officer said Thursday in warning about brazen pedophiles and how
technology is feeding their perversion.

A 34-year-old man from St. Thomas, Ont., was remanded into custody Thursday
and faces 11 charges for allegedly providing an undercover police officer with live
video of him abusing a young girl.

The London Free Press reported the victim was the accused's preschool-aged
child.

An undercover officer had been chatting online with a man since January - and was
sent child pornography images - but the case took an unexpected twist on Sunday
when the man allegedly connected police with a private video feed.

Toronto police Det.-Const. Paul Krawczyk said the undercover team was surprised
when the man offered up a live look inside his home, and stressed the transmission
was nothing police asked for.

He called the footage nauseating and said the case is unprecedented because it's
the first time Toronto's world-renowned child exploitation unit has made an arrest
based on a live Internet broadcast.

Krawczyk was shocked by what he saw, despite his years of experience fighting
child pornography.

"I've been in this unit for over four years and you think you've seen everything," he
said.

"At that moment what I recall is my heart racing out of control, sweating, and feeling
like I was going to throw up."

Toronto police immediately placed a call to Ontario Provincial Police, who in turn
got involved with St. Thomas police and sprang into action.

Because police had narrowed down the rough location of the man's home, St.
Thomas police were at his door within two hours. Police declined to discuss exactly
how they located the home.

Krawczyk said it was gratifying to have a case where police could act quickly and
rescue a victim.

"We see these images and unfortunately we see a lot of them, many times a day
even," he said at a news conference.

"But to see this child, and look in that child's eyes, and realize that that child was live
somewhere and we had the possibility to save her right then, it's difficult to describe
(how it feels)."

In the future, Krawczyk said he's convinced police will face similar cases. He said
the Internet and increasingly inexpensive technology have created a brave new
world for pedophiles, who can easily network with other abusers and are becoming
more brazen in committing their crimes.

Krawczyk said consumer technology has made huge strides in the last decade, but
even a year or two brings a huge evolution in improvement and reduced cost.

"Now you can take these images, download them to your computer and have them
halfway around the world within minutes."

Staff Sgt. Mike Frizzell of the RCMP's National Child Exploitation Co-ordination
Centre said not only has technology made it easier for pedophiles, it's also
encouraging them to push the envelope in more extreme and sick ways.

"Human nature is that you're always trying to outdo, and no matter what they're into,
the more extreme the better," he said.

Live feeds will become popular with pedophiles because it lets them feel involved in
the abuse, Frizzell said.

"It's not good enough that it's happening, they have to know it's happening right now
and even better, that they're somehow influencing what's happening," he said.

"If they get the abuser to do something that wasn't prerecorded abuse, it's like,
'Wow, he did that because I told him to.'"

Krawczyk said it's disturbing that pedophiles are finding it increasingly easy to
connect with each other and spur one another on.

"(They) set up places where you can meet and talk about it and normalize it and the
cognitive distortions that go on, they start discussing that this is OK," he said.

"They're getting more daring because the Internet allows them to talk about their
conquests and allows them to discuss (child pornography) with like-minded people,
and that is a scary thought."

Pedophiles are also sharing their expertise to help keep each other from being
caught, Frizzell added.

"They share with each other how to avoid detection, how to bounce off proxy servers
and make it look like you're somewhere else, how to hack into unsuspecting
computers to make it look like you're there instead of where (they actually) are,"
Frizzell said.

"They're very good at sharing their information to avoid detection and they know
statistically speaking, the chances of them being caught or found on the Internet are
very, very low."

But Krawczyk said police are constantly researching pedophiles' methods and
warned them they will be caught.

"We are on the Internet 24-7, we know where you go, we know where you are, and
we're there too," he said.

"We will find you and we will arrest you and we will rescue the children that you are
exploiting."

In the St. Thomas case, the accused - whose name is not being released in order to
protect victim's identity - is charged with making child pornography, making it
available, possession for the purpose of distribution, sexual assault and sexual
interference.

Officers also seized two computers and approximately 100 CD-ROMs and floppy
diskettes.



Italian police on Monday started an operation against child molestation and abuse
with 32 arrests warranted in Rome and other cities.

The operation, code-named "Flowers in the Mud 2", was said to be a follow-up to
another operation about a year ago involving the exploitation of gypsy children,
which resulted in the arrest of 18 people.

Those arrested included four parents, eight suspected pedophiles, two Roman
youths and two directors of a private social services firm.

According to sources in the current operation, the arrest warrants were issued
against people suspected of having sexually abused Roman minors under the age
of 14.

















A man from Nixa, Missouri is charged with multiple charges involving child
pornography, after Christian County authorities were alerted by investigators in
Switzerland.
Jonathan J. Lewis, 24, is charged with one count of promoting child pornography
and nine counts of possession of child porn.

Christian County Prosecuting Attorney Ron Cleek says Lewis came to the attention
of authorities in the Ozarks when agents of the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement office were contacted by Swiss authorities.

According to court documents, Lewis allegedly forwarded several video files
containing child pornography, to somone in Switzerland over the internet. The files
were transferred in June, 2005.

According to the charges against Lewis, the video files contained graphic images
and clips of young children engaged in sexual acts.

After Swiss Federal Police provided print outs of images seized from the computer
in Switzerland, ICE agents contacted Missouri state technical assistance officers
and Christian County investigators.

Cleek says a search warrant was issued for Lewis` home in Nixa the same day the
Swiss authorities notified Missouri investigators.

Cleek says charges were not filed until Friday, November 3, because Lewis`
computer has been with forensic examiners in Jefferson City since it was seized.

Lewis was arrested Friday and quickly posted bond. He has not yet made his first
court appearance.





A 44-year-old Wellington woman who worked as a Lake Worth police crime scene
investigator was barred from using the Internet and registered as a sex offender
after pleading guilty Monday to charges she solicited sex from teenage boys via the
computer.

In July, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Officereceived a call from a woman who
said Gina Brunelas was soliciting her 17-year-old son over the Internet for sex. A
probable cause affidavit contains banter between the teen and Brunelas in which
she writes, "the general is goin away the 1st week of August" and asks the boy if
he's interested in "fun fun and more fun." She wrote that the boy could come over
late "when the kids are well into a deep sleep."

general" and that she asked him many times to have sex when her husband was out
of town. The teen said Brunelas had also tried to have sex with his friend. Like the
17-year-old, a 16-year-old told police that Brunelas called and text-messaged him
to arrange a sexual rendezvous.

Brunelas pleaded guilty to a computer pornography and child exploitation charge.

Circuit Judge Edward Garrison placed her on five years of sex-offender probation,
which means she must abide by more stringent rules than regular probation, such
as completing sex offender treatment, not having unsupervised contact with any
children other than her own and not working or volunteering at a school or day-care.

She must also submit to an HIV test and take an annual polygraph test.

Garrison withheld adjudication, meaning that if Brunelas successfully completes her
probation she will not have a felony conviction on her record. She will remain a
registered sex offender, however, until she petitions the Florida Department of Law
Enforcement to have her name removed.

Brunelas made a beeline for the courthouse elevator following her plea, but defense
attorney Michael Salnick said the facts of the case "gave rise to some
misunderstandings and misinterpretations."












A prosecutor killed himself as police tried to serve him with an arrest warrant
alleging he solicited sex with a minor, authorities said.

Louis "Bill" Conradt Jr., 56, a chief felony assistant district attorney for Rockwall
County, died Sunday. Police had moved to arrest Conradt following a sting
operation aimed at exposing child sex predators set up by a television news
program.

Police forced their way into Conradt's Terrell home after hearing a gunshot when he
refused to answer the door, a police spokesman said. The officers found Conradt
with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He later died at a hospital in Dallas, about 30
miles west of his home in Terrell.

Police in the town of Murphy said Conradt had solicited sex from a decoy posing
online as a 13-year-old. Murphy police were attempting to serve an arrest warrant
and a search warrant for Conradt's computer when he shot himself, Murphy Police
spokesman Sgt. Snow Robertson said.

The Dallas Morning News reported in its Monday editions that the sting was a joint
operation between Perverted Justice, an Internet watchdog group, and NBC's news
magazine "Dateline." The sting lured men seeking sex with children to a house in
Murphy, about 20 miles northeast of Dallas.

Murphy police said Conradt had not gone to the house but believed he would.

Robertson said there was nothing police could to do prevent Conradt's death, which
happened while an NBC crew waited outside on the street.

"When somebody decides to do this, there is nothing you can do," he said.

There had been no contact between "Dateline" and Conradt, according to an NBC
statement to the newspaper.

Murphy Mayor Bret Bishop told the newspaper that he hopes Murphy won't be used
again as a trap for child predators.

"We're going to do whatever we need to do to make sure this doesn't continue," he
said. "I think it's a noble cause, but our police department is hired to serve and
protect our citizens, and not to expose them to outside threats."

















A TEENAGER found guilty of a series of child pornography charges walked free
from a court yesterday (Monday, 06 November).

Nineteen-year-old Oliver Mitchell
* aged just 13 when he got involved in an illegal child porn ring which swapped
hardcore pictures of young children over the internet - was handed a twoyear
community rehabilitation order and told he must attend a sex offender treatment
programme.

Describing Mitchell as "arrogant and intransigent", Cambridge Crown Court Judge
Gareth Hawkesworth told him his hands were tied by the law because of the teen's
age at the time of the offences.

The only custodial option available - a short term in a young offender institution with
a short licence period after
* would not do enough to deter or rehabilitate, he said.

He said: "My only course in such circumstances is to give priority to the need to try
to stop you offending in the future and to protect others.

"Your offending started at a very early age and I take the view it will take a number
of years of hard work before you really change. Extensive one-toone work will be
needed."

Mitchell has been subjected to vigilante attacks at his home at Shingay Road,
Steeple Morden, since he came under the police spotlight. His family has also
suffered because of the stress of the long investigation, the court heard.

"Nobody should lose sight of the fact it was ultimately your intransigence that
caused that long period of agony," the judge told him. "It was well within your power
to bring it to a swift end by admitting your culpability."

Mitchell maintained throughout a week-long trial last month he was innocent of the
25 charges he faced, relating to his interest in indecent images of children when he
was aged between 13 and 16.

He was convicted on 12 counts of possession, including two with intent to distribute,
and another of inciting - when he was 13 - a paedophile involved in a child porn ring
to send him hardcore images.

The teenager, son of a computer consultant father and whose mother runs a stud
farm, was ensnared by an email he sent to the paedophile in 2001.

Thames Valley police arrested the man in 2003 and found messages from Mitchell
still filed on his computer.

Police subsequently swooped on Mitchell's home, seizing computer equipment
there and discovering a small number of mostly low-grade indecent pictures.

More worryingly, they found a file - which it is believed holds thousands of hardcore
images - but which is covered by a sophisticated form of encryption requiring a
secret password for access.

Mitchell, who now concedes he did view child pornography, has refused to provide
the password and analysts have been unable to crack it. The teenager will have his
computer use restricted in future.

Judge Hawkesworth imposed an indefinite Sexual Offences Prevention Order
banning him from viewing, sending or receiving images of children under the age of
18 or using newsgroups or internet chat rooms.

Mitchell will also be required to retain, and provide to police if necessary,
passwords to any encrypted data stored on computers he uses from now on.

The judge also banned Mitchell from working with anyone under the age of 16 for
the next 11 years and ordered him to sign on the Sex Offender Register, where his
name will remain for five years.



Lincoln Crown Court heard how officers seized a computer tower and a large
number of DVDs and CDs. They also found two indecent photos of girls aged
between 12 and 15.

The pictures included 4,709 photographs on the hard drive and 2,583 that were
stored on the DVDs and CDs, the court was told.

Four of the images were graded at level four – the most serious – 14 at level three,
2,440 at level two and 4,831 at level one.

Jonathan Goulding, prosecuting, said Gasper downloaded all the images and either
transferred them to disc or kept them on his hard drive.

Police also found 645 pirate movies, including box office hits, and a list of films
during the search of his house.

Mr Goulding said the films were sent to the Federation Against Copyright Theft,
whose experts established they were all counterfeit copies.

When quizzed by police, Gasper admitted accessing adult porn sites and
“preferring teenage girls” but denied distributing any material.

Mr Goulding said Gasper (48) would put a particular phrase into his search engine
because he knew it was likely to find material about underage girls.

Questioned about the pirate films, Gasper admitted selling them to friends for
between £2 and £5, sometimes selling up to six a week.

He pleaded guilty to three offences of possessing indecent photographs of children
between December 30, 2001 and March 31, last year.

He also admitted 10 charges of making indecent photographs of children and eight
of possessing goods with an unauthorised trademark with a view to sell.

Audrey Archer, mitigating, said Gasper did not distribute any of the porn and put the
images on discs only because his hard drive was full.

She also said the children in the photos downloaded by Gasper appeared to be
aged 10, 11 or older.

She said: “There is no evidence he cut and pasted these photos. He did not e-mail
them to any other person or receive any by e-mail,” she said.

Miss Archer said Gasper was fulfilling his interest in “older teenage women” when
photos of youngsters were downloaded in the same batches.

Passing sentence, Judge John Machin, said anyone who viewed child porn was
encouraging demand for the material.

He said: “It is serious, because people like you, who view level-four material,
ultimately are responsible for the recruiting of these girls.”





ATHENS, Greece: A man has been arrested in northern Greece for hosting child
pornography links on his Greece-based Web site, police said Sunday.

The 32-year-old Greek suspect — a physics teacher who lives and works in
Germany — was detained Saturday in the northern Greek town of Halkida by police
after a two-month investigation. The web site server was located in the northern port
city of Thessaloniki.

Police said the suspect hosted links to foreign web sites that sold sexually explicit
material involving children aged 5-10.





CARLSBAD A 12-year-old Carlsbad boy has admitted he committed sex crimes
on a 2-year-old boy last month.
Anthony Duran of Carlsbad was in Children's Court on Monday for a hearing before
District Judge J. Richard Brown.

During the hearing, Duran admitted to two sex crimes criminal sexual penetration
and criminal sexual contact. Brown asked if Duran understood the charges against
him.

"Yes, sir," he said.

When Brown asked Duran what the charges were, he said, "Something that I
wished I'd never done and I really regret it. I don't want to talk out loud about it."

Duran, who has remained in juvenile detention since he was taken into custody in
mid-October, was wearing hand and leg cuffs as he was led into the courtroom by a
detention officer.

According to court documents, Duran is accused of committing the sex crimes on
the male child on Oct. 8.












A Toronto firefighter was arrested Tuesday as part of probe by child exploitation
investigators. But police found more than they had expected after raiding the man's
house.


Police conducted an afternoon raid at Scott Connor's home on Copping Road in
Scarborough.


Once inside officers seized video cassettes, compact discs and DVDs they allege
contain pornographic material involving children.


Police found a few surprises once they entered the home, including an alleged
marijuana grow-op in the basement and several weapons including a shotgun, a
pistol and swords.


Conner, who has been a member of the fire department since 1987, was taken into
custody.


The 45-year-old is facing several charges, including:


Two counts of possession of child pornography;
Making child pornography available;
Possession of a prohibited weapon; and
Possession and production of marijuana.

Senior fire department officials visited Connor's home after the raid and were
permitted by police to enter the sealed house.


"It's just an unfortunate situation and we're going to work closely with the Toronto
police and bring a (resolution) to it," Division Commander Daryl Fuglerud said.















the following are the most heartwrenching words fell from the mouth of a child forced
to sleep in cages constructed with chickenwire by his adoptive parents. when
questioned regarding potential experienced abuse and whether or not the "school
aged boy"  wanted to remain with michael and sharen gravelle, he said:

"It doesn't matter," he said. "There's no sense getting comfortable at any place."

the gravelles desire to regain custody of the 11 children, ages 1-15, which were
removed from the home after two years after another under-rug-swept social worker
report of potential abuse. the children are afflicted with various afflictions, including
fas, hiv, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. the child above reported various
occasions of abuse that would make dave pelzer squirm:

In earlier testimony, the boy said most of his brothers and sisters slept on wood with
blankets but no pillows or mattresses in the cages.

One girl's head was shoved in a toilet by a parent because she was drinking water
out of it, and another had her head pushed into a toilet because she urinated in bed,
the boy said.

The boy testified that he had to sleep in the bathroom for nearly three months
because he wet his bed at night.

"Another time, I spent a good portion of my life in there," he said. "If I was really
good, I'd get to come out for an hour."...

"I couldn't come out of my room until I wrote the whole book of Deuteronomy," he
said. "I was up there for like a month."

and, of course, the child's voice is immediately accompanied by doubt....

The boy admitted lying often when he was younger and being violent and abusive
toward his siblings....

Sharen Gravelle shook her head "no" frequently during his testimony and has said
the children have lied to investigators.

thanks to false memory syndrome and the labeling of adopted children with various
psychoses, as elaine scarry notes, another's pain is always accompanied by doubt.
and from which well springs doubt? denial.



MORE internet child sex predators are facing court, and most offenders are quick to
plead guilty, according to Australian Federal Police online child sex exploitation
team co-ordinator Greg Harrigan.

"There's not a high incidence of people challenging these charges," he said.
"Making a not-guilty plea means that all the images obtained by police will be
shown to the court, which may lead to more severe sentences.

"Most people, when caught, want to deal with the matter as quickly as possible."

More than 100 local and foreign police officers are at a four-day training session in
Brisbane this week - hosted by Queensland Police and Microsoft - to hone internet
investigation skills.



Global efforts are shifting towards identifying individual children, so they can be
rescued.

Image recognition software is used to compare where the abuse took place, and to
connect perpetrators with victims.

Since Interpol set up a database in 2001, about 500 children have been identified,
but there are photos of 20,000 abused children on the database, and Save the
Children Europe is calling for additional resources.

FBI Innocent Images Unit chief Arnold Bell reported greate