The trafficking of children for purposes of sexual exploitation

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• An increase in unemployment • Relatively low levels of education • Changes in nuclear and extended families • Changes in religious and cultural beliefs of society • Breakdown in family and community support systems • Lack of social welfare and protective services for children • Lack of effective and appropriate investigation, sentencing and prosecution of offenders • An increased demand for black children, from especially European and North American men, for sexual purposes • Changes in the domestic and international sex industries • An increase in the demand to engage in sexual acts with younger children Box 4: Article 39 – The UN CRC (1979) State Parties shall take all appropriate measures to promote physical and psychological recovery and social integration of a child victim of; any form of neglect, exploitation; or abuse, torture or any other form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; or armed conflicts. Such recovery and reintegration shall take place in an environment, which fosters the health, self-respect and dignity of the child. • Mistaken beliefs that children are free from sexually transmitted diseases • Mistaken beliefs that sex with a virgin will cure sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV infection and AIDS • Relative bargaining power that an older woman has • Children are less likely to be able to negotiate the terms of the exchange. Children are typically forced into specific sectors of the organised sex industry, such as being prostituted in hotels, brothels, hostess and escort clubs, sex clubs and bars, or being prostituted on streets. They are also forced to engage in sexual acts to be filmed and photographed for the purpose of pornography. The production of child pornography involving boys and girls are reported to be on the increase. Overtly explicit sexual and sexualised images of children are exploited as part of a multibillion-dollar world-wide pornography industry. It has been said that two things sustain the growth in child prostitution: the dominance of money and the strength of the desire for perverse pleasure, 99 essentially the demand fuelled by the money to pay for sex with a child. Box 5: Article 34 – The UN CRC (1979) State Parties undertake to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and abuse. For these purposes, State Parties shall in particular take all national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent: (a) The inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual activity (b) The exploitative use of children in prostitution or other unlawful practices (c) The exploitative use of children in pornographic performances and materials. 99 P.Lee-Wright: Child Slaves, Earthscan, 1990 p.25 39
Chapter 5 Cross-border trafficking of children Introduction Information on the cross-border trafficking of children for purposes of sexual exploitation is difficult to obtain. Interviews with SAPS officers, members of community organisations, an official of the Thai Embassy and newspaper reports however give some indications. Reports indicate that the traffic is mostly to South Africa and that it is organised by international crime syndicates from Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. It is suspected that crime syndicates involved in the traffic of women from these regions are also involved in the traffic of children. With regard to traffic from the rest of Africa South Africa is regarded as a country of destination especially for children from Moçambique and Angola. It is not known whether the same organised criminal groups involved in the traffic of women are involved in the traffic of children. 100 One report indicated that the traffic of children from Moçambique was the work of an individual. 101 Another report states that Moçambicans "cross the fence illegally via Komatipoort, in Mpumalanga, where they meet 'traders' who offer them the good life in South Africa". 102 2. South Africa as destination country The cross-border traffic of children for purposes of sexual exploitation is not a new phenomenon in South Africa. Van Onselen 103 in his study on the early sex industry on the Witwatersrand highlighted the story of 15 year old Fanny Kreslo from Poland who was trafficked in 1898, and described the operations for both in-country traffic of women from the Cape and the need for girls from elsewhere thus: "It is certain that some attempts were made to recruit local women into the trade in vice - a procedure which appealed to the souteneurs because it had the virtue of being relatively cheap. In such cases the pimps would usually send out the oldest and most trusted of their prostitutes - the madams of their houses - to the town parks and recreation areas where seemingly attractive propositions would be put to badly paid white domestic servants or other young white women. Given the chronic shortage of mature women on the Rand at this time, however, this practice hardly produced a solution to the pimps' problem, and for this reason they were forced to look further afield in their search for new recruits. In the course of this latter search the pimps found that the older social formation of the Cape Colony tended to yield a slightly readier supply of poor, vulnerable or marginalised women. Small numbers of coloured domestic servants who had already been seduced by white men could occasionally be recruited from Cape 'boarding houses', while job adverts placed in the Colony's newspapers - via bogus 'employment agencies' - sometimes succeeded in luring naïve European women into the Transvaal's ' 'houses of ill-fame'. Not even these forays to the south, however, could keep pace with the Rand's demand for sexual services during the mid - 1890s, and for this reason the 'Bowery Boys' and other local pimps were forced to turn to the older societies of Europe for the bulk of their supplies of prostitutes. At least some of these European recruiting operations worked along the same lines as those employed in the Cape. Advertisements placed in British or continental newspapers offered young women an assisted passage to South Africa in order to take up well-paid positions as 'barmaids' or domestic servants in 100 Molo Songololo: The Traffic of Women into the South African Sex Industry, 2000 101 See report on traffic in Wintersveld, in this chapter 102 N. Ncaca: "Cops rescue Illegals from grip of 'syndicate'" City Press, 31/1/99 103 C. Van Onselen: 'Prostitutes and Proletarians 1886 - 1914: Commercialised sex in the changing social formations engendered by rapid capitalist development in the Transvaal during the era of imperialism' in Studies in the Social and Economic Development of the Witwatersrand 1886-1914, Vol 1 New Babylon (Ravan, Johannesburg, 1982) 40
Page 2 and 3: The Trafficking of Children for Pur
Page 4 and 5: Acknowledgments This report was res
Page 6 and 7: Contents Page About Molo Songololo
Page 8 and 9: 5.4 Punishment and resistance 59 5.
Page 10 and 11: Executive summary This research rep
Page 12 and 13: Moçambique and Angola involves bot
Page 14 and 15: Children. The Norwegian Justice Min
Page 16 and 17: Chapter 1 Motivations of the resear
Page 18 and 19: 2. Ensure a reduction in the incide
Page 20 and 21: Box 1: Glossary of terms Trafficker
Page 22 and 23: 3. Terminology The terms, "the chil
Page 24 and 25: 4. Design and Method 4.1. Aims and
Page 26 and 27: m) A review of the following releva
Page 28 and 29: to emphasise the immediate need for
Page 30 and 31: countries to ensure that measures a
Page 32 and 33: Actors/dancers/singers wanted. Expe
Page 34 and 35: Chapter 4 Factors and trends with r
Page 36 and 37: Mpumalanga 7 3 18 12 North West Pro
Page 38 and 39: According to a sex worker the effec
Page 40 and 41: Here individual traits and problems
Page 42 and 43: • Men from the Northern Suburbs o
Page 44 and 45: Alleged police involvement and corr
Page 46 and 47: Map 2: Some indications of local tr
Page 50 and 51: Johannesburg. Needless to say, once
Page 52 and 53: Map 3: Cross-border trafficking of
Page 54 and 55: Chapter 6 The role of gangs in the
Page 56 and 57: gangs in their own right. 135 These
Page 58 and 59: Little is known about the gang lead
Page 60 and 61: • All had been physically and sex
Page 62 and 63: Original transcripts of selected te
Page 64 and 65: Abduction 3: Alicia's story Origina
Page 66 and 67: Any act seen as resistance or a cha
Page 68 and 69: Referred to as " besagheid" or "wer
Page 70 and 71: Lucia gets away: as told by Jenny T
Page 72 and 73: Table 6: Girls in the gang intervie
Page 74 and 75: During the course of the twentieth
Page 76 and 77: States Parties undertake to protect
Page 78 and 79: Article 3 states that: State Partie
Page 80 and 81: Article 7 places an obligation on s
Page 82 and 83: constitutive elements related to of
Page 84 and 85: the appropriate authorities, like t
Page 86 and 87: whoa) permits, procures or attempts
Page 88 and 89: foreign nationals to come to this c
Page 90 and 91: This Act provides for a broad defin
Page 92 and 93: • Films and Publication Act, No 6
Page 94 and 95: 2) The Children's Court may order t
Page 96 and 97: espect to restorative justice this
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process to manage the problem in So
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Legal Instruments South African Leg
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"Zunaid". Ek het, was die enigste e
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Ons gee vir hulle pak. - Belinda 5.
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man sê toe nou vir my ek moet eers
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For these purposes, State Parties s
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States Parties to the present Chart
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9. The commercial sexual exploitati
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esponsible sexual attitudes and beh
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The trafficking of children for purposes of sexual exploitation

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