Splintered Lives - Barnardo's

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chapter
9
invariably involves playing truant from school and being taken into care and it
always ends in tears ....The miserable truth is that the pavement gives the children
everything that has been denied them. They were poor now they have money. They
were bored, and this is a buzz. They were victims, but now they have power. They
were worthless, but now there are queues of adults who will pay handfuls of cash for
their company. They grew up in a world that made painfully clear that it did not want
them, but these punters love them. It is a caricature of the life they were promised, a
grotesque parody. It is child abuse, blessed by the authority of the commercial
contract (1994a, p2-3).
Developing routes out of sexual exploitation requires that we understand the potent,
and variable combinations of factors involved in remaining inside. These include:
�� economic survival (sometimes providing a much better life style than would be
possible otherwise);
�� the possibility of independence - from family or institutional care;
�� coercion by pimps, procurers and abusers often accompanied by a confused
sense of loyalty to them;
�� a sense of belonging to a community, coupled with the stigma which currently
attaches to anyone who is working, or has worked, in the sex industry;
�� drug addiction and/or debts.
There will seldom be only one of these elements present, although factors such as drug
addiction or overt coercion may limit the possibility of imagining/creating a route out.
Current provision for children and young people escaping the sex industry is extremely
limited. Few projects provide ongoing support which gives access to real alternatives22.
Those that do are still struggling against wider economic realities. We should be under
no illusions that major social and economic change which eradicated the possibility of
starvation for children and their families, and which tackled homelessness, would need to
be implemented before the possibility of a route out could be available for most
children and young people worldwide. Without these fundamental changes, provision
for those experiencing sexual exploitation will be severely limited in the change it can
effect.
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22. WHISPER a project for adult women escaping the sex industry in the United States, has recognised the necessity of providing
women with economic alternatives. The project finds women both refuge, and long term accommodation, and provides
employment training. Women's projects in the Philippines and in India have provided women with loans to set up their own
business.