Year on the Web
Year on the Web
Here is a summary of some sordid stories from child sex enclaves in various parts of the world.
The Austrian Government aimed to introduce tougher laws in a major clamp down on child sex abuse following a number of arrests involving an international child pornography ring. The Austrian Police have arrested four men on suspicion of producing pornography in a child prostitution ring spanning Central Europe. The men were also being investigated for alleged involvement in providing children as young as seven, mostly from neighbouring Slovakia to clients in Vienna. The leader of the Freedom Party, Joerg Haider, said that there must be no mitigation for child abusers and if convicted should be sent behind bars for life.
Bishop Hubert O'Connor (68), a former principal of a native residential school was sentenced on September 13 to two and a half years in prison for rape and indecent assault on two teenage native girls more than 30 years ago. Justice Wally Opal called the crimes committed by the Bishop as "highly offensive". The Bishop was the highest-ranking member of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada to be convicted of such offences.
A 52-year-old German man was sentenced on September 9 to two years in prison for sexual offences against young girls during a holiday in Thailand. A Frankfurt judge said in sentencing this man that the prison term was increased because he was involved in distributing child pornography and had gone back to Thailand despite the German criminal investigation. He was accused, among other things, of having sex with a 10-year-old girl and having the act filmed. In a similar sex tourism case, Berlin prosecutors in late August filed charges against two German men aged 43 and 35 sexually abusing children as young as 10 years old between 1994 and 1995 in Thailand. Engineer Konrad Heinrich Jecht (63) of Munich faces three counts of child abuse of two boys aged 15 and 16. According to German child welfare experts, an estimated 200,000 German men travel abroad each year in search of sex, many seeking girls under 14.
Most child prostitutes in Kenya, some young as 11, are penniless street children engaging in "Survival Sex", says Home Affairs Minister Francis Lotodo. They use the money for food, drugs, clothing and sometimes even school fees. Commercial sexual exploitation of children is rampant in pockets within civil society. In some cases parents/guardians were forcing their children into prostitution, and children were sexually exploited by teachers, religious leaders, soldiers and truck drivers. In the resorts along Kenya's Indian Ocean coast, "prostitution whether by children or adults is an integral part of tourism," says coast provincial tourist officer Karikui Ndune. Joseph Kittory, the Police Chief of the coastal resort of Kilifi says that no arrests were made because no complaints were laid in what were contracts between "willing seller, willing buyer". The East African Standard claimed that Kenya is fast developing a reputation as a rival to Thailand.
The District Court in The Hague presided over by Judge Leendert Verheij jailed 43-year-old Dutchman, computer specialist and father of two, Johan Vander Scheer, for five years on October 8 for sex offences committed against young girls, some as young as 12, while he was on holiday in the Philippines. Vander Scheer is the first Dutch citizen to be tried for sex offences committed against minors in another country. "The suspect treated his victims as objects to satisfy his sexual desires, he did so repeatedly and in an extraordinarily sickening manner", said the Judge in convicting him.
The Philippines special courts are to start hearing child sex abuse cases due to the increasing number of children making accusations of sexual molestation. The courts are to finish hearing a case within 60 days of it being referred to them, with a decision 15 days after the trial ends, said chief presidential Legal Counsel, Renato Cayetano.
A British man, Michael Clark, 50, of Eastbourne, was found guilty of child sex charges in the Northern Philippine city of Olongapo and was convicted on October 11 of inducing "child prostitution" after he was arrested in July 1995 for offering young girls to tourists for sex, and sentenced to 16 years, four months and one day in prison by Judge Farima Asdala. In July 1996 another Britisher, 44-year-old Steven Roy Mitchell of Walton-on-Thames, England was convicted by a Manila Court of having sex with two brothers, aged 8 and 4, and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
Sex tourism involving abuse of children is spreading to East European Countries such as Romania but authorities and public opinion are failing to take the problem seriously. Bucharest has now become an attractive destination for well-organised paedophiles with the estimated 2,000 children living in squalor on the city's streets easy prey for visitors. "We could face some overwhelming social problems unless Romania issues new laws and reforms old statutes to include new phenomena like paedophilia", said George Roman, Program Manager of 'Save the Children.'
About 600 children live permanently on the streets of Bucharest and are joined from time to time by up to 1,500 other children willing to sell themselves for sex. Around 50 paedophiles from Germany, France, Italy and Britain have rented flats in Bucharest which they visit regularly for sex with children.
The city of Cartagena on Colombia's Caribbean coast has become a new destination for sex tourists.
At night the Bocagrande hotel strip is an open-air sex market place with girls as young as 12 years on offer to groups of Italian, Spanish, German, French and Canadian men bussed from hotels to "discotheques" where they choose adolescent girls with whom they spend the night.
There are believed to be more than 21,000 under-age prostitutes in Colombia with 10,000 in Bogata alone.
Every summer hundreds of Egyptians bring their young daughters to one of three villages near Cairo and offer them to Gulf Arabs for what is described as "marriages de plaisir". The trafficking of young girls is done with the blessing of the parents who receive considerable gifts from the agents. The preference of the Arabs is usually for girls between the ages of 15-17 years. Although the legal age of marriage in Egypt is 16 years the papers can usually be changed to meet the requirements. The report received at Congress told of a young girl of 15 called Mohra forced against her will to marry a Saudi man aged 69 years. (The Egyptian Organisation of the Rights of Man OEDH)
Police said they had seized two computers and 350 floppy disks from a Helsinki flat. The disks contained pornography including pictures of sadistic acts with children, torture, mutilation and cannibalism. Law enforcers said they had no powers to arrest the suspect, a 19-year-old student, because under Finnish law distributing hard-core pornography is a minor offence. (Reuters, August 29)
The white Mercedes with tinted black windows swept past Lorraine
without stopping. So did the BMW.
"They're going round the corner for one of the little 12-year-olds," said Lorraine, her eyes glazed from sniffing glue. "I wish I was younger."
Lorraine is 19.
Just one story told from South Africa where child prostitution is said to be increasing at an alarming rate.
Children in the refugee camps of Goma are seen as a source of income for some families. Girls as young as 10 feel they have no other way of feeding themselves than to sell their bodies. Aid workers know children are bought and sold for sex but cannot do anything. There are no police, no courts and offenders go unpunished. (Action Jeunesse et environment)
A Cambodian suspected smuggling children for the international paedophile trade was arrested on December 1 at Rome Airport in the company of four Asian children aged 6, 8, 10 and 12.
Continue to Plus page 7 - Bride to be finds the groom a woman
Return to the Plus contents page
Please send your comments and suggestions on this web site to
info@suntimes.is.lk or to
webmaster@infolabs.is.lk