Paedophilia -
What Next?
By JONATHAN POWER
STOCKHOLM, Sweden--The rage and the storm have
passed--thus diminishing the hope that the world's
governments, in their collective unease, have decided at
last to throw their combined weight against the growing
cancer of paedophilia, ravaging and spoiling societies all
over. Last August, in a veritable blaze of publicity, the
Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
was held in Stockholm. 122 countries participated. The
press, more than sensitized by gruesome revelations of
sexual abuse and child murder in Belgium earlier in the
month, turned up the heat. The governments said they WOULD
do something.
A week later the U.S. was bombing Iraq once again. It
didn't, as usual, do much to damage Saddam Hussein but it
did bury the paedophilia story and allowed governments to
return to doing what they had pledged to do in Stockholm as
a matter of urgency more at their usual pace.
But to quote Julius Caesar: "There is a tide in the
affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows
and in miseries." Unless we give it everything we've got in
a sustained way and get a grip on the vast and inter-related
problems of paedophilia, child prostitution and street
children--some 100 million children around the world--we're
going to have a lot more Saddam Husseins in the not too
distant future. Not only is the world's slothfulness not
good for children whose formative and most innocent years
are made bleak, loveless and wretched, it is not good for
society at large which, before very long, will have in its
midst millions of adults whose lives were disturbed and
disrupted at an early age and who feel they owe the world
very little. Resentment can be one of the most destructive
of social forces. If nothing sufficient is done the sins of
the twentieth century will wreck an appalling havoc on those
who will live out most of the twenty-first.
The sexual exploitation of children, despite last
August's hoop-la, is a relatively unplumbed subject,
surrounded, as Swedish author Ore Narvesen puts it, "by
bitter personal experience, family tragedy, taboos, disgrace
and suppression."
My own conclusion, after reading his monograph, is that
governments are usually overwhelmed by any admonition that
says simply, "abolish poverty" and Mr. Harvesen by
identifying three fault zones where child prostitution is
most common enables scarce resources to be concentrated with
some likelihood of effectiveness:
The children of prostitutes: In India one study claims
that there are as many as 5 million children alive today who
are the offspring of prostitutes. Prostitutes in developing
countries rarely use contraceptives, either because they are
not easily available or because they cannot afford them.
The children of prostitutes, inevitably, do not
experience much family life. They spend large parts of the
day and evening left to their own devices. Not surprisingly
they are easily lured into a world of drugs, violence,
criminality and sexual exploitation. They are close to, if
not actually watching, their mothers in compromising, even
sadistic, situations. In Brazil children, even at the age of
three or four, are sent out to procure for their mothers. By
9 or 10 they are selling their own bodies.
Housemaids: They're often sent into service by desperate
parents at a tender age, even as young as 6 or 7. If there
is sexual abuse by employers, their sons or friends they are
intimidated into silence by the fear of dismissal. Often
they become pregnant or the mistress of the house discovers
what is going on. Out on the street they face disgrace if
they return home, particularly if they have a child.
Prostitution becomes a ready way of making ends meet.
Street children: They do not invariably drift into
prostitution. The large majority of children who live and
work on the streets make ends meet without selling their
bodies.
It is those street children with the least contact with
their families who tend to get lured into prostitution.
Often this is because, if they are girls, the arrival of a
step-father in the family has led to sexual abuse and this,
in turn, has encouraged the girls to run away. In a sample
of 1000 children, mainly street children, surveyed in the
Philippines, 70% had experienced sexual abuse. Nevertheless,
only about 1% of the street children in the Philippines are
involved in prostitution.
This is my approach to what seems an overwhelming
problem. Don't aggregate it and despair. Rather, break it
down into its constituent parts, isolate the worst
influences and concentrate resources on them.
The Stockholm Congress obviously pumped a lot of
adrenalin into the lethargic veins of governments far and
wide. But powerful jolt though it was, it was inevitable
that over time the effect was dissipated. Much is in the
works, I am told by Lisbet Palme, the Congress' chairman and
widow of Olof Palme, the slain prime minister of Sweden. It
is, but the pressure needs to be piled on and the focus
pulled tighter. If resources were concentrated on these
three groups for 5 years we might get some measurable
results.
February 19,
1997, STOCKHOLM
Copyright © 1997 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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