World

At Least A Million Child Sex Slaves

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

December 17, 2001 / 8:14 AM EST / CBS

She was only a teen-ager when she entered the sex trade in Canada. There, Cherry Kingsley remained trapped for eight years as a child prostitute, watching many of her friends die from violence, AIDS, drugs or suicide.

On Monday, Kingsley, now 30, stood before a packed hall of delegates from around the world and urged them to put an end to the multibillion dollar global sex trafficking in children.

"What we have to do is get beyond voicing outrage and move toward more practical and meaningful solutions," Kingsley said on the opening day of the Second World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children. "There are millions of children who live in utter despair."

The head of the U.N. Children's Fund was also demanding action to stamp out the multibillion-dollar global racket. Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF, told the conference, a four-day event which brings together more than 3,000 delegates from 138 countries, that there were no simple solutions.

"The commercial sexual exploitation and abuse of children is nothing less than a form of terrorism - one whose wanton destruction of young lives and futures must not be tolerated for another year, another day, another hour," Bellamy said.

Organizers reaffirmed a pledge, made by governments, United Nations agencies and children's rights groups at the first such gathering in Stockholm five years ago, to work together to eradicate the scourge. But they said far more needed to be done.

"… they are overwhelmingly drawn from the ranks of the most vulnerable - refugees, orphans, abandoned children, child laborers working as domestic servants, children in armed conflict - and those whose sexual abuse began at home or in other familiar surroundings," Bellamy said.

The Second World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children is co-organized by Japan, UNICEF and coalitions of children's rights groups.

It picks up where the first congress left off, assessing lessons learned since then and asking where to go from here.

UNICEF released a report last week highlighting the enormity of the global child sex trade through a barrage of sad statistics and testimonials from victims.

"From the brothels of Bangkok to the sidewalks of Manila, the train stations of Moscow to the truck routes of Tanzania, the suburbs of New York to the beaches of Mexico, the outrageous is commonplace," the report said.

Initiatives by some governments and better policing methods have notched up some victories, but most experts say commercial sexual exploitation is getting worse.

The most conservative figures available put the number of children involved in the sex trade at about a million, but experts say the true number could be five times that or more.

Police say organized crime is increasingly muscling in on trafficking in children, driving the industry yet deeper underground, while new technology is proving a boon to paedophiles and child pornographers.