EFFECTS OF CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING
All abuse is traumatic and harmful to victims. But many factors in sex trafficking intensify the pain even more than if a child was solely sexually abused.
Trafficked children are deprived of their natural support system. This alone deprives them of their other rights– their right to basic needs, their right to be free from abuse and exploitation, and their right to health and education, among others. Just by losing their family, they lose a better future.
Physical consequences of child sex trafficking include:
- Lack of rest, proper nourishment and health care;
- Teenage pregnancy and abortion;
- Infectious diseases like tuberculosis, recurrent urinary tract infections and sexually transmitted diseases (STD) such as syphilis, herpes or HIV/AIDS,
- Difficulty in walking or sitting due to bruises, lacerations and wounds at the genital, anal or mouth area; and,
- Frequent headaches, abdominal & pelvic pain, back pain, shoulder pain, nausea and other symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Physical damage may heal with time; however, its psychological consequences last a lifetime. Psychological effects put victims at risk of further abuse and at risk of becoming abusers themselves. Certain factors such as maturity, gender and parental support among many other factors influence the severity of these effects. Research shows that, although effects tend to last the victim’s lifetime, treatment helps lessen the symptoms of psychological trauma.
Psychological and behavioral effects may include any of the following:
- Fear of sailing, flying or of enclosed places (claustrophobia) and other irrational fears;
- Panic attacks and sleeping disorders;
- Sexually inappropriate or offensive behaviors such as obsession to sex or complete aversion to it; questioning of sexuality or gender;
- Non-observance of physical boundaries;
- Drug and alcohol abuse, addictions and eating disorders;
- Distrust of others and of themselves, shame, guilt, low self-esteem and self-hatred;
- Traumatic flashbacks triggered by certain cues present during the abuse;
Isolation, sudden bursts of anger and irritability, feelings of powerlessness, depression and extreme passivity; and, - Mental illness, personality disorders, hallucinations and suicide.
When the child turns into an adult, there may also be a need for family members to undergo counseling to process the experience of having a victim of sexual abuse for a parent or spouse.
WHY VICTIMS FAIL TO ESCAPE
Many factors virtually shackle a child to his or her captor:
- The mere threat of violence to the child or to the child’s family is enough to deter the powerless victim from escaping.
- Some children believe they have a romantic relationship with their traffickers.
Sex trafficking is hard to recognize even by the victim as it occurs over an extended period of time and place and is sometimes condoned by the child’s family. - A lack of familiarity with the manifestations of abuse in children causes unknowing witnesses to overlook cases of possible sexual exploitation.
- They have no one and nothing else to return home for. They feel that no one cares.
- Traumatized children are more likely to be reluctant to explore their surroundings when they have been conditioned to fear unfamiliar people, places, languages and cultures.
- Child victims feel damaged beyond redemption. Some may be suffering from mental disorders. Learned helplessness conditions the child to silently accept his or her fate.
- As children grow in the industry, their values become so distorted that they begin believing abuse and exploitation is part of their job or a normal part of life.
- The guilt and shame of one day having to face people they knew back home deters children from wanting to return to their place of origin.
- They have learned to endure their routine and are content to earn money in that manner.
The following is an excerpt from a paper presented at the Third Semi-Annual Conference on the Rhetoric of Monstrosity held in 2007 in Standford University.
The Monster Trade: The Child Sex Worker in Modern Child Sex Trafficking
by Mitali Thakor
“Yum-yum!”
Hearing those words makes most people think of a baby asking for food, cutely clapping its hands together for its favorite snack.
Yet, if we approach the phrase from a different context—say, a street in one of
Bangkok’s red-light districts—it takes on a whole new meaning. “Yum-yum” is what girls are taught to say by their brothel madams when they are pitching the sale of oral sex, specifically to foreign male tourists. Most of them are too young—maybe 7, maybe 9 years old—to know what a penis is, so they are taught to treat it like candy—like sucking on a lollipop.
Suddenly, that “yum-yum” is no longer cute, but it is genitalia; foul; repulsive; abject.
The child is no longer endearing, but now a nauseating example of what we never, ever want to see: a young person overtly sexualized, lacking all sense of innocence and purity.
This problem is one of the roots of the global sex trafficking issue. Human trafficking is often referred to as “the modern slavery,” a worldwide crisis that transcends nations, ethnicities, age, and gender. Of the forms of modern trafficking—debt bondage, child labor, drug trafficking—the forced sex trade presents the most grave and heinous dilemma. It cuts across many issues—labor, health, migration, poverty, and crime. Many countries today have the resources to obtain statistics and reports of ongoing sex trafficking, and in some cases, even assist in ‘brothel raids’ to rescue trafficked women and children. Politicians, journalists, activists, and celebrities all speak out against child sex trafficking, the ultimate ‘violation of innocence’ and ‘crime against humanity.’ Theoretically, the illegal sex trade should be dying, if not completely stamped out.
Yet, look at the statistics: from 600,000 women and children in 2004 (US Department of State) to 1.2 million in 2006 (UNICEF). Nearly half of people trafficked are children (UNESCO 2006). Juvenile sex trafficking is not at all dead, but is in fact on the rise, rampantly booming throughout the world’s largest cities. Why? Why have thousands of minds and dollars not been enough to solve this problem?
I propose that adult traffickers and brothel owners succeed in keeping the child sex trade flourishing by treating child sex workers as objects and untouchable monsters. Through brutal initiation periods of starvation, repeated rape, and torture, kidnapped girls are dulled and brainwashed into rapid adulthood. By destroying the emotional childishness of young sex workers, traffickers create empty ‘shells’ of adults, world-weary and street-worn but not at all emotionally developed or mature.
By understanding theories on social construction of monsters, and linking them to child exploitation, I hope to facilitate a powerful dialogue on how the objectification and abjectification of juvenile prostitutes is a strong factor in explaining why trafficking continues to thrive.
Family & Social Background
If we look at the literature on adolescent sex work, the overwhelming issue of concern seems to be the personal background of the sex worker herself. A Taiwanese study found adolescent sex workers to be more socialized, aggressive, emotionally dependent, realistic about the real world, yet stimulant-seeking and careless. A Canadian study found that adolescent prostitutes are more likely to have been runaways from home than other adolescents. A large number of child prostitutes also come from dysfunctional families—most studies show them to be victims of sexual abuse or rape by a close adult relative, and/or have a parent who is an alcoholic or drug addict.
In some cases parents directly coerce their children into the sex trade.
“‘Cooperative’ parents participate in the commercial exploitation of their children. Such fathers and mothers fall into two categories: those who are pathologically dependent on the exploiter and become involved in the abuse of their children in order to gain the exploiter’s approval, and those who are driven by pathological narcissism, or total self-absorption”
There is the story of ‘Uncle Bill,’ an Australian diplomat in Indonesia who supposedly tutored and helped local boys, even giving them extra cash for doing odd jobs for him. The parents of these boys, often very poor, praised Uncle Bill for keeping the boys off the streets and acting as a good role model. Uncle Bill was in fact the head of a sex ring busted in 1996 for the oral and anal rapes of over 40 boys around the age of 10 – the biggest shock, though, is that many of the parents of these boys already knew about Uncle Bill’s abuses.
Around the world, a Chicago-based pimp also acknowledged parents’ role, speaking from his experience working with rural Midwestern teens: “Mothers are a bunch of assholes—most of them—because they sell their daughters. A mother is the greediest son of a bitch in the world.
There’s some good ones…the others are dogs. They don’t care how far you want to go…just so the girl isn’t hurt”….