No end to child exploitation in sight

www.sun-sentinel.com By Patrice M. Jones Foreign correspondent Posted March 4 2003

RECIFE, Brazil · The dimly lighted clubs and bustling bars where a tourist can pick up a young girl or boy for sex are widely known in Recife, a beach city in Brazil's impoverished northeast that has a reputation for prostitution.

Even on a quiet weeknight in the upscale Boa Viagem tourist district, girls as young as 12, teenage boys and young transvestites line up under the bright lights of the main thoroughfare, hoping for foreign customers.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made ending child prostitution one of his main campaign promises. But prostitution and the sexual exploitation of children are as old as Brazil, and in the sun-worshiping northeast, the world's oldest profession helps fuel the tourism industry.

Da Silva, who was born in Pernambuco state where Recife is the capital city, has begun a national campaign to stop child sexual exploitation. Leading up to the country's Carnival celebrations, which kicked off last week, the campaign has warned Brazilians and particularly foreign tourists that sexual exploitation of anyone younger than 18 is a crime.

"There is a lot of official marketing that says Brazil has lots of natural wonders, including beautiful women," said Lauro Monteiro, founder of a nonprofit organization that works with the government on child-protection issues.

"This is good for business, but I don't think tourism sold exclusively on this aspect is good," Monteiro said. "This marketing has led to the idea that people can do anything they want in Brazil -- that they can have women or children as conquests because people here are poor. We don't want this kind of tourist."

Some child-rights activists, who have long pushed the government for a crackdown, have argued that the annual Carnival festivities are at fault for helping create an image of Brazil as a place of decadence.

Because prostitution is a clandestine business, government officials do not know how many visitors come to patronize the sex trade or how many children are involved.

But even without numbers, the pervasiveness of the underground youth sex trade is evident in places such as Recife. There are well-known Internet sites where devotees of sex tourism talk about their experiences, suggest what clubs to visit, tell about prices and share other information on underage prostitutes.

Last month a major police sweep was launched in 19 states, resulting in the arrests of 52 child "exploiters" and 19 children taken into protective custody. Arrests of foreign tourists involved in buying sex from minors have been on the rise in recent weeks.

Starting this week, several nonprofit organizations nationwide are beginning a prevention campaign. Tourists and local residents will be given pamphlets in their native languages and greeted with posters in international airports and busy thoroughfares.

"The idea is [to] have police action but also prevention," National Secretary for Justice Claudia Chagas said.

Many activists say the social ills that cause Brazilian youth to end up on the streets are complex, and government programs that focus mainly on arrests will do nothing to shake the nation's biggest obstacle, poverty, which besets nearly one-third of the nation's 175 million residents. Many in the drought-stricken northeast are affected.

An often corrupt and weak police force and an overburdened and slow judicial system mean the crime of child sex abuse often goes unpunished, activists said. The maximum penalty for child exploitation is 10 years in prison.

Even with the high-profile arrests, child-rights activists say little has changed in the nightly entertainment on the streets of Recife.

A 15-year-old male prostitute who calls himself Catherine stood on a street corner in Recife waiting for his next client. He said his mother does not object to what he does because the money helps his family.

"This is the easiest way to earn money in this city. How else could I make this much money?" he asked, referring to the roughly $14 he earns from his mainly European clientele for one hour of work.

Patrice M. Jones writes for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune Co. newspaper.