Young victims of the sex trade
She had just turned 14 a few months earlier. Like most students at her age in this high-tech era, she thought surfing the Internet a «cool» thing. Her parents had a computer at home and she used it to get on the information super highway and check all the latest websites. Little did her parents know that their daughter had met an alleged child molester in a popular «chat room» on the Internet, and that she would leave the country to meet him. In February 2001, authorities arrested a man in Pendeli, Greece, following a five-month investigation by US Postal Inspectors and the Polk County, Florida, Sheriff’s Department into the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl. US Postal Inspectors determined the man had used the mail and the Internet to lure the child from her home and convinced her to travel to Greece to be with him. [The Thessaloniki trial of 36-year-old Franz Constantin Baehring, who is charged with luring the teenager to Greece via the Internet and sexually abusing her, was postponed earlier this month until July after judges decided the girl had to testify due to discrepancies in her depositions.] Crimes against children and child exploitation have become cross-border crimes, exploiting recent advancements in communication technology and hampering the efforts of local and national authorities. «Do you think your child is safe at home… on the computer talking with this person? Approximately one in five children received a sexual solicitation or approach over the Internet in the past year,» reads a recent poster issued by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the USA. Since the passage of the 1984 Child Protection Act in the USA, Postal Inspectors have conducted more than 4,000 such investigations, resulting in the arrests of 3,462 individuals who used the mail in violation of federal child pornography laws. Moreover, in 2001, inspectors arrested 335 individuals on child sexual exploitation offenses related to the mail. Reports on Greece In Greece, findings indicate that the number of minors in prostitution has tripled over the last five or six years, according to non-governmental organizations such as A Step Forward and ECPAT International. According to reports by rights groups, more than 40 percent of the children in prostitution in Greece are from neighboring or regional countries, including Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Albania and Iraq, which have suffered conflicts and are lacking in social cohesion. In 1999, the groups International Save the Children Alliance and Children’s Rights, declared that 5,000 cases of sexual exploitation were reported in Greece in the previous three years. Prostitution is legal in Greece, with the State regulating permits and hygiene in designated areas where brothels are located. In spite of the legal framework, street prostitution and especially forced prostitution is on the rise. A survey by the Maragopoulos Foundation for Human Rights, carried out from September 1995 to March 1997 in Athens, revealed the presence of approximately 3,000 children and young persons involved in prostitution. A similar survey conducted by ECPAT International during the same period identified almost 2,900 minors in prostitution, with more than 200 of them under the age of 12. The legal age of consent for sexual activity in Greece is 15, with the age of consent for marriage is 18. Organized crime groups in Southeastern Europe that once flourished by dominating regional drug and arm trafficking, have evolved into cross-border organizations with enhanced activities which today include trafficking in women and children. According to the US State Department, trafficking in women and girls for prostitution is a growing phenomenon in the Balkan region, with trafficking networks extending to the former Soviet republics in Eastern Europe. According to the 2001 Human Rights Report by the US State Department, over 2,000 children between the ages of 13 and 18 are involved in prostitution rings in Albania. In its report the previous year, the US State Department declared that as many as 4,000 children from Albania were working as child prostitutes in Greece. Thousands more were thought to have been trafficked to Italy, where of the 1,800 to 2,500 minors who work as street prostitutes in Italy, 1,500 to 2,300 were brought from Albania and Nigeria. The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) reports that more than 8,000 Albanian girls are prostituted in Italy, and that more than 30 percent are under 18. Traffickers lure young jobless women through advertisements which promise job opportunities and citizenship in Western EU countries. But once across the border, they strip them of their passports and all identity papers, and force them to work as prostitutes. In 1997, Bulgarian authorities registered 200 cases of attempted smuggling of women to Western brothels, CATW notes. Human rights groups estimate that some 10,000 Bulgarian women, many under the age of 18, have fallen into the sex trade. In Turkey, the government estimated in 1999 that as many as 30,000 minors were involved in prostitution, while, according to CATW, the figure is much higher, estimating some 60,000 female child prostitutes between the ages of 12 and 17. Poverty and wars Poverty appears to the primary cause that compels young Balkan women to seek better job prospects abroad, a dream that quickly turns into a nightmare in the hands of vicious criminal gangs. According to CATW, in 1999 there were approximately 2,000 homeless children in Romania, and 5 percent of them were in prostitution, mainly in the capital Bucharest. The local group Salvati Copii notes that there are between 5,000 and 6,000 children living in squalor on the city’s streets and around the main railway station. Many of them are forced to accept money for sex to survive. In Hungary, it is estimated that 500 children are engaged in prostitution, mainly in Budapest, while, according to police, 5 to 10 percent of the girls in prostitution are under 18. Moreover, an estimated 10,000 adults are engaged in prostitution in Hungary, with 7,500 of them working in Budapest. Recent conflicts in the region have also inflated the situation, making the Balkan borders even more porous, while the presence of international troops has boosted local demand for sex services. According to the International Organization for Migration, young women from Eastern Europe and ex-Soviet republics were lured to Kosovo with the promise of jobs in catering or entertainment, and then forced to work in the sex trade. A number of them are minors under the age of 16. Similar trends are noted in Croatia, as well as in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where there is a strong presence of international military forces, while the latter, according to the US State Department, is a country of origin, transit, and a destination point for women and girls trafficked for the purpose of forced prostitution.
