Contrary to the popular myth that many of the young girls involved in the sex trade entered the industry voluntarily for the money, a study by the Garden of Hope Foundation (GOH) shows that many are victims of coercion.
Nineteen-year-old Wen (小文) ran away from home more than three years ago to stay with friends when her divorced mother found a new boyfriend and often left her at home alone.
It was during that time that she was sexually assaulted by a friend. After the incident, she lost her faith in people and began to consider money more important, she said. Hence, she joined the sex trade.
“Our ‘agents’ would take our money, saying they would save it for us, or use the money to pay our rent,” Wen said in a recorded video clip played at a press conference in Taipei yesterday.
“They gave us drugs for free at first, and then began to charge us a lot of money for them after we became addicted. They sold us fake name-brand bags at the prices of authentic ones, and even my ‘friend’ who hooked me up with the sex trade wanted to take a certain percentage of my income, wanted me to pay for the room we shared and wanted me to pay for her meals and other stuff,” she said.
Once, when Wen returned home after she was kidnapped by a client and finally managed to escape, she said: “I found the ‘friend’ I shared the room with gone, with all my belongings, because she thought I’d been caught and feared I might give her away to the police.”
Wen was finally able to quit the sex industry after she was caught by police three years ago and put in a shelter run by the foundation. With the help of social workers, Wen has now moved back home with her mother.
Wen’s case is not an isolated one.
The foundation conducted interviews with 140 underage girls in shelters who used to work in the sex industry. About 60 percent said they were deceived or coerced into the trade, and the majority were abused and exploited.
“You may see girls claiming to be students who work as part-time prostitutes looking for clients on the Internet,” GOH executive director Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) said. “Well, our study found that at least 60 percent of these girls are controlled by large brothel groups.”
Chen Shu-chuan (陳淑娟), an official from the Taipei City Department of Social Welfare, said that while some of the girls may appear to have joined the industry “voluntarily,” they actually had little choice.
“Many of the girls are desperate for money, for care, or for love. The industry operators give them just what they need to bring them under their control,” Chen said.
To combat the sex trade, Chi urged the media and the government to stop using the Japanese term enjokosai (援助交際) — literally “assisted relationship” — for prostitution involving young girls, “since it may create an image that the client is actually helping the prostitute.”
“The term ‘sexual exploitation’ should be used instead,” Chi said.
She also called on the government to pay attention to young adults’ needs to find employment.
“The government thinks that young people should somehow stay in school and not work,” Chi said. “But in fact, some of them may actually need a job, and if you don’t help them, they may end up working as a prostitute or joining gangs.”
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