Child Prostitution in the UK


 


Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION


 


Background


            United Kingdom (UK) is one among many countries which legalized prostitution, although there are aspects encompassing prostitution that are illegal. According to Home Office, prostitution is defined as the ‘exchange of sexual services for some form of payment.’ As  (2008) put it, the last 15 years has been a tumultuous time with respect to prostitution and its debate of legalization or criminalization. The growing concern focuses on men’s violence, victimization including trafficking and pornography, exploitation of women, luring young people and children in prostitution. Moreover, there are also concerns relating to the ability of UK’s long standing prostitution laws to deal adequately with the problems of the sex industry. The main problems, however, are evident on the social, economic, spiritual, mental and physical aspects of prostitution as well as punishing those who exploit, victimized or coerced women and young children who sell sex. There are British cities which experimented with tolerance zones such as Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool although the national trend is geared toward zero tolerance for street prostitution. Nevertheless, the government is committed in trying to get prostitutes off the streets by means of addressing issues of drug problems and violent pimps, for instance ( 2006).


 


            A reality is that for most women engaged in prostitution, selling sex is above all an economic activity. Women’s decisions to enter prostitution are shaped by the broader economic push and pull factors which are not limited to whether and how much money can earn through paid employment ( 2008 ). But for children, it is a completely different case. Child prostitution in the UK is a multifaceted situation. The UK government now recognizes that there is a widespread concern that children involved in prostitution have previously been inappropriately regarded as consenting adults both by the police and others involved in child prostitution work. Today, the government aims at preventing and deterring children from entering or staying in prostitution and that the government now believes that the best way forward is a multi-agency approach with the children’s welfare as the primary concern (2003). In this research, the scope causes and background of child prostitution in the UK will be investigated. Likewise, the legislative base of to ensure that children who are sexually exploited are not criminalized will be also addressed.   


 


Aims and objectives of the project


 


Basically, the aim of this study is to analyse child prostitution in the UK context. In lieu with this, this study purports to:



  • Evaluate the reasons why children engaged in prostitution

  • Investigate the impact and consequences of prostitution for children

  • Explore how child prostitution is being regulated in the UK


 


Type of issues it raises


 


Drugs, abuse, pornography and human trafficking are three of the issues which are commonly associated with child prostitution. Child prostitution is commonly linked with abusive practices and drugs. Child abuse has been considered the primary reason of the increasing number of child prostitutes in the streets of UK. The Children’s Society states that most people who had been prostitutes before reaching the age of 18 are in a situation which only gets worse. In their independent survey of 50 young adults, 50% claim that their first sexual experience was one of abuse and a quarter had been abused before they reached the age of 10. Over half of the participants were runaways which are mainly from local authority care homes. It was also been established that the younger the child prostitutes were, the more likely they are taking drugs. Two thirds of the participants started using drugs before becoming prostitutes (1999).


 


Further, computer sex kiosks in British clubs and pubs which give access to Internet pornography, or simply pornography, also exacerbate the case of child prostitution in the UK. Computer firms are consistently installing sex booths over the years. Child prostitutes often fall victim of child pornography because of sexual commercial exploitation of children and availability of technology. In the UK, taking, making, distributing, showing or possessing an indecent image of a child is considered illegal. A child, herein, is defined as the person who has not reached the age of 18. Under the Protection of Children Act, accessing an indecent image is also considered as child pornography.


 


Child trafficking is also associated with child prostitution as well as sexual exploitation, forced Labour, drugs transport, benefit fraud, and other crimes. Girls as young as 11 or 12 are commonly put into prostitution because of human trafficking. There are also teenagers under the age of 16 who are held captive in private flats while their pimps are seeking punters from the local area ( 2006).  (2006) also relates that children, especially female, are transported from remote places like Nairobi, Kenya into brothels in UK. In these brothers, children who are victim of trafficking involve imprisonment, beatings and systematic rape over a lengthy period.


 


Definition of key terms


 


Brothels – a place where people pay to have sexual intercourse with prostitutes


Prostitution – the act of engaging in sexual intercourse or performing other sex acts in exchange for money, or of offering another person for such purposes


Drug abuse – habitual use of drugs to alter one’s mood, emotion, or state of consciousness


Human trafficking – recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation


Pornography – sexually explicit material; films, magazines, writings, photographs, or other materials that are sexually explicit and intended to cause sexual arousal


Child prostitute – anyone under the age of 18 whom is used by others for sexual activities in return for remuneration or any other form of consideration


 


Statistics of child prostitution in the UK


 


            There is no solid child prostitution statistics in place in the UK although there is an estimated 80, 000 sex workers. According to  (2007), there are 5, 000 child prostitutes in the UK by the year 2007, making UK a hub for European commercial sexual exploitation of children nevertheless. Figures suggest that there are 1.8 million children who are being abused in the sex industry worldwide. Three-quarters of these are girls. Further, about 1.2 million children and babies are trafficked everyday worldwide. Those who are involved in sex trades among children make an annual profit of £15bn profit. As such, child prostitution and child trafficking are two of the most common forms of child slavery. Child prostitutes in UK mainly come from West Africa specifically in Nigeria and also in Easter and Central Europe. Britain and Italy are two among the most notable destinations where demand for child prostitute is high ( 2001). These child prostitutes are being paid  


 


Approach


 


            An investigation of the commercial sex trade in the UK involving children, the chosen approach is the interactions approach. As cited in  (1994), “the interactions approach would overcome the limitations of the black box design by offering a methodology designed to explicate the internal processes and problems, events, meanings and situations that make up the interaction between a program and its clients” In the field of evaluation research, an interactions approach could give the researchers the opportunity to collate in formations on how and why the outcomes) occurred. There are various assumptions relating to child prostitution in the UK and these assumptions could neither confirmed or legitimized by an experimental approach and so the necessity for the interactions approach (1994).   


 



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