Quotes of the Day

Barely 200 m from the Point Cruz yacht club, where cheery expatriates are enjoying their Wednesday-night drinks, Junelyn is fighting back tears on the Honiara dockside. She searches the faces of the three child prostitutes hiding in the shadows. One by one, she asks them, "Have you seen my daughter?" Finally, a girl admits Junelyn's runaway 12-year-old has been working alongside them as a "dugong" - the local term for a young prostitute - servicing the foreign freighters that anchor off the Solomon Islands capital to collect tuna caught by local fishing boats. On the wharf where the child was last seen, Customs officer Moses Tare says he spotted five young girls on a freighter during his last water patrol but has no authority to remove them. "I rang the police," he tells the desperate Junelyn. "They said they were on the way. That was three hours ago." Junelyn turns away. She has a new lead to follow, courtesy of another underage prostitute. She heads for the thumping bass of the Top 10 nightclub, where some of the freighters' crewmen are downing their Solbrew beers.

For many in the Solomons, life has improved dramatically since mid-2003, when an Australian-led rescue effort - the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) - arrived to calm long-running ethnic tensions and prevent the country from falling into anarchy. Dozens of violent militants are in jail or on trial, thousands of weapons have been confiscated, and corruption investigations are cranking up. Australia will spend $A247 million this year on its participation in RAMSI; other South Pacific nations are also giving security help. The shattered economy is gaining momentum, and an election is scheduled for April 5.

But the forces of law and order have yet to make an impact on several illicit criminal enterprises. And none is as visible and pervasive as the one that has snared Junelyn's pubescent daughter. A report on child sexual exploitation in the Solomons, commissioned by the United Nations Children's Fund (unicef), was completed in 2004 but has never been publicly released. A copy obtained by Time documents dozens of examples of child sexual abuse - from underage prostitution to the manufacture of child pornography, child sex tourism and marriages of convenience. The report has been in the hands of the Solomon Islands government and ngos, as well as Australia's AusAID, for more than a year. It calls for an investigation of the allegations, tough countermeasures including a comprehensive child protection law, rapid tightening of existing laws against child abuse, regulation of the hotel industry, and a police crackdown on the exploitation of children. But most of the allegations have never been investigated, and many of the report's key recommendations have still not been implemented. Unwieldy laws carry vague definitions of child abuse; the age of consent varies according to circumstances; tribal traditions are exploited by ruthless foreigners; and strict time limits on reporting offenses make prosecution difficult. The Solomon Islands' Law Reform Commission, designed to review and strengthen weak laws, has been inactive for months while the government advertises for staff. Why has so little been done? "I think people are scared," says one of the report's authors, Sister Doreen Awaiasi, who runs a refuge for abused women and children outside Honiara. "We gave them our report, but it's up to the government to accept it. We lobbied them. We wanted to protect the girls." More disturbing, she adds, is that "politicians are involved in some of those things. It needs to be investigated quickly."

She and co-author Helen Newton, an Australian counselor, spent weeks in 2004 traveling across the Solomons and documenting instances of abuse for the first time. Medical, prison and ngo officials were interviewed; sensitive issues were brought into the open in focus groups and in meetings with women, youths and villagers. Among the allegations: n Nine boys, aged six to 14, told how they had survived on the streets for the previous three years by charging the equivalent of $A1 a time to have sex with the crews of Japanese-owned fishing boats. "It is very painful, but I need money for food," one of the children told the unicef researchers.

n Four expatriate teachers - three men and a woman - were sexually abusing underage students. They reportedly offered the students inducements ranging from small gifts to financial help with school fees.

n Eighteen girls from two villages on the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal island were either forced at gunpoint or given money or food to have sex with militants which resulted in them becoming pregnant. One of the girls, who was 11 when she was raped, told researchers her attacker still lives in her village: "I am now 14 years old and he still has sex with me nearly every week."

n A taxi driver forced at least 15 young girls from a remote village to pay him in sex for rides to school. Seven became pregnant to the driver, who confessed to his pastor. The driver was not reported to police.

RAMSI's special coordinator, Australian diplomat James Batley, acknowledges that stopping child exploitation is an urgent problem, and says his team is "reinforcing the system" for doing so. But he points out that the mission's mandate is to help the Solomons government perform its role more effectively. To that end, it has focused on the most pressing problems: a lack of security and essential services. Much of the effort by RAMSI's Participating Police Force and the Royal Solomon Islands Police "has to be put into the task of getting the pieces of this fragmented institution (the RSIP) operating as a whole," Batley says. "Until that happens, there will be limited success in the pursuit and prosecution of specific areas such as child sex offences. The one thing not to forget is that RAMSI is not the only player on the ground here. We would want to be guided by where the Solomon Islands government wants to take this issue.''

Prime Minister Sir Allan Kemakeza was not available to comment last week. Newly appointed Police and Justice Minister Simeon Bouro blames a lack of manpower for the government's apparent failure to curb child exploitation, and says he has not heard that politicians are involved. Only three government welfare workers can be called on to help the victims; they service a population of about 500,000 across a vast archipelago. Worse, senior officials dismiss or play down unicef's allegations. "I think that report was biased," says Ruth Liloqula, who until last month was permanent secretary of the Home Affairs Department. "It only refers to about 7% of children. We need to do more research on it." And, in a refrain heard all too often in the Solomons, she demands more help from RAMSI: "Our budget is only about $SI2 million ($A400,000). So far RAMSI has not put any advisors in to help the actual human side of things." In dozens of the islands' idyllic bays lurk the rusting foreign freighters that transport logs or catch tuna. Their owners are masters at exploiting the impoverished country's resources; their crews are equally expert at exploiting its people. The sailors - from all over Asia and the Pacific, but mostly from the Philippines - "are the dregs," says a RAMSI customs advisor. "Conditions on the ships are horrible." Many of the sailors carry sexually transmitted diseases, raising the specter of an aids epidemic. "hiv has to enter the country somewhere," says Save the Children country program director Ian Rodgers. "Prostitution on ships is one of the most high-risk settings. Seafarers are a known area of concern."

Like many, Rodgers fears that the Solomons may be following the dangerous path of neighboring Papua New Guinea. There, unicef has estimated that in a population of 5.5 million, 80,000 people - including 11,000 children - are infected with hiv. "The social and economic impact of ignoring child sexual abuse, and the indivisible nature of things such as hiv, social dysfunction and conflict must not be underestimated," says Rodgers. The World Health Organization estimates that without swift action, 4,000 Solomon Islanders will be infected with the virus over the next decade.

Back on the docks, it's 10 p.m., and Junelyn is looking for her daughter in the Top 10. The black cavern is on the ground floor of a warehouse with a casino at one end; upstairs, a pool room leads to private "karaoke rooms." When the nightclub closes in a couple of hours, the dugongs - some not yet in their teens - will be taken out to the waiting ships, where they will be given alcohol or drugs and paid the equivalent of about $A20 for sex. That's if they're lucky. "Sometimes they rape," says one of the dockside girls. Another youth says that late last year a girl tried to commit suicide by jumping off a boat but was picked up before she drowned. During the day, when the foreign-owned net boats arrive to offload tuna onto the freighters, locals motor out in their fiberglass boats to trade for the by-catch. "The way it works," says Customs officer Tare, "is that the fish won't come off unless there's a girl on board." Sometimes, says Kala, a boat driver who works for Mako Fisheries, he is expected to carry girls as well as crew between ship and shore.

At one ship visited by Time, a cluster of small motorboats are tied up on the ocean side, out of sight of the port, defying the local Customs regulation that boats must have a permit to tie to a freighter. Young girls, some obviously drunk, sway high above on the deck, watched by shirtless crewmen. Members of the water police say they'd like to stop the vice but haven't the resources. The officer who was told of Tare's earlier sighting of young girls says he relayed the request for action to a senior officer. His superior told him they lacked the appropriate warrants to make an arrest, and that any action might compromise an ongoing operation. Besides, the police inflatable boat has no navigation lights, so night patrols are impossible.

Detection is difficult in any case, says RSIP Commissioner Shane Castles. "Once people on a vessel in the middle of Honiara Bay see lights approaching, or a police boat, the chances of actually identifying a crime are minimal." Although he had not heard of the unicef report, Castles says, "we are aware of this issue and we have been working proactively. We have an operation going on. It's more to do with collection of information and intelligence." New measures are being introduced, such as fining boat owners who tie up to the tuna freighters without permits. And there are encouraging signs from the community: Castles says complaints of sexual abuse are on the rise as Solomon Islanders learn to trust their police force and its sexual assault unit.

That trust has been breached, however. unicef cites cases where even the protectors have had congress with underage local girls. According to the report, RAMSI's influx of soldiers, police and civilian officials was seen "as contributing to an increase in prostitution." Some of the girls involved, say researchers, were well under 18. A RAMSI contractor paid a family $A2,000 for a girl to serve as his mistress while he built housing for police on an outlying island.

Time has also learned of two cases involving sexual-abuse allegations against Australians who were with RAMSI. One, an Army corporal, was discreetly sent back to Australia to face charges in a Brisbane military court after demanding sex from young Solomon Islanders in October 2003. An Army spokesman said the man had been convicted and discharged. Sources tell Time the corporal escaped more serious charges because the age of his victims could not be established. The other case involved an Australian Federal Police protective services officer who was charged with having sex with a person under 16 outside Australia. His case was the subject of a suppression order but was later dropped.

Far from the capital, on islands where the law's sway is minimal, another group of foreigners is upsetting the rhythms of village life. The traditional payment of "bride price" to a girl's parents, once a means of building ties between clans, is now, says the unicef report, "associated with the oppression of women." The minimum legal age for marriage is 15, but girls under 18 need the consent of a parent or guardian to marry. The researchers found that in a parody of tribal custom, young girls are being "bought up" by foreign loggers, who pay off their impoverished families, only to abandon their "wives" and children when they move to another job. Around Marovo lagoon near an oil-palm plantation at Merusu, in the New Georgia island group, some 230 km northeast of Honiara, crude shanties of chainsaw-cut planks line the side of a wharf built from old logs, off-cuts, rocks and mud. The plantation is run by Malaysia's Silvania company; environmentalists say it is a front for a logging concern. The muddy village echoes with the sound of saws chewing through giant tree trunks. Until a few months ago, 16-year-old Leslie Pua called one of these shanties home, sharing a room with her eight siblings. Then the elderly boss of an Asian logging company took a shine to her. Leslie now has a new house and her own room, where she sleeps with the boss when he visits. It boasts air-conditioning, a new Toshiba television, a dvd player and a stereo. Leslie sits playing video games or watching the satellite shows; she's not so active now she's pregnant with the boss's baby. Her father Joe is coy about how much money he received for letting Leslie set up house with the man. "He helps with supporting us," is all he will say. Leslie had little choice. "I didn't want to, but in my family it is the parents who decide," she says.

Leslie is well off compared to some around the lagoon who have sought the help of Joshua Lamu, the nurse at the village's health clinic. He opens the exercise book in which he records new sexually transmitted infections in teenagers; the names - one per line - take up two full pages. "I think it is related to the logging boat crews," he says. Asked if there's hiv in the area, he replies: "I don't know. I can't test for it." The director of the national disease prevention and control unit, Dr. John Paulsen, believes children are at risk from hiv, but says a preventive strategy is helping them. And although the country ran out of condoms late last year, he says, the supply has now been restored. Paulsen admits little research has been done on interactions between young people and foreigners, and there are no programs to monitor those at risk. "None of these people have come in for tests - those on the boats and those visiting them," he says.

It's almost midnight when Junelyn finds her daughter hiding behind the Top 10. At the sight of her mother, the girl prepares to flee. But in a low voice Junelyn begs her daughter to come home. After five tense minutes of urging and promising that an abusive stepfather is out of their lives, Junelyn finally persuades her daughter to come with her - and then cries with relief. Later, the daughter says she has been on a tuna boat; she spent the previous night in a hotel room with Atto, a 20-year-old Asian sailor from the Sea Chase, who paid her for the night. Under Solomon Islands law, defiling a girl under 13 carries a life sentence, but Atto is unlikely to face prosecution. Junelyn and her daughter just want to return to their home island, and have no plans to go to the police.

Some involved in monitoring the trade think all that's needed is a firm demonstration that child abuse will no longer be tolerated. "Hover a helicopter over one of those boats, drop a boarding party on the deck, and it wouldn't happen again," says a senior ngo worker. But RAMSI chief Batley says "one show of force is not going to solve the problem." Commissioner Castles says he will follow up Junelyn's story and investigate the other allegations in the unicef report. Yet for all of RAMSI's successes to date, this is an area where authorities can't afford to wait, says Dr. Holly Aruwafu, a former government advisor on hiv/aids. She warns that no one should have any illusions about the cost of failure to protect the Solomons' youngsters. "Anyone who thinks helping children is not their mandate, in terms of political and economic stability, needs to think again," she says. "These are the children who went through the tensions, and in 10 years' time they are the ones who'll be standing there asking hard questions - and potentially with guns pointing, all over again."

• Rory Callinan
• As help floods into Solomon Islands, so does harm. Many visitors are sexually abusing the country's children - and parents, politicians and police seem powerless to stop them