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Child prostitution is no less a product of poverty and drugs in the U.S. than it is in Colombia. Estimates of the number of U.S. prostitutes under age 18 range from 90,000 to 300,000. "The combined impact of the deterioration of the cities and the drug epidemic is driving this phenomenon forward fast," says Kenneth Klothen, head of Defense for Children International U.S.A. in Philadelphia. Poor teenagers sell their bodies to acquire drugs, jewelry or even food and household items for their families. Once initiated, says Klothen, "kids learn that they can use sex to get things in the world -- status, acceptance, material things -- or the prevention of worse things, like physical abuse."
The sex trade among children receives a further boost in the U.S. and elsewhere by the child pornography industry. In Germany annual sales of "kiddie porn" are estimated at $250 million and the number of consumers between 30,000 and 40,000. Since penalties in developed countries are severe, most dealers buy films made in Asia, where operations can be easily run from hotel rooms and where there is an abundance of potential victims in the streets.
The market for child prostitutes has always been strong, especially in Asia. In India children command a price three times that of older women, in part because of a common belief that sex with a virgin or a child cures venereal disease. "Having sex with children provides a greater sexual thrill to many men," explains I.S. Gilada, secretary-general of the Bombay-based Indian Health Organization. "They find it more titillating, and it gives them an added sense of power." To feed the sex market, tens of thousands of girls as young as 12 are recruited in Bombay and other cities; many are devadasis, "slaves of god," a distorted legacy of a 7th century religious practice in which girls were dedicated to temples for lives of dance and prayer. Today the girls pledge fealty to the goddess Renuka at puberty and then -- with the full knowledge of their parents -- are shunted off to brothels.
One of the more tragic, and ironic, reasons for the recent upswing in child prostitution is the mistaken belief that young sex partners are less likely to have AIDS. In fact, the opposite may be true. "Both boys and girls are more vulnerable to infection because they are prone to lesions and injuries in sexual intercourse," says Dr. Pers-Anders Mardh, director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Center for Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Uppsala, Sweden. "Imagine intercourse occurring millions of times under these conditions." The AIDS epidemic alone is enough to justify a crackdown on child prostitution, says Mardh. "There is too little attention being paid to the health of these children," he says. "Yet they are playing Russian roulette with their lives."