40 child prostitutes working in PoS

Maxi-taxi drivers have been singled out for special condemnation for sexually exploiting schoolgirls, in a report commissioned by the Ministry of the Attorney General which was recently laid in Parliament. Shocking revelations were made in the Second Periodic Report on the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago on the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Attorney General Glenda Morean officially launched the report yesterday at the Hilton Trinidad. Addressing Article 34 of the Convention, on Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, the Report said: “There is general agreement among stakeholders that commercial sexual exploitation is growing. The situation of adolescent schoolgirls and minibus drivers is particularly alarming since this phenomenon has been identified across socio-economic strata and geographical boundaries. Key informants suggest that it is now part of the secondary school culture in Trinidad and Tobago.”

The report listed different local forms of commercial exploitation of children, including: “Schoolgirls who establish sexual relations with ‘minibus’ men/taxi drivers in exchange for free transportation, designer clothes, jewelry, food and other material possessions.” Other forms of sexual exploitation listed were: “Children and adolescents involved in formal prostitution, adolescents involved in prostitution in the school system, runaway adolescent girls who are recruited from the ‘street’ and ‘kept’ by older men, children and adolescents sexually abused in the home by the ‘breadwinner’/stepfather or other adult relative, sexual exploitation of primarily male street children, adolescent girls and boys involved in sex tourism in Tobago.” The Report also noted: “There is some organisation of female commercial exploitation in a network involving some fashion houses, night clubs, and dating and escort services. There is a market of business and tourist visitors for teenage prostitution. The commercial sexual exploitation of children and adolescents in Tobago appears to be mainly associated with the tourist industry. Erotic dancing and stage performances by females in nightclubs were found to be a common practice. While there is no evidence of any connection to the drug trade, drug use is one factor influencing child prostitution”.

The Report said that since no State agency collected data on child sexual exploitation, its findings were based on anecdotal evidence. The Report, in a chapter on the Economic Exploitation of Children (breaching Article 32) also said: “Based on information obtained from some of the interviewees and a key informant, there are about 40 female children working in prostitution in the Port-of-Spain area...Commercial sex workers are known to have been stabbed, while others have been infected with HIV/AIDS and other STDs”. The Report cited police statistics which reported some 258 sexual offences against juvenilles in 2002, including 103 with females under age 14, 129 against females age 14 to 16, 20 against an adopted minor, and six offences of sex with a male under 16 years.