RIGHTS-MEXICO: Sterile at Age 12, AIDS at 14

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Feb 10 1998 (IPS) - Thousands of children in Mexico, victims of mafias involved in the appalling but profitable business of child prostitution and pornography, face a dismal future: sterility at age 12, an abortion at 13 or AIDS at 14.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) calculate that nearly 100 children and teenagers a month fall into the hands of child prostitution networks in Mexico, a number they say is on the rise in spite of police investigations and controls.

An estimated 5,000 children are currently involved in prostitution, pornography and so-called sex tourism in Mexico, according to Elena Azola, an independent expert who specialises in the issue.

There is “great demand” for child prostitution and pornography, whose main victims are children who live and work in the streets, “greater than the demand for adults and even more profitable,” says a government report released this week.

A large proportion of the minors catch sexually transmitted diseases which leave them infertile, while others are infected with AIDS. Many girls get pregnant, and are forced by the circumstances to have abortions. All suffer serious psychological consequences, the document underlines.

The networks that sexually exploit minors often function as “companies,” says the report, which was turned over to the special UN rapporteur on trafficking in children and child prostitution.

Although legislators have promised to enact laws clamping down on the phenomenon, Mexico as yet has no specific laws defining and sanctioning child prostitution and pornography as criminal activity. Existing laws only speak of “corruption” of minors.

In 1996, after the discovery of a criminal organisation that produced and sold child pornography, the attorney-general’s office set up a special group to investigate the sexual exploitation of children. But no group has yet been dismantled.

The phenomenon is on the rise partly due to “the insensitivity of authorities,” who are often even involved in the abuse, say spokespersons for the human rights organisation Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez.

Studies show that children in the capital and cities along the U.S. border are at highest risk of sexual exploitation, says the NGO.

“Some gringos offered me 400 dollars for taking my clothes off and kissing some girls and then a dog,” Armando, a boy living on the streets of the border city of Tijuana, told the local press recently. He said he was also offered food and free transportation to the United States.

In May 1996, the U.S. Postal Service denounced that Mexico City operated as a leading producer of child porn videos.

After several months of investigations, the Postal Service reported that the Mexico City-based Overseas Service Mail company produced pornographic videos using seven to 11-year-old children. The videos sold for 250 dollars each.

The company’s list of clients included some 2,000 addresses, all of them located in the United States.

Shortly afterwards, authorities in Mexico discovered a house in the resort town of Acapulco where pornographic videos were filmed. Drugs, video and photographic equipment, sadomasochistic instruments, money, arms and dozens of tapes were confiscated.

After reviewing the material, the attorney-general’s office reported that the two U.S. citizens and four Mexicans implicated in the affair used children ranging in age from newborns to 18 year olds to film the videos.

“Child prostitution has to do with a lack of work and educational opportunities for minors, poverty, and the insensitivity of authorities,” says the NGO Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez.

Ser Humano, another local NGO, reports that some 25 street children in Mexico City have been infected with AIDS in the past two years after being forced to engage in sexual activities.

According to the UN children’s fund, UNICEF, nine million children – out of a total population of 91 million – live in absolute poverty in Mexico, 60,000 of them on the streets.