Sold for Sex

Sold for Sex was written 'to try and help people understand the factors that link the two little girls who died in a Belgian dungeon, Rosario the Philippine child who suffered at the hands of a foreign sex-tourist, young boys on the streets of South America forced to sell their bodies to survive, and a school room in the small town of Dunblane'. - - It is a subject which always attracts media attention, but which is still barely understood. Media reports which simplify the issue into 'paedophiles' and 'missing children', belie the complexity of the issue and the fact that the solutions are also complex. - - Sold for Sex looks at the different forms sexual exploitation of children takes - from small boys appearing in pornographic films made by visiting westerners in Sri Lanka in exchange for small change, to the organised trafficking of children from Eastern Europe to the West, to young African refugees being forced to exchange sex for food. The book examines the different factors that make children vulnerable to pimps, paedophiles, tourists, madames, 'honest citizens' and the many others who profit from their humiliation or take pleasure in their suffering. And it describes these different players, explaining the characteristics that differentiate them and yet lead them all to become criminal exploiters of children. - - As spokesperson for the first ever World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Stockholm in August 1996, June Kane was present when representatives of 122 governments adopted the Stockholm Declaration and committed their governments to an Agenda for Action. Sold for Sex describes some of the work that has been done since Stockholm and suggests what might come next, and what we all can do to play our part.