The Quest for Hope in Slum Communities
SECTION III: EMOTIONAL HOPEby Scott Bessenecker
Excerpted from forthcoming The Quest for Hope in Slum Communities,
Reprinted with permission ISBN 1932805-192 World Vision Press in partnership with Authentic Media
expected publication date Summer 2005
Part 1: Prostitution
Part 2: Children
Part 3: Justice
On the Burmese border of northern Thailand, edging the Golden Triangle, money means opium and heroin, and every spring the thatched bamboo huts of the villages are roofed with poppy heads drying in the sun. The only other commodity here is young girls. In Mae Sai town, the flashing red and yellow fairy lights outside a local brothel cast a surreal glow over Kok, 11, as she sits quietly with ten other frilly-dressed girls waiting for her customers. At first it seems unbelievable that this small child is working as a prostitute, but she is available for sex at $38 a night ...
Her eyes are made up heavily with black kohl, lips reddened, and fingernails lacquered pink. But no amount of make-up can disguise the child-sized feet in tiny red flip-flops, the pre-pubescent figure hidden under a sailor-collared shirt or the high-pitched voice. “My father sold me for 200 baht [$5] two months ago,” she says. “He comes to the brothel every month to collect 3000 baht ($190) from Big Ma. I clean Big Ma's house in the day and then work as a prostitute at night. I don't get money at all—just food. I get one man a night but most of the girls go with six or seven men a night.” Kok says she has never used a condom.1
Prostitution is an integral part of the poverty landscape that cannot be ignored, though it would be far more comforting if we could just turn our heads away from the reality of eleven-year-old prostitutes. We’d like to imagine prostitution in a sanitized form: willing and eager call girls dispatched to lonely, rich men. We’d rather not imagine what goes on in the lives of girls as young as six years old being sold as sex slaves to entertain as many as ten men a day. But there are untold numbers of these girls (and boys) on the streets of every major and many smaller cities.
The prostitution industry is not primarily nurtured and driven by women who choose prostitution as a career, although that does happen. Prostitution is perpetuated by brothel owners and pimps who prey on women and children forced into this life by dire poverty and by despairing men who seek sexual highs to satisfy an addiction or relieve their own depression. Prostitutes must develop an emotional distance from their work. Some view their work with the kind of detachment with which a janitor cleans a public toilet. Nonetheless, prostitution is not benign. It is destructive to the prostitute, to the nuclear family structure so vital to a healthy society, and ultimately to the men who visit prostitutes. Those with a variety of gifts are needed to befriend prostitutes and help them move out of this industry. Those with law degrees are needed to aid the process of shutting down brothels. Counselors are needed to help prostitutes deal with the emotional damage that inevitably comes with such a lifestyle. People with business skills are required to create healthy employment opportunities for former prostitutes. And I am convinced there is a demonic element to prostitution that requires addressing by someone with spiritual discernment. In addition, hardly anyone seems to be dealing with the unique problems of male prostitutes, and fewer still seem to be dealing with the demand side of prostitution: the millions and millions of users, many of whom also have deep issues and needs.
Two recommended readings tell the ugly truth about prostitution. The first reading from El Universal, an online Mexican newspaper, reports on the sad reality of sex trafficking between San Diego and Mexico. In part, this is the story of an investigators challenge to get governments on both sides to acknowledge the problem. The second reading is a seminal investigative report from Human Rights Watch Asia allowing the prostitutes themselves to tell their stories. These readings give voice to prostitutes and help to build an understanding of the sex industry from the perspective of the women who have found themselves in a situation nearly impossible to climb out of without help.
Notes
1. Jocasta Shakespeare. “Saving the Child Sex Slaves,” http://www.burmalibrary.org/reg.burma/archives/199406/msg00057
Part 1: Prostitution
Part 2: Children
Part 3: Justice
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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