In October 1993 an article was published in Reader's Digest which attempted to uncover the problem of child prostitution in Asia, sending a broadcast of this dilemma to the whole world. The article quoted Taiwan's Garden of Hope Foundation as estimating that in this country there are more than 61,000 underage prostitutes. It caused quite a sensation. Some people feel that this number is exaggerated; others feel the count should be even higher. But disregarding people's opinions, no one seems to have real evidence or reliable numbers.
In early November 1993, Wu Fang-fang, the administrator of the Hualien Christian Mennonite Good Shepherd Rescue Center, a halfway house that provides shelter for underage prostitutes in Hualien, was accosted and beaten by gangsters. This incident brought exposure in all the media, and the problem of juvenile prostitutes became a hot topic, drawing attention and discussion from all circles of society.
In the early hours of November 14, 1993, more than 14,000 people joined the ranks of a jogging event held by the Garden of Hope Foundation, "Protest Child Prostitution in Snake Alley," in which everyone expressed their support for the fight against underage prostitution.
Not long after, the National Police Administration began to actively implement a program of investigating, arresting, protecting and processing child prostitution cases. The Ministry of Education announced a "dropout program." The "Underage Prostitute Protection Law," drafted by the Garden of Hope is currently being reviewed by the Internal Affairs and Justice committees of the Legislative Yuan, and the Taipei City government Bureau of Social Affairs has also commissioned some professional scholars to undertake research into the special psychology of underage prostitutes, to form a counter-strategy of rescue and guidance.
"We have finally lifted the lid on this social taboo!" Garden of Hope administrator Chi Hui-jung declares. The problem of child prostitutes has always been the greatest malady of our society. In the past no one was willing to address this subject. It was not even possible to bring it up in a conversation.
Today everyone is loudly shouting, "Down with child prostitution." No one can be seen opposing this message, but how many people truly support it? Chi Hui-jung expresses: "We have only just begun."
According to statistics of the National Police Administration, from Mareh 1987 to December1993, 1489 girls under the age of 17 were investigated and fined for pursuing the trade of prostitution. This is just the tip of the iceberg. No one knows how many prostitutes there are who have not been arrested.
Two years ago the Garden of Hope Foundation formulated an estimate, based on the number of locations where the sex trade was carried out, as well as interviews with girls involved in prostitution. They found that Taiwan's sex industry employs as many as 60-70,000 females under the age of 18. Many people respond to this figure with exclamations of "Unbelievable!" and "Absolutely impossible!"
Chi Hui-jung once commented, "The important point is not how many underage prostitutes there are. The important thing is to look the problem straight in the eyes and to try to solve it."
Actually, the problem of child prostitution exists in every country in the world. Sister Tang Ching-lien of the Good Shepherd Sisters Fellowship believes that the problem of underage prostitution must be confronted cooperatively throughout the whole world. It is not only Taiwan: in Thailand,Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil and other countries, the problem is even more serious.
The End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism Committee is an organization with membership in more than 20 nations. Li Li-fen, a member of its Taiwan National Committee, explains that the most highly developed nations of Europe and America are the principal "patron exporters," and undeveloped countries have become "child prostitute suppliers." Many Thai and Filipino children have been sold to Europe, Australia and Japan to prostitute themselves. According to investigation by the Thailand headquarters of the aforementioned committee, there are 100,000 child prostitutes in the Philippines and even more--as high as two to three million--in Thailand.
Rescuing underage prostitutes actually involves the tough task of struggling against the underworld.
Chi Hui-jung emphasizes that when opposing prostitution the point of confrontation is not the unfortunate girls, but the underworld of organized crime. "The ones who find and sell the girls, the mama-sans, the pimps, the customers, the bouncers, the corrupt politicians, the mercenary policemen:the whole combined institution is what ought to be condemned, what ought to be the object of attack."
Some organizations that try to block the underworld's road to riches become the victims of blackmail and ceaseless telephone harassment. Wu Fang-fang, administrator of Good Shepherd Rescue Center was even abducted and beaten in broad daylight. Rescue work is obviously a difficult and dangerous undertaking.
"After I was beaten up, I experienced a feeling of frustration. I really thought about giving up," says Wu Fang-fang, who insists on working without pay. Because of this work she nearly lost her life. Today she still worries about the safety of her family. If it were not for her husband's support and the power of faith, perhaps she could not persevere.
Of course, if it is up to a few mere individuals and private institutions to combat the forces of darkness, how can they match the strength of organized crime? All the people responsible for these few institutions share the lament of being powerless. Since they can not change the greater environment, they can only work at rescuing the girls. "If we can save one, at least that's one," Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation Administrator Chen Hui-chi says helplessly.
How can underage prostitutes be distinguished from adult prostitutes? Public and private definitions are not the same. According to criminal law, police organizations consider persons under the age of 16 to be without sexual autonomy; they are not capable of intending to profit from fornication. According to the regulations of the Youth Welfare Law and the United Nations Rights of Children Convention, private institutions consider everyone under18 to be children, not yet fully mature.
The law differentiates between two major categories of underage female prostitutes: "coerced" and "consenting." But most private institutions that shelter underage prostitutes are not willing to use the word "consenting." They prefer to say "not sold" or "enticed."
Wu Fang-fang says, "Children simply don't understand the ways of the world. How could they possibly consent to prostitute themselves? It's fundamentally a problem of adults."
Chen Hui-chi also adds her suspicions. "Children under 18 are still not grown up. They don't have the ability to decide about sex. How could they consent to prostitution?" When a child who is not yet mature "consents" to join the sex industry, is it not the responsibility of her home, her school and her society? Currently when police uncover child prostitutes, they must first determine the cause and duration of the girls' involvement in prostitution. Then the girls are given shelter at either the Taipei City Kuangtse Women's Vocational Institute or Taiwan Province's Yunlin Girl'sTraining Center (depending upon where they are apprehended).
If the investigation determines that a girl is a "consenting prostitute," she is transferred to the juvenile court, and after a verdict is reached she is placed under the guidance of the Kuangtse Institute or the Yunlin Girls' Training Center for six months to two years.
Those who have been forced into the trade stand the danger of being sold into prostitution again, so they are placed under protective custody. Usually after they have studied at the Women's Vocational Institute for half a year, they are transferred to a private halfway house.
Kuangtse Women's Vocational Institute and theYunlin Girl's Training Center are organizations for guidance and protection. Yet in a closed environment, locked behind a thick steel door, the children are compelled to study vocations or skills. Could that produce a feeling of being "locked up"?
Li Hui-chen, director of the Kuangtse Women's Vocational Institute explains, "The closed-up environment is helpful in separating newly initiated children from bad friends." When children first go in, they may rebel, but after two or three weeks they begin to stabilize.
How long the girls stay at the vocational institute depends on their emotional condition and their behaviour. Most stay for a year at the longest. Before each girl leaves the institute, a guidance counselor evaluates whether it is appropriate for her to return home. If her family is dysfunctional or if she is in danger of being sold again, the institute will arrange for her to be transferred to a halfway house.
Currently the privately instituted halfway houses include: the Good Shepherd Sisters Fellowship, the Garden of Hope, the Hualien Good Shepherd Rescue Center, and the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation. Besides the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation, most have been formed by religious groups.
Privately founded halfway houses are noncompulsory development establishments. The atmosphere is no different from most dormitories, but the address is not released to the outside public, for the safety of the girls. The girls sheltered there leave "home" during the day to study or work and return "home" in the evening. Their movement is relatively free. But because there are no controls, a good number of them run away from "home."
Follow-up guidance is generally lacking. So when girls walk out the front gate of the Women's Vocational Institute, they are like a kite whose string has been cut, completely beyond control. Institute Director Li Hui-chen bemoans, "This is the aspect of underage prostitute guidance that makes a person feel the most powerless."
Li Hui-chen continues, in the past year and a half, she has guided 17 girls to the point of entering a halfway house. Of those, only four still remain in a halfway house. "It is an entirely strange environment to them, but the temptations of the outside are very familiar," she explains. At this time it is very easy for the children to run away.
The situations of those girls who return home are not necessarily wonderful. Although the girls will have the guidance of local social workers after they exit the vocational institutions, if they ever have any real problems they are not likely to seek the social worker's help. Some girls have telephoned the Vocational Institute to get rescued. But Li Hui-chen helplessly declares, "We usually are powerless to really help them. After one or two times, the children don't call us when they have problems, and our connection is severed."
When little girls are forced into prostitution, it breaks one's heart. When a girl "consents" to prostitute herself, it is even more startling.
Chen Hui-chi explains that in the past most underage prostitutes were sold into the trade, but in the last one or two years the situation is different. The number of child prostitutes who have not been sold has obviously increased.
Li Hui-chen explains that at Kuangtse Women's Vocational Institute of the 56 girls currently receiving guidance, only three were sold into prostitution. Llister Tang Ching-lien comments that more and more of the girls at the Good Shepherd Sisters Fellowship's halfway house, tend to be from "consenting" backgrounds.
Why would a child "consent" to prostitute herself?
Last year the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission of the Executive Yuan commissioned an investigation of the problem of underage prostitution by National Taiwan University Sociology Professor Yi Ching-chun and National Chengchih University Sociology Professor Hsieh Mei-oh.
The results of the research indicated that most girls who were forced into prostitution were coerced by friends or sold by parents. As for the reasons for "consenting," needing to support a family was the most common motivation. Other reasons could further be enumerated as: curiosity, easy money, relieving economic pressures of the family, etc.
From this investigation, the conclusion can obviously be drawn that the "economic element" is either a direct or indirect cause of underage prostitution.
The Chang Teacher Monthly undertook a survey of the values of junior and high school students and asked which was most important--education or money? 44% of junior high and high school students feel that education is most important; 33% find money most important. Compared with American students, 77% of whom favored education and 16% of whom favored money, it is evident that a large portion of Taiwan's students are rather mercenary.
In reality, not only young people maintain an acquisitive outlook; it is the whole of society. The social environment created this kind of younger generation. Wu Fang-fang says with understanding, "The problem of child prostitution stems from a problem of value judgment; it is a social problem."
In the past private organizations quietly undertook the work of sheltering underage prostitutes. Whereas the task of sheltering is important, it is, after all, "Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted." The results are limited. Today private organizations have begun to develop prevention work. To put it another way, private groups have changed the emphasis of their efforts from curing injuries to preventing them from ever happening.
The Good Shepherd Rescue Project, for example, concentrates its work among the aboriginal villages of Hualien County. They employ various preventative methods, such as social visitation, extra-curricular guidance and girls' educational courses, to reduce the likelihood of the aboriginal girls' getting involved in prostitution.
Most girls who end up in prostitution are those who have problems fitting in at home or in school. For this reason, girls who drop out of school or run away from home are put in the "high-risk category."
"We go through the whole community, asking at every house which daughters don't go to school," Wu Fang-fang explains. If they discover that a girl has gone missing or there is a chance that she has been sold, they alert the police to search for and rescue the girl.
Extra-curricular training and education are the work of laying down solid roots. "To change values, we have to start with education," says Wu Fang-fang. This kind of work has virtually no immediate impact on the problem of child prostitution, but she believes that ten years from now, she will see results in the persons of the children that are being taught now.
Turning around the general drift of society is an even bigger enterprise. Chi Hui-jung states, "Advocating morality is completely useless." She believes that only opposing the "accomplices" and reducing society's demand for this practice will have any impact.
The Garden of Hope Foundation is actively advocating the "Underage Prostitution Prevention Law." This law would place a heavier penalty upon slave traders and mama-sans, from the current crime of offense against personal freedom, which allows release on bail, to incarceration of five years or more. Furthermore, it would specify that photographs of male customers be posted publicly, and that the customers receive sex education lectures,etc.
Besides petitioning the Legislative Yuan, the Garden of Hope intends to continue its promotional campaign at every level. Chi Hui-jung remarks that after their "Protest Child Prostitution in Snake Alley" campaign, the next target is the broader industry catering to business carousal.
"We are going to initiate a campaign to 'Refuse another round, turn down a girl,'" Chi Hui-jung explains. If only the demand does not continue and the related enterprises stop making a profit, then "our little girls won't be viewed as commodities anymore."
At the same time that private advocates work hard to oppose underage prostitution, relevant government organizations are actively getting involved, as well. The Taipei City Kuangtse Women's Vocational Institute is planning to establish a halfway house, to give girls who leave their facility a "buffer period." Currently, the Ministry of Education is activating a "special project on dropouts." It will establish a coordinated reporting system with the National Police Administration, in which the police would help locate junior high and high school students who have dropped out or gone missing. It is also strengthening guidance measures to rematriculate dropouts and help them better acclimate themselves to the school environment. This will lessen the chances that children may go astray because they do not fit in well in school.
If we are to guide these young girls out from the mist, the efforts of individuals or government bureaus is simply insufficient. Only with the energy of our whole society can we meet with success.
[Picture Caption]
p.106
In the past, everyone avoided talking about the problem of underage prostitution, but recently it has become a hot topic. In the satellite television program "Marginal People," an underage prostitute grants an interview. (photo courtesy of TVBS)
p.108
Every nook and cranny of society is filled with snares and temptations. The hearts of youngsters are not yet mature; they can easily lose their way. (Photo by Huang Li-li)
p.110
To build a correct set of values, one must start with education. During the winter vacation, the Good Shepherd Center holds an activity camp. With speeches and songs, they build friendly relations with the children and foster an appropriate point of view.
p.111
An ill-fated girl who lost the support of her family finds proper care in the protection of a halfway house. Shown here is a gift that a girl gave to the Good Shepherd Center's director.
p.111
The photo of a pop idol is hung on the wall, a cute little teddy bear is placed on the bed. This is a room for a nine year-old and two 12 year-olds at the Good Shepherd Center's halfway house.
p.112
The "Protest Child Prostitution in Snake Alley" jogging event appealed to the whole population to confront the problem of child prostitution. Even more, it raised a challenge to the "accomplices of child prostitution." (photo by Vincent Chang)
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A healthy family and benevolent parent-child relations are the foundation for solving the problem of underage prostitution.
To build a correct set of values, one must start with education. During the winter vacation, the Good Shepherd Center holds an activity camp. With speeches and songs, they build friendly relations with the children and foster an appropriate point of view.
An ill-fated girl who lost the support of her family finds proper care in the protection of a halfway house. Shown here is a gift that a girl gave to the Good Shepherd Center's director.
The photo of a pop idol is hung on the wall, a cute little teddy bear is placed on the bed. This is a room for a nine year-old and two 12 year-olds at the Good Shepherd Center's halfway house.
A healthy family and benevolent parent-child relations are the foundation for solving the problem of underage prostitution.
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