http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3960
From the desk of A. Millar
According to the NSPCC up to 5,000 children and young adults may be working as prostitutes in Britain, and the number appears to be rising. They are also being trapped into a life of prostitution at a younger age than previous.
In some cases, the NSPCC states, peer pressure is to blame. Clearly, children are being increasingly sexualized through the media, and this, of course, feeds very rapidly into the way in which children see themselves and how they see the world. Girls, particularly, are encouraged to think of themselves as virtual adults, or, perhaps more especially, as virtual adult stars. A month ago, for example, an online ‘game’ called Miss Bimbo was launched which, although aimed at children, gives players a naked virtual Bimbo character to be dressed, embellished with breast implants, and its virtual weight controlled by virtual diet pills – hardly a good example of womanhood. However, according to the BBC’s investigative reporting program Panorama many British girls (some as young as 12) are “groomed” for prostitution by criminal gangs with networks that extend across the country. Such girls are typically not the out-of-control youths lacking parental guidance, such as we might assume. They are merely teenagers, easily manipulated and easily controlled by ruthless, older men. “Grooming” consists of an emotionally and mentally paralyzing mix of flattery and gifts from boys only slightly older than their victims, introductions to older men, drink, drugs, sexual abuse, and rape. According to Jane, who talked on Panorama about being forced into prostitution at the age of 13:
“The grooming starts where you meet them [slightly older boys in a group and they’re nice to you and take you to McDonald’s and buy you cigarettes.”
“I was flattered that older boys were interested in me, which at 13 is nice.”
“And then you start to meet the cousins and the brothers, and then you realize that you’ve been passed on because suddenly you’re hanging around with older people.”
“They [the older men start to touch you and say sexual things to you.”
“And then the abuse starts. I was pinned down by two men while a third man raped me.
“And there were other men watching.”
The Daily Mail ran a couple of stories that drew on this particular episode of Panorama (‘Sex for Sale’) even before it had aired, though it concentrated largely on the racial composition of Britain’s various gangs, in contrast to the television program itself. The newspaper states, for example, “these crimes frequently have a racial element: in many of the identifiable cases, the pimps come from the Asian or Afro-Caribbean communities”. The racial composition of Britain’s gangland is, accordingly, “largely Asian in northern England, Afro-Caribbean in the West Midlands and elsewhere White, Turkish and Kurdish.” However, while the documentary focused on a specific few Asian criminals and their White, female victims, it only very briefly touched on the subject, and a description of the documentary on Panorama’s homepage makes no mention at all of the race of the pimps or their victims, though, not surprisingly.
Race and sexual abuse is a sensitive issue in multicultural Britain. The fear that racist groups will exploit the situation to enflame tensions, or that accusations of racism will emerge in response to any official enquiry, seem to run through the sad tale of child exploitation in Britain. A Channel 4 documentary made in 2004, claiming that Asian men in Bradford were grooming White girls for prostitution, was cancelled for fear of public anger. The Coalition for the Removal of Pimping (CROP) has, likewise, a lengthy statement against racism on its website noting that it will not cooperate with racist organizations, as:
“Racist and political exploitation of the issue confuses the issue and undermines, or even prevents, active responses by relevant responsible agencies.”
Both Conservative M.P. Philip Davies and Director of the Ramadhan Foundation Mohammed Shafiq have suggested that the police have so far failed to tackle the problem of Asian gangs pimping White girls for fear of being accused of racism. Shafiq, who appears in the Panorama show, has said:
“These are criminals they should be treated as criminals. They are not Asian criminals, they are not Muslim criminals, they are not White criminals. They are criminals and they should be treated as criminals.”
“If there is a drug dealer grooming a White teenager into prostitution then I don’t want the police service or local authority not to be open about it.”
Although the police appear to have a good idea about the ethnicities of Britain’s gangs, according to the NSPCC little is known about the ethnic composition of its child prostitutes. Last year the press highlighted the plight of young women trafficked from Eastern Europe, though thousands are also brought into Britain every year from Asia and Africa, usually under the pretext that they will have a better life in the U.K. Yet they are uquickly used by their traffickers to obtain government benefits, and in many cases are made to work as prostitutes.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3140