Our children are selling sex to survive

Young girls are being preyed on, and men often make them available to gangs and even exchange them among groups or individuals for goods or services.

The pilot study by Molo Songololo for the provincial department of social services and Poverty Alleviation focused on Atlantis.

But it is believed the situation there mirrors that in many poor areas around the city, children are at serious risk because of poverty.

The department has decided to expand the study to at least two other Western Cape towns, one being Beaufort West.

The Atlantis report included a study of 16 young girls in the area. But it included other cases seen by the department's Atlantis office, including:

• A total of 51 cases of trauma as a result of sexual abuse.
• Eight cases of neglect by parents or caregivers.
• Altogether 27 cases of drug and alcohol abuse
• Physical abuse, 51 cases.
• Ten instances of witness support, when children have to be prepared in order to testify in court.

The report, titled "Beyond Possibilities: The intervention and prevention of child sexual exploitation in Atlantis and surrounding areas", says: "Drug addiction, lack of secure shelter, daily survival of self, pressure from siblings, pimps and gangs and dangers to staff, further hampered our contact with children at risk and victims of sexual exploitation."

At the start of the study, five of the 16 girls involved had been sexually exploited, eight were at "high risk" of abuse and three had escaped the abuse cycle.

The study found nine of the girls abused drugs, and three said they used them on a recreational basis.

Three were sole breadwinners in their households.

Among the recommendations in the report is for a database to maintain a police record of arrest for offenders and victims of child abuse.

"The lack of responsiveness, abuse of power and corruption, in respect of child sexual exploitation, with the police must be investigated," the report said.

Atlantis, once a coloured group area, is estimated to be home to more than 110 000 people and has an unemployment rate above 50 percent.

By the 1990s, poverty had caused a big rise in child prostitution. Rape and other violent crimes have become a regular occurrence. Lately the area has had a tik epidemic.

Molo Songololo director Patrick Solomons told the Cape Argus on Tuesday that the Atlantis situation was not unique.

Poverty and drug dependency sometimes kept children in the spiral of sexual exploitation.

"What happens is that economic pressure makes them vulnerable."

Molo Songololo, which is also working in areas including Delft, Elsies River and Mitchells Plain, has found sexual exploitation to be one of the five biggest problems children have to deal with.

"Girls are procured for sexual exploitation by gangs to sell drugs, or are used by gangs or groups or individuals or syndicates to prostitute for them."

Sharon Follentine of the department told the province's standing committee on social development that there was a major problem with the commercial sexual exploitation of children, but its extent was difficult to measure.

"It is an under-reported phenomenon, like incest... You don't ask where the money is coming from. Parents often turn a blind eye, that is the tragedy."