In Cambodia, nearly every single women working in Cambodia’s sex industry is her family’s main provider while three in five of the country’s sex workers are HIV positive, the UN is reporting in two new studies.
Cambodia is also among several Asian nations where health and social services are grossly deficient in treating the mental health problems of sexually abused children, according to the studies on child sexual exploitation.
Published by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the studies claim sexual abuse of children is still one of the most hidden and underreported forms of sexual violence in Asia.
Conducted in Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the studies found that children who are victims of rape, incest, prostitution and pornography suffer from severe mental problems including depression, substance abuse, self mutilation and suicidal tendencies.
Yet despite the severity of the problem, governments are failing to provide child victims with proper psychological treatment or legal protection. State services dealing with the mental traumas of exploited children are either non-existent or severely lacking in professionalism, the reports found.
Mam Bun Heng, secretary of state at the Ministry of Health, said Tuesday the government is working to improve mental health services in Cambodia. He said assistance from NGOs and UN agencies is helping to improve the level of psychological treatment.
“We have [a mental health] policy to implement. We are taking action and we are doing something to improve these services,” Mam Bun Heng said.
Yim Po, director of the Cambodian Center for the Protection of Children’s Rights, which undertook research in Cambodia funded by the UN commission, said Tuesday figures to accurately measure the number of child sex workers in Cambodia is difficult to establish because of secrecy surrounding the business.
However, children’s rights organizations estimate 5,000 children are working in Cambodia’s sex industry, Yim Po said.
The young age of victims and evidence of mental problems faced by children rescued from prostitution has led the Center to focus on psychosocial rehabilitation for victims, in addition to skills training and education, which are not widely available, Yim Po said. “There are many difficulties faced by these children. But for sexually abused children the main problems are mental.”
Of 53 sexually exploited girls surveyed in 1998 by the Center, 45 had also been subject to physical abuse at the brothels in which they worked. “The most common forms [of abuse] were hitting and kicking. Three girls were regularly whipped with electric wires,” the Center’s report states.
In Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and China, 33 percent to 50 percent of children who enter the sex industry suffered prior sexual abuse. Child victims of rape or incest often leave home to enter prostitution willingly due to the stigma of being sexually abused, or are sold by their families into prostitution, the UN studies found.
Once in the sex industry, some child sex workers are forced to serve more than 10 customers a day in deplorable conditions, where physical abuse by brothel owners and customers is common, the studies noted.
In Cambodia, the majority of brothel owners and child traffickers surveyed for the UN study were women. They reported that virgins are sold in Cambodia for as much as $800.
Kim Hak Su, the UN commission’s executive secretary, said laws to punish child sex abusers exist in the 11 countries featured in the studies. But enforcement of these laws is lacking, Kim Hak-Su said. “Although legislation against sexual abuse and sexual exploitation exist in all countries of the Greater Mekong sub region and South Asia, great challenges remain to enforce these laws, as well as to strengthen preventative and punitive measures against perpetrators,” Kim said.
Launching new anti human trafficking department at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs Monday, Minister Mu Sochua said court officials have shown a consistent inability to punish sex offenders brought before the country’s judicial system. “The practice of law here is not always proper,” Mu Sochua said.
Research done by the Center also notes the collaboration of police and military officials in Cambodia’s child sex trafficking business. “In some provinces these officers whose duty it is to enforce laws themselves are the owners of sex establishments housing child prostitutes and profit from the sexual trafficking of children,” the report claims.
