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Child sex tourism (CST) is tourism for the purpose of engaging in the prostitution of children, which is commercially facilitated child sexual abuse. The definition of child in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is "every human being below the age of 18 years". Child sex tourism results in both mental and physical consequences for the exploited children, which may include sexually transmitted infections, "drug addiction, pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and death", according to the State Department of the United States. Child sex tourism, part of the multibillion-dollar global sex tourism industry, is a form of child prostitution within the wider issue of commercial sexual exploitation of children. Child sex tourism victimizes approximately 2 million children around the world. The children who perform as prostitutes in the child sex tourism trade often have been lured or abducted into sexual slavery.
Child grooming is establishing an emotional connection with a child under the age of consent, and sometimes the child's family, to lower the child's inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse. Child grooming is also used to lure minor children into various illicit businesses such as child trafficking, child prostitution, cybersex trafficking, or the production of child pornography.
Laws against child sexual abuse vary by country based on the local definition of who a child is and what constitutes child sexual abuse. Most countries in the world employ some form of age of consent, with sexual contact with an underage person being criminally penalized. As the age of consent to sexual behaviour varies from country to country, so too do definitions of child sexual abuse. An adult's sexual intercourse with a minor below the legal age of consent may sometimes be referred to as statutory rape, based on the principle that any apparent consent by a minor could not be considered legal consent.
Some of the personnel of the United Nations peacekeeping are accused of commiting sexual abuse in general and of child sexual abuse in particular. An Associated Press (AP) investigation revealed in 2017 that more than 100 United Nations (UN) peacekeepers ran a child sex ring in Haiti over a 10-year period and none were ever jailed. The report further found that over the previous 12 years, there had been almost 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other UN personnel around the world. AP found the abuse to be much greater than originally thought. After the AP report, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, urged all countries to hold UN peacekeepers accountable for any sexual abuse and exploitation. As early as 2004, Amnesty International reported that underage girls were being kidnapped, tortured and forced into prostitution in Kosovo with UN and NATO personnel being the customers driving the demand for the sex slaves. The UN's department of peacekeeping in New York acknowledged at that time that "peacekeepers have come to be seen as part of the problem in trafficking rather than the solution".
The Rochdale child sex abuse ring involved underage teenage girls in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England. Nine men were convicted of sex trafficking and other offences including rape, trafficking girls for sex and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child in May 2012. This resulted in Greater Manchester Police launching Operation Doublet to investigate further claims of abuse with 19 men so far being convicted. Forty-seven girls were identified as victims of child sexual exploitation during the police investigation. The men were British Pakistanis, which led to discussion on whether the failure to investigate them was linked to the authorities' fear of being accused of racial prejudice. The girls were mainly White British.
The Derby child sex abuse ring was a group of men who sexually abused up to a hundred girls in Derby, England. In 2010, after an undercover investigation by Derbyshire police, members of the ring were charged with 75 offences relating to 26 girls. Nine of the 13 accused were convicted of grooming and raping girls between 12 and 18 years old. The attacks provoked fierce discussion about race and sexual exploitation.
The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal consists of the organised child sexual abuse that occurred in the town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Northern England from the late 1980s until the 2010s and the failure of local authorities to act on reports of the abuse throughout most of that period. Researcher Angie Heal, who was hired by local officials and warned them about child exploitation occurring between 2002 and 2007, has since described it as the "biggest child protection scandal in UK history". Evidence of the abuse was first noted in the early 1990s, when care home managers investigated reports that children in their care were being picked up by taxi drivers. From at least 2001, multiple reports passed names of alleged perpetrators, several from one family, to the police and Rotherham Council. The first group conviction took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 12–16. From January 2011 Andrew Norfolk of The Times pressed the issue, reporting in 2012 that the abuse in the town was widespread and that the police and council had known about it for over ten years.
The Oxford child sex abuse ring was an alleged group of 22 men who were convicted of various sexual offences against underage girls in the English city of Oxford between 1998 and 2012. Thames Valley Police launched Operation Bullfinch in May 2011 to investigate allegations of historical sexual abuse, leading to ten men being convicted. Upon further allegations in 2015, Thames Valley Police then launched Operation Silk, resulting in ten more different men being convicted and Operation Spur which resulted in two more convictions. The term itself and the investigation has been heavily criticized by Muslims and Left Wing members for being highly racially motivated and Islamophobic. Some have put the blame on media and the police for ignoring such crimes if they really happened for so long Some have even questioned the narrative of grooming gangs as similar events elsewhere in India and Nigeria have instead been blamed as a conspiracy by right-wing Hindus and Christians.
The Telford child sexual exploitation scandal was a scandal in the United Kingdom. Originally, a group of men were convicted of grooming local children for sex between 2007 and 2009 in Telford in the English county of Shropshire. While media reports had suggested 100 or more girls had been affected and around 200 perpetrators were suspected, the Sunday Mirror reported in March 2018 that up to 1,000 girls may have been abused, with some even murdered, in incidents dating back to the 1970s. Social workers and police cast doubt on this report, denying that Telford had a "discernible problem compared to other towns".
Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom has been reported in the country throughout its history. In about 90% of cases the abuser is a person known to the child. However, cases during the second half of the twentieth century, involving religious institutions, schools, popular entertainers, politicians, military personnel, and other officials, have been revealed and widely publicised since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Child sexual abuse rings in numerous towns and cities across the UK have also drawn considerable attention.
The Peterborough sex abuse case involved 10 men who committed sexual offences against under-aged girls, some as young as 12, in the English city of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. In a series of trials in 2014 and 2015, they were found guilty of rape, child prostitution and trafficking for sexual exploitation. Police had been alerted by the Rotherham and Rochdale child abuse cases to the possibility of abuse taking place.
The Banbury child sex abuse ring was a group of six men who committed serious sexual offences against under-aged girls in the English town of Banbury, Oxfordshire. In March 2015, they were found guilty of offences including rape and sexual activity with a child over a period extending from 2009 to 2014. Police in Banbury had drawn on the lessons of Operation Bullfinch, which targeted sexual abuse in nearby Oxford.
The Aylesbury child sex abuse ring was a group of five men who committed serious sexual offences against two under-aged girls in the English town of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. In July 2015, they were found guilty of offences including rape and child prostitution over a period extending from 2006 to 2012. The child protection charity Barnardo's stated that it had worked with the two girls in 2008 and referred one of them to Buckinghamshire County Council as in danger of child sex exploitation. The council did not respond adequately and, following the convictions, apologised to the two girls for its failure to protect them. It has now instituted a Serious Case Review to examine those failures.
The Keighley child sex abuse ring was a group of twelve men who committed serious sexual offences against two under-aged girls in the English town of Keighley and city of Bradford, West Yorkshire. In December 2015, they were found guilty of rape and other forms of sexual abuse by a unanimous jury verdict at Bradford Crown Court. They were sentenced in February 2016 to a total of 130 years in jail. The main victim, who had been targeted by ten of the men, was aged between 13 and 14 at the time of the attacks between 2011 and 2012. The alleged ringleader of the gang was named as local drug-dealer Ahmed Al-Arif Choudhury, who was not among those found guilty in court and is believed to have fled abroad.
The Halifax child sex abuse ring was a group of men who committed serious sexual offences against under-aged girls in the English town of Halifax and city of Bradford, West Yorkshire. It was the largest child sexual exploitation investigation in the United Kingdom. In 2016, the perpetrators were found guilty of rape and other crimes in several separate trials at Leeds Crown Court. In total, as many as a hundred men may have been involved in child abuse. Twenty-five suspects were charged by West Yorkshire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service and 18 of these were found guilty, totalling over 175 years of prison time. A further nine men were convicted in February 2019 for grooming two underage girls in Bradford and sentenced to over 130 years in prison. The majority of those charged and later convicted come from the town's Asian community; there were fears that their arrests might impact race relations in the town.
The Newcastle sex abuse ring were a gang of seventeen men and a woman who sexually abused adolescent girls and young women from 2010 to 2014 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, after plying them with alcohol and drugs. The men were of Albanian, Kurdish, Bangladeshi, Turkish, Iranian, Iraqi, Eastern European and Pakistani heritage who were aged between 27 and 44. A British man of Indian heritage was also charged for conspiracy to incite prostitution and supplying drugs to a victim. The victims ranged in age from 13 to 25.
The Huddersfield grooming gang was a group of men who were convicted of sexual offences against girls in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom. It is the largest gang ever convicted for sex abuse in the United Kingdom. The offences took place between 2004 and 2011, and the men were charged following the Operation Tendersea inquiry by the police. The trials began in April 2017 and 20 men were convicted in 2018 in three separate trials. Since then, further men have been convicted in a series of trials, bringing the total number of men convicted to 41 by August 2021.
The Kidwelly sex cult is the common name given to a cult that operated in the Welsh town of Kidwelly that raped children for decades until its perpetrators were arrested in 2010. Known by its members as simply "The Church", its leader Colin Batley psychologically terrorised and coerced vulnerable children into performing sexual acts, by using death threats and brainwashing. Batley, three female members, and a second man were convicted of child sex offences in 2011 and jailed.
Operation Voicer was a major police investigation into serious sexual offences against pre-school aged children and infants across England, launched in 2014. The perpetrators groomed the families of the young victims, in some cases before the babies were even born. By September 2015, seven offenders were jailed, 28 further suspects had been arrested, three victims were identified, and 33 children were safeguarded. Ten offenders received significant prison sentences.
The Manchester child sex abuse ring was a group of men who committed serious sexual offences against under-aged girls in Manchester, England, between 2016 and 2018. Four members were jailed in September 2019, while others evaded arrest by fleeing the country.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 Morris, Steven (27 November 2014). "13 men guilty of enforced prostitution and rape of vulnerable girls in Bristol". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 28 November 2014.
- ↑ Laville, Sandra (3 March 2015). "Professionals blamed Oxfordshire girls for their sexual abuse, report finds" – via www.theguardian.com.
- ↑ Morris, Steven (28 November 2014). "13 men jailed over Bristol sex-abuse ring". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 September 2015.
- ↑ "Gang jailed for teens sex abuse". Keighley News. Press Association. 27 November 2014. Archived from the original on 18 February 2018. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
- ↑ "Bristol sex gang: The horrifying ordeals of the brave 13-year-old who came forward". The Independent. 27 November 2014. Retrieved 28 November 2014.
- ↑ https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-independent/20141128 – via PressReader.
{{cite web}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - 1 2 "A gang who were part of an inner city sex ring involving the abuse, rape and prostitution of British girls have been jailed for more than 40 years". London Evening Standard. 28 November 2014. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
- ↑ "Seven jailed for part in Bristol sex abuse gang – BBC News". BBC News. 28 November 2014. Retrieved 9 September 2015.
- 1 2 "'Schools can't cope with the tide of child sexual exploitation'". The Guardian. 2 December 2014. Retrieved 2 December 2014.
