Chile tackles child-sex trade

It's 5 a.m. on Providencia Street in Chile's capital, and you can still see children as young as 5 peddling red flowers as their parents look on from the shadows. They've been working all night, and flowers aren't the only thing they sell.

Child prostitution is a problem that has plagued much of Latin America for decades. But just as Chile has been sheltered from the rest of the region's economic problems, to most people here this was a social problem that existed only elsewhere.

That changed late last year with the eruption of a sex scandal involving business impresario Claudio Spiniak, whose family made its fortune building a luxury-spa empire. He is alleged to have been at the helm of a prostitution ring that recruited street children. Mr. Spiniak denies the charges.

The sordid case has been front-page news for the past three months, with police officers and high-ranking businessmen under arrest. Two senators, one a former mayor of Santiago, are under investigation. [Editor's note: The orginal version of this story incorrectly stated that two senators were arrested in connection with the sex scandal case.]

It has taken a scandal of this magnitude to open Chile's eyes to a problem long ignored. Now that it has come to the fore, the government is taking bold steps by strengthening laws and increasing funding to groups working on the problem, all in the name of helping thousands of at-risk children.

"It has gone from being a topic that was absolutely unseen to one that has been made visible - thanks, unfortunately, to these horrible events," says Marcela Abarca of the National Service for Minors (SENAME), a government department specifically dedicated to the protection of children. "In terms of public policies and help for children, this is pretty positive. It is showing people that a problem exists, that this is a crime, and that it damages those children. That wasn't recognized before."

Francisco is one of the hidden tragedies. His mother died giving birth, and his father was shot shortly after that. He grew up in orphanages, and at the age of 7, he escaped to an even rougher life on the streets. For half his life, he worked in the sex trade. It was the only way to feed himself, he says.

"I saw that other kids were doing it, but all of them did it out of need," says Francisco. He is 15 now and has been off the streets for three months.

A recent SENAME study estimates that there are 4,000 children in the commercial-sex trade in Chile, though other studies have shown the number could be as high as 15,000. Some start as young as 5 years old, making anywhere from $1 to $50 per episode.

"We haven't seen the phenomenon that exists in Thailand, where there are establishments where little boys dance on tables," says Claudia Fuentes, founder of Alert and Response against the Sexual Abuse of Children (ARASI), a nongovernmental organization. "We haven't reached that level, or at least we don't see it explicitly.... It is still very hidden."

ARASI has identified 65,000 online networks of pedophiles across the country. Thirty of them are now before the courts. It's hard to know how many people are involved because one person can belong to many networks.

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