Combating Child Prostitution in Colombia

More than two million rural Colombians have been displaced by the country’s violence over the past 15 years. Many are now struggling to survive in the unfamiliar and intimidating environment of Colombia’s large cities. With an unemployment rate close to 20 percent, it is virtually impossible for many displaced to find legitimate jobs. The majority of them work in the informal sector peddling cheap goods or shining shoes on the streets while some have turned to crime in order to survive. Many parents send their children out into the streets to help support the family by stealing, selling chewing gum and cigarettes, or worse, selling themselves.

It is estimated that there are 35,000 children working as prostitutes in Colombia with between 5,000 and 10,000 of them on the streets of Bogotá. According to Juan Carlos Carrillo, a psychologist for the Renacer Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides housing and education to former child prostitutes in Bogotá, “Many of the kids that live in the streets were displaced from different parts of Colombia by the violence. Many end up in prostitution because of domestic problems or are forced into it by their families to earn money.”

Renacer workers go out into the streets at night to befriend child prostitutes. They try to earn the trust of the kids in order to convince them to join the Renacer program. If the children agree, they are given a place to live in one of the Foundation’s two houses. Renacer’s six psychologists and three social workers provide some 60 kids between the ages of 12 and 19 with counseling as part of the organization’s two-year program. While in the program the children attend school and participate in workshops that help them develop their social skills. They are also provided with job training at the organization’s restaurant, book-printing shop, graphic arts company, tailor shop and computer lab.

Renacer was established 13 years ago to help address the growing problem of child prostitution in Bogotá. According to co-founder, Estrella Cardenas, “I had been working as a volunteer with a religious group that worked with female prostitutes of all ages. We came across child prostitutes living in the streets, but had no program for them. We set them up in rooms, but they still worked in prostitution. We began noticing more and more child prostitutes and saw that this wasn’t the way to deal with the problem.”

The foundation receives funding from a Colombian government agency, Bienestar Familiar, as well as from the British, Canadian and Spanish embassies. Some celebrities have also contributed to Renacer, including tennis star Martina Hingis who came to speak with the children after seeing a documentary on child prostitutes in Colombia.

Renacer also operates a medical clinic that provides free healthcare for child prostitutes who have not joined the program and continue to work on the streets. Because of a lack of funds, however, the clinic has limited facilities and is dependent on doctors volunteering their time. One such doctor is Tina Teikari, a young Finn from Helsinki who volunteered to work full-time at Renacer for four months. Mostly she deals with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), “It breaks my heart to see the same kids keep coming back. I treat them and warn them that one day they will get something I can’t treat. It is not easy to tell a child that they have an incurable disease such as Aids or Hepatitis C.”

The psychological and economic stresses that result from displacement often cause families to break apart. For many impoverished children who end up on the street, prostitution is one of the only means of earning enough money to support themselves. According to Doctor Teikari, this economic desperation increases their risk of contracting fatal STDs because child prostitutes can “earn double for having sex without a condom.”

Working as prostitutes on the streets of Colombia’s cities offers displaced rural children little respite from the country’s violence. Death squads intent on “socially cleansing” Colombia’s urban areas through the killing of drug addicts, the homeless, petty thieves and homosexuals also target child prostitutes. “Sometimes children come in with gunshot wounds,” explains Teikari, “If it’s bad, I have to send them to the hospital, but often the hospital will turn them away if they don’t have an ID card or money.”

Renacer offers teenage prostitutes a viable way out of their dangerous and miserable existence. But even those children who successfully complete the program and re-enter society still have to live with their dark past, “It is a stigma they carry for the rest of their lives. Even if others don’t know they were a prostitute, they know themselves,” says Teikari.

Nevertheless, nineteen year-old Carolina, who ran away from home when she was fifteen because of repeated abuse, is extremely grateful to the Foundation for rescuing her from the street and providing her with an education. After more than two years at Renacer, Carolina has almost completed the program and is ready to head out into the world with renewed optimism, “Now I have friends in school and I want to finish school, learn English, and study business administration at the National University.”

This article originally appeared in Colombia Report, an online journal that was published by the Information Network of the Americas (INOTA).