Child Prostitution
Child prostitution is common in the country, and especially in Peru’s isolated Amazonian mining communities. In the Amazonian department of Madre de Dios the illegal exploitation of gold has dramatically increased the recruitment and coercion of adolescents into prostitution through false employment offers.
While poverty and inequality are important causes of child prostitution, part of the problem is also a social attitude that views sex--including paid sex--between adult men and adolescent girls as normal. Luis Gonzalez-Polar Zuzunada, president of La Restinga (an Iquitos-based nonprofit organization that works with at-risk children) said about teenage prostitution:"It's not seen as a crime. People think that's the way it is. Here, anyone is a potential client."
The Peruvian government recognizes child sex tourism to be a problem, particularly in Iquitos, Madre de Dios, and Cuzco.
Read more about this topic: Prostitution In Peru
Famous quotes containing the word child:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)