Crackdown on Child-Sex Trade

Aug. 18, 2006 — -- As many as 2 million children worldwide are drawn into the sex trade each year, according to UNICEF and End Children Prostitution, Child Pornography, and the Trafficking of Children (ECPAT).

The child-sex trade is thriving in places like Thailand, where 41-year-old John Mark Karr was arrested in connection with the 1996 slaying of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey.

Carol Smolenski, ECPAT's U.S. executive director, estimates 25 percent of tourists who travel abroad seeking children in child-sex trades come from America.

These tourists, she says, fall into two different categories.

One category is what Smolenski called "preferential child abusers."

These pedophiles want to have sex with kids and will do it in the United States if they can get away with it, but find it easier to do in a foreign country.

Another category, Smolenski said, is "situational child abusers" -- primarily middle-age men who might not be that interested in children, but might try sex with kids in a foreign country.

"They want to try something new," Smolenski said.

These people rationalize their behavior, she said, by thinking, "Everyone does it here, so what the heck?"

The second group, Smolenski believes, can be educated to change its behavior through a public awareness campaign launched in North America by ECPAT in 2004.

For the last three years, ECPAT has tried to get U.S.-owned hotels and airlines to follow the lead of other foreign-owned corporations to stand up to the child-sex trade.

Air France, for instance, runs in-flight videos against child-sex tourism.

According to Smolenski, 10 other airlines have used the videos, but no U.S.-owned airline has agreed to show them, "even though they've been asked many times."