Children for Sale

Children for Sale

2010, Crime  -   36 Comments
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Ratings: 7.82/10 from 76 users.

From slums and misery in Brazil, hundreds of children and teenagers leave each day in search of tourists. At home there is no food on the table. On the beaches of Fortaleza there are plenty of men eager for easy and cheap bodies. Left to themselves or encouraged by their parents into prostitution, many children try to survive with what the night of Fortaleza has to offer - sex and drugs.

NGOs are trying to rescue some of these children, but during the humid nights in northeast Brazil sleeping on the floor is the lesser of two evils for the 400 street children of Fortaleza. Homeless, without food or parental love they quickly become experts in petty theft, drugs, and prostitution. On the streets and in newspaper ads, all the Brazilian women sold to tourists are 18 years old; no more, no less. To avoid the police, who are now more attentive to child sexual exploitation, documents are falsified and they avoid the main streets.

It is estimated that every year 200,000 men travel to poor countries in search of sex. Fortaleza is very much on their route. Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese are the most frequent customers. The men get the pleasure, the girls the money; three to twenty Euros at the most. According to the latest data of the Brazilian geographical research, 62% of the population is living below the poverty line. Brazilians are at the mercy of the tourists. Women want to escape poverty and men believe that anything can be bought. The lack of opportunity turns the tourists in disloyal competition.

The industry is designed so that no law prevents exploiters from profiting from the misery of Brazil. Foreigners and also some Brazilians rent houses on the beach and taxi drivers take the girls there. In this industry profit is the law. Drug dealers realize that the prostitute is the best vendor. For the dealer it’s excellent, because he creates the dependency on the drug and it also creates a system of trafficking. It makes it impossible for her to denounce him because she also becomes a dealer.

Although rare, cases of imprisonment for sexual exploitation have increased in Brazil. But the industry knows how to take advantage of any gap in the legislation. Besides drugs and prostitution, sex tourism acts as a gateway for human trafficking.

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Carlaryoungscarlaryoungs
Carlaryoungscarlaryoungs
4 years ago

I love you Rose Youngs

jona
jona
6 years ago

who documented this film ??

Loira
Loira
7 years ago

mediatorguy: The name of the sociologist and photographer is Robson Oliveira.

person
person
8 years ago

Can someone please identify the song played at 22:19?

GODHELPUS
GODHELPUS
9 years ago

This world makes me ill. Sick world

Jessica
Jessica
10 years ago

Very disturbing documentary. I had no idea child prostitution was a major issue in brazil and other South American countries. Truly saddening.

bringmeredwine
bringmeredwine
10 years ago

I'm pretty jaded, but the woman's story about the baby at the 30min mark really upset me. It's crazy that Brazil is hosting a FIFA soccer tournament, (has it happened yet, I'm not sure) and a summer Olympics; but ignores its societal problems. But this neglect of the most poor and vulnerable happens all over this world and is nothing new. The interview with a nun was interesting. Brazil needs more people like her.

wheelnut53
wheelnut53
10 years ago

Birth control or sterilization has anyone heard of it , simple solution if poverty ,starvation , prostitution is the problem limiting the amount of children being born seems like the best solution . Also putting a few of those sex tourist behind bars for 10+ years would serve as a deterrent not for tourism but for the pedophiles

Jennifer Wappler
Jennifer Wappler
10 years ago

pedophilia is a mental disease. men who lust after the bodies of babies are mentally sick and science needs to urgently investigate where this horrific mindset stems from in order to get them away from kids

watchtheduck
watchtheduck
10 years ago

With all of the money and power that men wield in this world, if instead of competing with other men for who has the bigger house, boat, plane, d-k, etc. the money and power was used to solve the issues of poverty, we would live in a much different world. Bill Gates and others in his league have more than enough to help solve the problems of poverty... instead they live in pavillions, the size of which could house an entire village of starving people as they eat at extravagant banquets, and fly their jumbo jets and command their fleets of ships, and spend more money in a year than an entire village could spend in a lifetime. It's criminal if you ask me that some people hoard so much for themselves, while others simply because of where they live have to beg in the streets. I know that there are many that won't agree with me, but I find it beyond disgusting.

DigiWongaDude
DigiWongaDude
10 years ago

"Although rare, cases of imprisonment for sexual exploitation have increased in Brazil."

They're rare, not because arrests aren't made. They're rare because the authorities take pay-offs and bribes to compensate their abysmal pay. The tourist's pockets are deep for that kinda charge. Then there's the women who run the girls in to the ground and addiction, under the guise of 'caring' for them (for their pimping slice of course).

Back in the old days...during the European Dark Ages...if parents could no longer take care of, or feed their children, it wasn't unheard of for them to be abandoned, literally, in the wild. This is partly where the background of the story of Hansel & Gretel originates (see "The Big Chill - Little Ice Age").

Here, in present times...the wild is the glittering city lights and golden beaches. Children are even more often abandoned and the wolves are everywhere. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This industry of exploitation is tolerated and perpetuated on so many levels by the indifference of so many. You can point the finger at dirty old men all you want, I get that - because to even consider the epidemic is systemically supported, affects a much larger percentage of the population and sheds a disturbing light on those we'd ordinarily wish to hold in higher regard.

Blame poverty, drugs, parents, lack of education, society, inequality, lack of opportunity...or just dirty old men...whatever helps you deal with it I guess?

Any society that tolerates this kind of activity through a superficial rejection of it, is sick to the core. And these jungles of wild hungry creatures, feeding and preying on each other for survival, are growing and regressing into depravity year on year. When we collectively allow our children to become part of the 'food chain', that depravity can surely know no bounds. Open your eyes and see just how this depravity is tolerated!

Think I'm offering no solutions? DNA swab the tourists on their way in. DNA swab every arrested individual. Build a database and make the perps think twice. Make them take their sperm home with them (as a Thailand tourism campaign once touted). Pay authorities decent wages...exceptional wages. Reward informants for tip-offs. The government could buy its children's safety, and if it can't afford to then foreign, western, wealthy governments through foreign aid (and tourism) can... instead of looking on with such helpless pity.

Wherever there are huge differences in exchange rates, you'll find sexploitation is rife across the board with many people directly or indirectly cashing in on the action. That influx of tourism wealth can be put to such good use - it's simple stup*d, children are not for sale!

Nikita Kade
Nikita Kade
10 years ago

This goes on and on and on...and it seems to be getting worse, as globalization and the spread of information make it easier for predators to find prey. What will happen as poor nations get poorer? How many new generations of exploited children will there be in a hundred years? I agree with watchtheduck: if only someone could get working on that virus. I think we'd soon find the world devoid of most old men--and the few left would be the good ones. Can't happen soon enough.

watchtheduck
watchtheduck
10 years ago

If it weren't for the men buying the bodies of women and children, this wouldn't be an issue. What is it about men that separates them from their humanity turning them into monstrous predators? Is it testosterone or is it more societal conditioning? Whatever it is, I wish there was some kind of killer virus that these girls could pass onto to the men without themselves having it, so that the men who do seek out these children and poor women, would die a slow and painful death. Maybe that's what it would take to stop this abuse.

mediatorguy
mediatorguy
10 years ago

In the documentary, one of the people interviewed is a sociologist and photographer; from what I can hear, his name is Rob Sinolafiera but I can't find him via Google. Does anyone have the actual spelling of his name?