That Serial Rape of Girl Child

by Dr D. Chandraratna

The writer was former Deputy Commissioner, Probation and Child Care (SLAS)

A/Professor Curtin University, Perth

Consultant, UNICEF, Social Care Project 2006

The United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child defines child prostitution as ‘the use of a child in sexual activities for remuneration or any other form of consideration.’ Therein a child is taken to mean anyone under the age of 18 years, The current episode of the serial rape of a girl child has caught the attention of many in the country and understandably so. We all are entitled to know more about it and in a sense it is genuinely everybody’s business for obvious reasons.

Official statistics at the National Child Protection Authority seem to suggest that child, related crimes are perpetually creeping up despite the many institutions, statutes and other state and non-state apparatuses brought in to stem the rise, alongside improved social conditions and law reform. We need to caution that rises in statistics could be due to better reporting and policing by state officials. On the contrary, there are child protection authorities that believe that those official figures, far from exaggerating, underestimate the real quantity of crime, leaving out many who do not get reported owing to a number of reasons. There is also scepticism in society that many schemes unveiled with fanfare as quick solutions to child crimes have not been implemented.

Why the sickening abhorrence

Leaving aside the emotional and affective arguments there are scientific reasons as to why this sordid episode is heart rending. First, working as a prostitute is dangerous and presents real risks to children. The body of a Sri Lankan child is often too small and malnourished to have intercourse with an adult man, and early sexual activity can be physically damaging for life. Young prostitution is also associated with poor health and substance use. Many child prostitutes are often already traumatised kids who have been abused. Pimps and traffickers manipulate children by using physical, emotional, and psychological abuse to keep them trapped in a life of prostitution. Venereal diseases run rampant. Children may also suffer from short–term and long–term psychological effects such as depression, low self-esteem, and feelings of hopelessness.

Secondly, technological advances, in particular the Internet, have facilitated the commercial sexual exploitation of children by providing a convenient worldwide marketing channel. Individuals can now use websites to advertise, schedule, and purchase sexual encounters with minors. Third, the overwhelming majority of clients are men, and at most time’s men of economic and social power who thrive on exploitation in their vocations. Fourth, child prostitution is clearly related to other forms of child sexual exploitation, such as trafficking and pornography; the precise links varying between different locations. Child prostitutes are filmed having perverse sex and that these images are stored, shared with others, and, in some cases, made commercially available. In the current episode the mobile phone has facilitated the despicable act of selling the services of this child.

Types of child prostitution

Child prostitution has a number of dimensions: trafficking, debt-bondage, prostitution supplementing family economies, ‘survival sex’, religiously sanctioned child prostitution and a few others. Debt bondage we already know from Bangkok and Phuket streets where intermediaries offer cash advances to parents to procure girls and boys under false pretences. The children are then sent to work in brothels, sometimes without their parents knowing the nature of the work they are involved in, working until they have paid back the debt. Finally, there are also other incredulous instances of religiously sanctioned child prostitution, such as the ‘devadasi’ cults of India, where girls are ritually married to a deity and are expected to have sex with intermediary priests or higher caste members of the community. These variants are operating in the newfound cults of major religions of the world and expose style sensational news hit the headlines from time to time.

Sri Lankan child prostitution:
A situational report

Let me explain the merits and demerits of our experience in the field and discuss serious flaws, which need to be improved if we are to contain the possible growth of these instances. This kind of gang raping little girls is becoming all too frequent in a hitherto conformist Sri Lankan society.

Sri Lankan child prostitution came to prominence in the time of the burgeoning tourist industry, alongside the height of the HIV infection. There have been claims that the demand for child prostitutes, in the developing world, rose as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, because children are thought less likely to be infected and are therefore more favoured as sexual partners. There are also claims that some men believe that having sex with a virgin will cure them of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Literature says that similar claims were also made about syphilis in Victorian England.

Our research in the early 2000, conducted as part of UNICEF and the Ministry of Social Services, distinguished between situational and preferential abusers. Preferential abusers were habitual paedophiles that have an interest in either boys or girls only of a specific age. Situational abusers may well not have a particular sexual preference for underage prostitutes but will have sex only if circumstances yield an opening. The South Western coastal belt from Negombo to Tangalle was a haven for paedophiles arriving in the guise of genuine tourists. Evidence was plenty that these preferential paedophiles took residence in some tourist spots and were molesting beach boys, sometimes with parental consent. Parents and others who were benefitting from the sordid crime harassed our research staffs. The police were surprisingly quiet. In one encounter the mother who shouted, ‘my son will not be pregnant, so what does it matter to you’, chased the researcher out of a home. Such is the ignorance of the illiterate folk and the lure of good money.

Our Achievements on this front

The combined effort by the Ministry of Social services (which included Child Protection at the time) with UNICEF, operationalised a number of projects along the popular therapeutic remedies suggested by child experts. The themes we worked on were many. Very briefly (a) Training the cadre that prostituted children should be treated as victims, never as offenders, (2) Victim-sensitive interview techniques be used in all cases of child abuse, (3) Prostituted children be treated with respect and concern and should be encouraged to talk about their experiences, (4) A holistic approach when working with these children (5) Greater access to services; (6) Private court hearings rather than open courts; (7) Gender sensitive, and culturally appropriate services planned with victims; (8) Victims included in the process of identifying and developing solutions. (9) Professionals to make a concerted effort through information sharing and all stakeholders involved in developing, implementing, and/or overseeing strategies to prevent and address prostituted children and youth; (10) Stiffer penalties for all types of offenders.

We were weak on professionalism in the child protection services and to rectify that we drafted a Human Services Diploma (at graduate level) to cover the entire island. The entire judiciary was to be familiarised on the subject covering all 10 items noted above. The response that the judiciary extended to us including Supreme Court and High Court judges was admirable. The Judges participated with so much enthusiasm.

Sad to note that these programmes (costing over $100 Million) have been one off affairs and the courses themselves have been prostituted for money. Regret to note that this project, funded by, UNICEF came to nought for the unbending bureaucratic attitudes of general administrators who refused to accept any science that upsets their hard earned status and power. The $60 million spent to build Social Care Centres to transform casework practice are cattle sheds. Despicable is too soft an epithet to describe the reticence of bureaucrats. Given the length of this vast topic I will note, by way of a conclusion, a few issues that we must address to arrest further decay.

We are accelerating towards a moral abyss?

Firstly, like in many third world countries, the exploitation of children is still prevalent in domestic and commercial trades. Children who fall prey to sex crimes are generally the poorest in countries as Sri Lanka. This exploitation is rampant in Sri Lanka beyond reasonable bounds. Mark Suckerburg’s Facebook and Internet have catapulted societies, which were autocratic, but reasonably moral, into the moral ‘vacuum’ where pornography overwhelms online learning (trawling) as my friends from Colombo tell me. Hope they are wrong. When corruption has engulfed society, exploitation becomes the natural modus operandi. In COVID times we have seen how Asian societies made extortion of the dying without compunction. Lest you charge me for condescension let me state that capitalism in the West has an ethic still held tight both by fear of God, civility and stiffer penalties. Wonder whether readers saw how the Australian Prime Minister himself put down the plunder of toilet rolls at the beginning of the pandemic. Nothing untoward happened in trade and commerce ever since in Australia.

When I queried, the Chief monk, Rev Siri Sobitha, in our Perth Buddhist Temple, he wisely told me that Sri Lankans have given up the eternal truths (Dharma) as enunciated in the Angutthara Nikaya without any semblance of civility in our society. When a society, or an individual, discards ‘Hiri Oththappa’ there is unending decay. The simplest meaning, as our mothers have harped on us, is ‘Lajja Bhaya’. Are we on the doorstep of this Nadir?

Police – Protectors or Oppressors

What we observed then were police indifference and neglect. Abuse from the upholders of the law, manipulation of the poorest and most defenceless, and temptations to twist discretion into improper discrimination, improper bias, improper means and intransigence. In Sri Lanka uniformed patrolmen supplementing their meagre pay by small payments from myriads of drivers on the road is an open secret. Every instance of child prostitution had political or economic power links. Wonder whether police were voluntary molesters in this episode, too.

Bribery has become a way of life in highly bureaucratised countries as Sri Lanka. It is well known that bribery is necessary to oil the wheels of essential government services. Overzealous public officials have created unnecessary rules that invite corruption as part of acceptable practice. Corruption at all levels in the country is a chronic political illness. Corrupt police reflect a corrupt community where the government is corrupt and in similar measure the professions, businesses, industry and labour. And even the system of criminal justice is tainted.

The sentencing drama

A judge in sentencing, we believe, is guided by a single clear criterion, but it is by no means clear to the public. These crimes are like warfare against the community, touching new depths of consciousness. If criminals are brought to trial, the convictions must be commensurate with the public sentiments such that others will not commit such depredations. The punishments must deter would-be imitators. By the same token retribution has to be proportionate to the enormity of crime. The question of just deserts is important to the degree that punishments shall not exceed the guilt. This rape was vile, repulsive, demanding that it must be avenged, the perpetrators denounced but yet it must accord with the guilt and no more. As Bentham said ‘punishment itself is evil as crime and thus the judge should impose no more of it than the limit allowed’.

The court system is biased against the powerless child victims from poor environments. They are handicapped from the start for several reasons. The judgements given are seen as unfair. Unjustified prejudice, ignorance on the part of courts, poorly conducted police investigations, discrepancies due to the practices of individual judges, discriminatory practices of police, differential ability of defence counsel are insurmountable hurdles against the poor victims.

Finally in Sri Lanka it is difficult to quell public rumours about political interference at various stages in the proceedings. The case against the perpetrators of the Jaffna girl Vidya demonstrated the invisible hand of politics.

Let the citizenry be vigilant to stop this savagery.