- They call it gridding. The boys use felt-tip pens to
scrawl their names, ages and mobile phone numbers on the toilet walls.
-
- Below each name is a list of likes and dislikes. In the
former, words such as 'oral', 'fisting' and 'pissing' crop up regularly.
'Time-wasters', 'old men', 'queens' (those who overdramatise gay mannerisms)
are common in the latter. Punters choose from the menu and dial accordingly.
-
- Prices range from £5 to £20, depending on
the 'trick' performed and the cost of drugs in whichever city the transaction
is taking place. Many of the phone numbers are inked over by boys trying
to see off rivals. Faecal stains and blood mark the toilet walls, delineating
territory.
-
- Young boys forced into prostitution are perceived not
to exist. They cannot be found huddled under the sodium lamps of red-light
districts. They do not drop in to drop-in centres. If they register in
society's consciousness at all it is as 'rent boys' of popular fable, the
willing, homosexual prostitutes who earn a mythical fortune in the backstreets
of London's Soho.
-
- But an Observer investigation in UK cities reveals that
hundreds of boys, some as young as 10, are being forced to prostitute themselves
daily while society looks the other way, reluctant to confront the issue.
-
- 'We still live in a homophobic society. As a nation we
want to protect young women but there is a feeling boys should be able
to look after themselves,' said Ady Davis, an outreach worker with the
children's charity Barnardo's based in Newcastle upon Tyne.
-
- The little research that has been done into the problem
exposes this feeling as a lie. A small-scale survey carried out in Newcastle
last month showed that around a third of children known to have been abused
through prostitution were boys.
-
- Of the 15 young people identified in the survey carried
out over the last couple of months, five were male. Researchers gleaned
the information from sending out questionnaires to 120 agencies working
with children. Only 10 have replied so far, and four of these identified
children at risk. 'The numbers will undoubtedly grow. If four services
have identified 15 young people, most of them children, who are actually
being sexually exploited, what might be uncovered if the remaining 100-plus
services provide us with information?' Davis asked.
-
- A paucity of information makes gauging the problem difficult.
Unlike girls, boys forced into prostitution tend to act alone, making it
difficult to build a true picture of what is happening. Their 'trade' does
not take place on the streets but at pre-arranged destinations: a bedsit,
a car in a lay-by, a public toilet. The few attempts to reach out to them
by charities and welfare groups are fraught with problems.
-
- 'You have to build up trust. It's a short word, but it's
got a big meaning,' said Paul Richardson, an outreach worker in Middlesbrough
and one of the few people in his field who works exclusively with boys
forced into prostitution.
-
- Richardson knows why his job is difficult. 'If I had
one wish it would be to take the stigma away. The boys just can't bring
themselves to come forward and talk about what they do. Many are not homosexual
and they feel ashamed,' he said.
-
- The clients too are corrupted by the stigma. Many are
married men with children who are in denial about their sexuality. Some
even believe they are helping the boys by paying them.
-
- 'There is no such thing as a "child prostitute".
Paying for sex with children makes the men child abusers, not punters.
Paying money to a desperate child, or feeding their drug habit, doesn't
change the nature of the act,' said Chris Hanvey, UK director of operations
at Barnardo's.
-
- In a new initiative to be launched this week, Richardson
and Davis will start texting and emailing the boys whose numbers and addresses
they discover graffitied around the north east of England, asking them
if they need help to escape the world they are immersed in.
-
- The pilot project, which will spread across the country
if it proves successful, comes after a six-month survey concluded earlier
this year that, of the 378 children identified as at risk of being abused
through prostitution in the Stockton-on-Tees area, 187 were male.
-
- Recently a project set up to help young girls trapped
in the sex trade on Merseyside uncovered evidence that scores of boys -
one only 10 years old - were being abused.
-
- 'We've worked with about 200 girls and young women involved
in sexual exploitation since the project started in 2000, and have noticed
that there are substantial numbers of boys involved as well,' said Jaci
Quennell, the project's children's services manager.
-
- 'It's hard to assess the numbers because it's a hidden
problem, but it's likely to be about 10 times bigger than it appears.'
-
- Further investigations by The Observer confirm a similar
picture in Glasgow, London and Middlesbrough.
-
- Most of the boys forced to sell themselves have run away
from home. Many are homeless. Some have been abused by family members.
Only around half of them describe themselves as homosexual. The need to
buy drink and drugs looms large in their motivation.
-
- Sometimes a friend introduces them to the scene; often
it is forced upon them by a relative. Lee, who ran away from a violent
home at 12 and whose story was supplied to The Observer by a Barnardo's
worker in Glasgow, is typical of those who end up prostituting themselves.
-
- 'I got taken into care. I did not like it there. The
other boys bullied me and gave me a hard time. I started running away again,
sometimes living on the streets, sometimes kipping with mates.
-
- 'Someone told me how I could make money without the police
getting to know. I hated it at first, but the other guys doing it were
just like me. It wasn't as if I was gay. It was just for the money.'
-
- New technology has transformed the mechanics of procuring
a young boy for sex. Picture phones allow the boys to advertise themselves
to prospective clients, while the internet connects them to an illicit
national marketplace.
-
- 'Near where I worked there was a 24-hour internet cafe,'
recalled Lee. 'All I had to do was pay £3 or £4 and I got to
stay there all night. I started to use the computers and logged on to chat
rooms. I got talking to these other guys who also "worked".
-
- 'They used to make contact with the punters over the
internet. It was getting harder to survive on the streets and I was always
starving. The other guys were always trying to set me up with punters and
I eventually said, Aye, why no'.'
-
- Once in, however, boys find it almost impossible to escape
the vortex of prostitution. Ashamed of acknowledging their problem, boys,
much more than girls, find it difficult to approach the authorities for
help.
-
- While social services are geared to help females, there
are few dedicated specialists working with boys.
-
- Resources and personnel are acutely scarce. Alternative
housing, vital to ensuring the boys escape their destructive lifestyles,
is often non-existent.
-
- 'The difficulty with this is it's hidden. It doesn't
present itself with the urgency that some of the other Home Office agenda
items do,' Hanvey said.
-
- Jay, now 21, has been forced to work as a prostitute
for five years. He was introduced to the scene by Dom, 25, who took him
from his native Newcastle down south, promising him they could make far
more money if they moved. But soon Dom had begun a relationship with a
14-year-old boy, and threw Jay out.
-
- 'I had nowhere to stay, no money, nothing, so I did the
only thing I know how to do, and sold sex. I still do,' Jay told an outreach
worker who recorded his story for this newspaper.
-
- 'I don't want to any more but I don't know what else
to do. I've tried stopping but I get really depressed.
-
- 'There's nothing to do. I can't get a job. The first
question you get asked is: why haven't you had a job before? You can't
really say "I have - I've been a rent boy for the last x years".'
-
- Further problems emerge as the boys mature. 'Young men
have a shelf life. Once they lose their baby-face looks they're washed
up,' said Daljeet Dagon, a charity outreach manager who works with prostitutes
in Glasgow.
-
- Some men escape the scene. Others end up using the knowledge
they have gleaned to become pimps, dragging a fresh group of young boys
into their world.
-
- As in all industries there is a hierarchy. 'Boys might
start off with mutual masturbation, then move on to oral, then penetrative
sex.
-
- 'People will pay more for unprotected sex. A boy might
think "I could do one bloke unprotected for the amount I would make
from five using protection",' Davis said.
-
- Breaking out of the cycle often means getting off crack
or heroin. The Stockton research suggested that 94 per cent of children
forced into prostitution spent some of their earnings on drugs.
-
- Wendy Shepherd, a project manager in the north east with
about a decade's experience, said: 'Over the years it's become less about
money. When I first started out it was £60, £50. Today it's
hardly ever mentioned.
-
- 'The guys who are purchasing will purchase with a wrap
of heroin. There is very little money changing hands these days in what
we traditionally term prostitution.'
-
- Shepherd said the days of 'simply cleaning toilet walls
of graffiti,' had passed. 'We need to do proper observations of those we're
concerned about. We need to offer boys help to encourage them to come forward.'
-
- But until society confronts its final taboo and sees
beyond the 'rent boy' tag, there seems little hope they will have the courage
to come out of the shadows.
-
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/child/story/0,7369,1323956,00.html
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