GANGS TARGET CHILDREN FOR TRAFFICKING
By Johan Schronen

December 18, 2003 – (Cape Argus - Cape Town) Four teenage schoolgirls spending the afternoon in the city were strolling through the Golden Acre shopping mall when a group of men approached them and threatened to shoot them with a gun concealed under their clothes.

Too scared to shout for help, the Delft girls were marched to a car in full view of unsuspecting passersby and taken to a house in Salt River, where they were beaten and raped.

But the school friends' ordeal was only beginning.

Debora Mobilyn of Molo Songololo, an organisation lobbying against child trafficking, said the girls were held as sex slaves whose captors' psychological terror tactics and emotional games became far more paralysing than the gun barrel they had first had to look into. 'Escape is not
easy - sometimes they are even killed'

After being fed drugs and forced into addiction, the teenagers were on their way to becoming child prostitutes.

Mobilyn said soon there was only one life for them, that of remaining in the gang.

Being sold to men for sex to support their drug addiction was the plan of their "owners".

Having their gang leader's name tattooed on their hands completed the ritual of becoming a child sex slave.

One of the girls refused and was forced to drink alcohol until drunk before she was pinned down and tattooed.

Mobilyn said the child prostitutes soon picked up tips from older prostitutes, including how to rob clients.

The girls were also expected to recruit other girls, she said.

But their ordeal ended after three months when one of the girls sneaked out of the house and telephoned her mother from a public telephone.
Mobilyn said such cases needed to be highlighted to create public awareness about child trafficking in Cape Town.

She said the Delft girls' ordeal was not an isolated incident. This was why her organisation had joined a 10-member Human Trafficking Inter-Sectoral Task Team set up by the National Prosecution Authority International Campaign Against Child Trafficking (ICACT).

Mobilyn said ICACT partners and Molo Songololo were engaged in creating international awareness about the evil, to advocate for anti-trafficking legislation and offer support services for victims.

She said thousands of children worldwide were being forced into prostitution, child labour, pornography and other exploitative practices.

Children were being smuggled in and out of South Africa.

"Our research shows that children are being forced into prostitution by their own parents, family friends, taxi drivers and gangs," Mobilyn said.
"Girls between 12 and 16 are especially vulnerable.

"They are kidnapped in broad daylight, in shopping malls, taxi ranks and schools. They are raped and sometimes filmed for pornography.

"Escape is not easy - sometimes they are even killed."

Molo Songololo at the weekend took part in a global action against child trafficking by displaying banners and handing out pamphlets in Cape Town Railway Station and in the Atlantis Town Centre.

Anyone wanting to support the drive against child trafficking can contact Molo at Traffick@molo.org.za or call them on 021 762 5420.

From: http://allafrica.com/stories/200312180519.html