The photograph displayed a tiny gold Buddha lodged in the vagina of a 12-year-old. The image appeared in a roll of film dropped off at a photo shop in Bangkok. Outraged to see a holy object desecrated, the shop owner sent the picture to Sanphasit Koompraphant, director of the Center to Protect Children's Rights, an advocacy group for abused children. "The owner did not anger because a child was treated so cruelly," Koompraphant says, "but because his Buddhist religion had been insulted. He probably would not notice another object used that way."

Koompraphant, a wiry man with a missionary intensity, tells the story as he climbs a wobbly ladder to reach for one of the many cardboard boxes that line his office. The Buddha incident began in Bangkok's Patpong district, famous for its tourist bars and sex clubs. A Thai man approached an Australian and offered him sex with two girls--the 12-year-old and her 6-year-old sister--who had been sold into prostitution by their relatives. The agent delivered the girls to the tourist's hotel room, where he abused and photographed them for months. He was eventually arrested and sentenced to jail--one of the few foreigners ever to be convicted in Thailand of sexually abusing children. The case involved all the classic players in the sex trade of young girls: family members, a recruiting agent, a male in pursuit of cut-rate pleasure, girls expected to trade sex for family income, and social workers struggling against government indifference.


Sanphasit Koompraphant has helped to free children as young as six from forced sex work. "Some are in brothels sealed up so tight, they never has fresh air."
Koompraphant opens a box and flips through bundles of photographs that document physical abuse suffered by young girls in Thailand's sex trade. He hands me a series of a Burmese girl covered with swollen bruises and slash marks formed into oozing scabs. Next he offers me a picture of a wasting young AIDS victim, reduced to a canvas of skin stretched across her skeletal frame. "This AIDS disease makes everything more crisis," he says. Finally he locates the pictures taken by the Australian. The children, tears streaming down their cheeks, perform oral sex on the foreigner as he photographs them. In another photo, he has stuck a banknote in the younger girl's vagina. And then there's one where her sister is face down with her arms handcuffed behind her back and her legs forced open.

I see the delicate beauty of the two moon-shaped faces with translucent skin. I see fear in their eyes. The 12-year-old has her hair pulled into a ponytail and wears a gingham dress with puffed sleeves. The 6-year-old stares out from underneath long bangs and straight black hair that curves below her chin. Her head reaches only as high as her older sister's thin shoulder.
Koompraphant's speech is rapid and determined as he describes the exploitation he has witnessed. I ask whether he has children. His face relaxes and he almost smiles, "I have one boy. I feel bad when I think that my child, with a young beautiful body could be destroyed like this. I look at my son and think, yes, the family makes the first decision. The family can protect or abuse or destroy a child." But the family unit, the only social security in place for this nation of more than 60 million people, is pitted against the forces of a modern global economy that is consuming the lives of young females at an alarming rate. The economic policies embraced by the government, the military, business leaders, and international lenders have all played a major role in escalating this costly business.

Koompraphant's photos document the shadow side of a well-organized and profitable sex trade that, according to calculations by the Chulalongkorn University Political Economy Centre in Bangkok, generates annual revenues of around U.S.$4 billion. Several million people earn their living either directly or indirectly from the activities of the prostitution industry. In fact, a 1998 report by the International Labor Organization (ILO), entitled The Sex Sector, says Thai prostitution has grown so rapidly in recent decades that it has become a "commercial sector," one that contributes significant employment and national income. Yet the government's budget, statistics, and development plans do not recognize the trade, putting this lucrative business in an economic and legal twilight zone. In addition, Thai commerce laws sanction prostitution as a "personal service," even though it is illegal under the penal code. The law thus recognizes the investment privileges of the sex trade while technically making its workers criminals.




The simple truth is that prostitution is a big business, well entrenched in Thailand's economy, and it is having a devastating effect on countless young girls--at least a third of all Thai sex workers are under the age of 18, the international legal standard for child labor. Teenagers are the most in demand with clients, and the majority of adult prostitutes entered the trade as children themselves. The ILO report concludes that children "are clearly more helpless against established structures and vested interests than adults" and much more likely to be "victims of debt bondage, trafficking, physical violence, or torture." As the industry has grown, so has the problem of trafficking, defined as the illegal movement of people into sex work through deceit, coercion, or force. Although it's primarily girls who are trafficked in Thailand, in recent years boys have also been forced into the tourist sex trade.
Thailand's sex industry is organized along two parallel tracks, with one market for Thai and immigrant workers who pay in local currency and a second for foreign tourists who bring with them badly needed foreign cash. Most researchers agree that Thailand's local sex trade employs far more people than the tourist trade. For centuries, Thai men have viewed visiting brothels as almost a national pastime. Prostitution is an accepted form of entertainment that men introduce their sons to and expect their wives to tolerate. A recent Ministry of Public Health study says that roughly three quarters of all Thai males regularly visit prostitutes and that prostitutes initiate almost half of all teenage boys into sexual activity.

The international sex market, however, is a more prestigious and intoxicating lure for families who expect to earn money through their daughters and for young girls desperately seeking a way out of poverty. Male tourists and business travelers from around the globe come to Thailand to indulge themselves at bargain prices in a freewheeling atmosphere, unconfined by taboos against sex with minors or the threat of arrest. The money they spend on sex, hotels, meals, gifts, transportation, and tourist extras is a major source of Thailand's foreign currency exchange.

I have to tell you Bob and LA there are pages and pages of text all telling the same story.Yes the Thai culture does view Prostitution as acceptable men bring their son's up to use prostitutes so to a degree you are right in what you say.But child prostitution is massive in Thailand,and why do you suppose 60% of travellers to Thailand are lone men mostly coming from Britain as it happens.Girls and young boys are trafficked from all over Asia to work as prostitutes they are all from poor backgrounds and their families have sold them because they are desperately short of cash.The Thai Government take the aid to fight against the sex trade ,and turn a blind eye because they make massive profits from the labour of the prostitutes.I am glad you said you don't condone this totally unacceptable situation.The Vietnam war did bring an escalation in the sex trade ,as the demand increased so did the supply.I would ask you both ,would you be happy knowing your own children were working in the sex trade in Bangkok /Thailand?The economic climate is such that things will get even worse,I think these people are being exploited by the western men who travel to Thailand for cheap sex with young women and children.I find the people who purchase the services of these poor individuals dispicable and not the kind of people I would want to associate myself with.I have friends who are sex tourists,a contradiction you may say?but they were friends before they stooped to exploiting disadvantaged people.They argue their money helps the girls,deep down they know thats not true.Bob your comment about the Thais girls looking younger because they are petite is frankly rubbish,girls as young as twelve can't help but look young.I know you didn't invent this situation and it seems like I am blaming you for it all,I am not .I just think it would be reassuring to hear people like you who live in Thailand speak out occasionally against the suffering these people endure on a daily basis.