What has happened to this little girl? The city’s organizations who work with this attractively funded subject of Child Sexual Abuse—for seminars, more seminars, discussions with the same people or a round robin of different people, awareness campaigns among their colleague organizations—do not know. The girl has vanished. ‘Well,’ says the spokeswoman for one organization primly, ‘we did call a press conference but the reporter who turned up could not get confirmation from the shelter’s authorities. They denied it, you see.’

Oh yes, we see.

Why did they assume that journalists should be avenging angels on behalf of organizations who don’t have all their facts in place? And why did they not group together and move the High Court on a Public Interest Litigation to have that shelter investigated by the police, the children within moved to another safe shelter, the child’s sexual abuser arrested?

Another spokeswoman for another organization, but as viscerally committed to the cause, sniffs, ‘Really! What do we know about law! We are just public-minded people working towards trying to save children from being exploited, how much can we do? Besides, that is not part of our charter, we cannot be using our funding for what we have not said. That would be misuse, you see.’

Oh yes, now we really and truly see.

As do the children on the streets who know these kind of stories well, as do child-prostitutes. When they run away from their homes because of the sexual abuse and are trapped by organized sexual-exploiters of children, they quickly pick up on the pitfalls of being ‘rescued’ by society, the very same society which brought them till here in the first place. They rapidly hone their survival skills within their new exploitative environment, the boys do it better than the girls.

Boys survive better. Is that why they are being preferred as child-prostitutes over girls for the tourist sex industry?

That boys are being preferred—in India and internationally—is now an accepted fact. The North American Man Boy Love Association (Nambla) has been formed with the express charter of facilitating sex with young boys: ‘It should not be against the law for children and adults to express their love sexually. Children should be able to become sexual with an adult.’ A thirty-page guide from men who like boys has sold out swiftly in America, 72,000 copies in thirteen months priced at five dollars each, titled Where The Young Ones Are. In India the guide is the middleman, the omniscient and omnipotent pimp. And now it is also the world wide web.

The report on The National Consultation on Child Prostitution organized in Delhi by the Ymca, Unicef and Ecpat states: ‘There is growth of international networks of child sex abusers who are working together to share information on the safest places to visit in the world. There is also the development of a huge market for child pornography in the world of computers. India and other South Asian countries are slowly replacing South East Asia as the venue of choice for the tourist sex industry as there are fewer laws against child sexual abuse in these countries. Another reason is that European tourists believe that Aids among children in India is not as rampant. A large number of sex tourists are now seeking out India. The main destination in India for tourists seeking child prostitutes is Goa, with its combination of beaches and lax security at the airport for chartered flights. The recent trial in Stockholm, Sweden, is one indication of how Goa is fast out-rivalling Bangkok as the new sex capital for paedophiles. When Lena Perned and her lover were put on trial along with eighteen others, she disclosed that they had chosen Goa because the Thai capital had become “too hot”. Another popular destination appears to be Kovalam in Kerala. A German tourist was recently caught in the act but managed to bribe his way out.’