“I would rather sleep here than at home..I would rather sleep under this car.”
All street children are dangerously vulnerable to sexual abuse and child prostitution.
The heart breaking reality is that the vast majority of these young children engage in prostitution as a means of survival.
Young boys have often been sexually abused by older gang members. Many street girls lose their virginity at a very young age through rape. Worse still is that these children even have an international clientele, of Westerners and Gulf Arabs.
A huge cause for concern is the health risks that these children are continuously exposed to, particularly that of incurable infections such as HIV and eventually AIDS.
The subject of sexual abuse and prostitution remains a huge taboo. Denial of this distressing situation makes it even more difficult to address and only serves to intensify the marginalisation of these children.
