World Cup Sex Trafficking Fears by Lynette Johns

Weekend Argus, 24th October 2009

Thousands of sex tourists are expected to be among the half a million visitors to South Africa during the World Cup next year, and there are fears that children will be abducted by trafficking rings.

Professor Susan Kreston says the US, Australia and the UK, Germany and Nigeria are where most of the sex tourists come from. She said there could be as many as 5 000 people who would pay to have sex with children during the month-long event.

Kreston is a Fullbright professor and research fellow at the Centre for Psychology and law at the University of the Free State. She was speaking at The Centre for the Book yesterday at a ‘roundtable’ organised by child rights group Molo Songololo.

Kreston hoped that the Prevention And Combating of Trafficking In Persons Bill would become law before the World Cup. She said traffickers would advertise bogus jobs in major cities, some of them connected to the World Cup, and the successful applicants would find themselves trapped in a world of prostitution.

Children most at risk included orphans, children from child-headed households, poor children and those living in rural and informal settlements. She said the children would often be initiated into the work by being gang-raped, held captive and moved from city to city so that they did not form any relationships with NGOs or people who could help them. They were also moved around the country because clients liked ‘fresh meat’, Kreton said.

Patrick Solomons of Molo Songololo said there would be 12 million children on holiday during the World Cup, and they would want to go where the action was, near stadiums and fan sites. “They will be at risk,” Solomons said.

Kreston said sex tourists often used conferences, workshops and major events as ‘facades of respectability. At the end of the day they go and find street kids.”

Sex tourists often also knew how to contact underground travel agencies which would ‘arrange children to the client’s specifications”. South Africa was a premier destination for sex tourists who found it easy to blend in because of the high number of tourists in the country.