It might be a different story in bigger cities such as Tokyo and Osaka with a more international community, but in smaller cities and in the countryside with more traditional ideals it can be very difficult for foreign women.
Illegal porn with very young foreign girls
"It's mysterious," acknowledges the young, blue-suited executive at a Japanese company that specializes in child pornography. "It's OK to publish nude pictures of foreign girls, but not of Japanese girls."
A second type presents posed pictures of children, very often naked. Most of the children involved are girls from Southeast Asia and, to a lesser extent, Eastern Europe, according to three men who work in the pornography industry. In keeping with the industry's self-imposed guidelines for pornography involving children under 18, no genitals or sexual activity is shown.
The Japanese have also been comfortable with people entering into sexual relationships at an age that Westerners might consider young. Until the end of World War II, Professor Hashizume notes, girls were given or sold into marriage at the age of 12 or 13. To this day Japan's penal code, passed into law in 1908, puts the age of sexual consent at 13, even though Japanese must be 20 to vote and 18 to drive a car.
But in May 1987 police arrested a publisher and photographer, saying the child pornography they were producing violated Japan's obscenity laws. In 1988 and 1989, a printing plant employee named Tsutomu Miyazaki killed four girls aged between 4 and 7, crimes that combined violence with sexual abuse.
Sex tourism is commonly regarded as a transnational challenge, as it can be seen to target marginalised demographics in developing nations, such as South East Asia and Brazil. The chief ethical concerns arise from: the economic gap between tourists and residents, the sexual trafficking of children and women and the parties taking advantage of the ability to engage with minors. These groups and individuals are subject to the foreign prostitution laws of the destination's jurisdiction, often resulting in exploitation and abuse. Sexual activities that involve minors are almost universally non-consensual and illegal.
Individuals are not exempt from prosecution. Sex tourism as recognised by the CDC supports human trafficking and slavery.[26] Even if prostitution is legal in a country or region, human trafficking, sexual encounters with a minor, and child pornography are almost universally criminal in nature and individuals caught breaking these laws can be prosecuted. Citizens of any foreign country must abide by the laws of the country in which they hold citizenship in addition to the local laws of the country they are visiting, including laws regarding consent.[27]
The cultural attitudes of sex tourism in highly developed countries such as Australia however where sex trafficking is illegal and highly policed can offer a different perspective to those of lesser backgrounds. Brothels are still vivid within states such as Tasmania and New South Wales where people can exchange money for sex. Recent studies suggest that sex slavery is still happening in Australia, exploiting the vulnerability of individuals and families from poor backgrounds.[35]
Sex work may yield higher wages than work in the formal sector, and can encourage engagement with the industry for those seeking to achieve a much higher quality of life.[43] This economic temptation can often lead to sexual exploitation of children.[43] Young girls and adolescent women are some of the most common to be sold into slavery or transported across national borders to work in the commercial sex industry.[43]
Child prostitution usually manifests in the form of sex trafficking, in which a child is kidnapped or tricked into becoming involved in the sex trade, or survival sex, in which the child engages in sexual activities to procure basic essentials such as food and shelter. Prostitution of children is commonly associated with child pornography, and they often overlap. Some people travel to foreign countries to engage in child sex tourism. Research suggests that there may be as many as 10 million children involved in prostitution worldwide.[1] The practice is most widespread in South America and Asia, but prostitution of children exists globally,[2] in undeveloped countries as well as developed.[3] Most of the children involved with prostitution are girls, despite an increase in the number of young boys in the trade.
Research indicates that traffickers have a preference for females age 12 and under because young children are more easily molded into the role assigned to them and because they are assumed to be virgins, which is valuable to consumers. The girls are then made to appear older, and documents are forged as protection against law enforcement.[17] Victims tend to share similar backgrounds, often coming from communities with high crime rates and lack of access to education. However, victimology is not limited to this, and males and females coming from various backgrounds have become involved in sex trafficking.[17]
Prostitution of children in the form of survival sex occurs in both undeveloped and developed countries. In Asia, underage girls sometimes work in brothels to support their families. In Sri Lanka, parents will more often have their sons prostitute themselves rather than their daughters, as the society places more weight on sexual purity among females than males.[28] Jaffe and Rosen write that prostitution of children in North America often results from "economic considerations, domestic violence and abuse, family disintegration and drug addiction".[29] In Canada, a young man was convicted of charges relating to the prostitution of a 15-year-old girl online in 2012; he had encouraged her to prostitute herself as a means of making money, kept all of her earnings, and threatened her with violence if she did not continue.[30]
The multimillion dollar child sex tourism industry is supported by foreigners who travel to developing countries where widespread poverty and corrupt law enforcement foster an illicit environment in which they can have sex with children as young as 5 for as little as $5, often with little recourse, said Geoffrey Keele, a child protection spokesperson at UNICEF, the world's largest child care organization.
Since the passage of the Protect Act, a 2003 law that criminalizes different types of child exploitation like child porn and sexual assault, even when committed in foreign countries, the tourist who travels with the intent to have sex with a minor and the one who decides to do it after he arrives both violate federal law.
A classic example is texting by a teen who is an adult. Most states consider 18- and 19-year-olds to be adults. If a young adult is involved in a relationship with someone a few years younger, the law might consider certain acts illegal because one party is a minor. In most states, sexting images of or to a minor constitutes a felony or misdemeanor.
First, an adult who receives or shares a nude or sexual image of a child under the age of 18 can be charged with possessing or sending child pornography. Some states have enacted defenses against child pornography charges for teens (sometimes including kids up to 19 years old) who engage in sexting, but such defenses don't apply to older adults. For example, one young man was charged with possessing child pornography because he had nude photos on his phone of his 16-year-old live-in girlfriend, who was also the mother of his child.
Sex with underage children is easily available in Thailand, which also is major center for international child prostitution rings. Referring to the four or five customers she serves a night, one girl a P.O.V. documentary said, " I guess they think we are cute." When the police raided her room, she said, "just another guy, coming my room." In some cases, young Burmese girls are kept in cubicles and rented out as virgins. In Phuket, a 15-year-old was charged with pimping two younger girls.
At one time an estimated 80,000 children in Thailand are involved in the sex industry. There are probably less than that now as the practice has gotten a lot of negative publicity and there have been crackdowns. But even so child prostitution is still widespread, and for every place that has been shut down in Thailand a new one has sprung up in Cambodia or elsewhere. Even in Thailand some sex clubs still boast about the young age of their girls. According a 1995 survey, one third of the child prostitutes in Southeast Asia tested positive for HIV. 2ff7e9595c
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