Two hundred child prostitutes in New Zealand
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Child prostitution
According to the Prostitution Law Reform Review Committee Report 2008, there are approximately 200 children involved in prostitution in New Zealand.
It is estimated that every year more than 1 million children worldwide are forced into performing sexual acts for compensation, and the total could be as high as 10 million, including 300,000 in the United States alone. Both girls and boys younger than 18 years of age are introduced into this lifestyle. These children are exploited by local men, paedophiles, and foreign tourists and may have 5 to 10 clients per day, generating $5 billion per year. They are difficult to locate because they are hidden and moved around frequently and because of the involvement of organised crime. In addition to being held in slavery, child prostitutes are victims of adverse health effects such as human immunodeficiency virus infection, cervical cancer, pregnancy complications, mental illness, substance abuse, malnutrition, and violence.
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One million attempts to access child pornography websites from New Zealand computers every month!
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Child pornography
In New Zealand, over a million clicks on illegal child sex abuse websites were identified by the Department of Internal Affairs. Many of these sites contained images of abused children from 1-5 years old.
There is an increasing trend towards younger victims and greater brutality; infants and toddlers, are being raped and tortured for the enjoyment of viewers. An estimated 20% of all pornography traded over the Internet is child pornography, and since 1997, the number of child pornography images available on the Internet has increased by 1500%.
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“800,000 people are bought and sold across international borders each year
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Child trafficking
To date there have been no prosecutions for trafficking in or out of New Zealand, however, there are anecdotal stories of sex workers being trafficked both across the border and internally.
Internationally, trafficking is the world’s third largest illegal industry behind arms and drugs and has an estimated earning of NZ$50 billion per annum. An estimated 800,000 people are bought and sold across international borders each year; 50% are children, most are female; the majority of these victims are forced into the commercial sex trade. There is now an estimated 2.5 million children, the majority of them girls, sexually exploited in the commercial sex industry.
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