The sexual exploitation of children

A personal encounter with darkness

Last week I attended a multi-disciplinary meeting assembled to listen to Tim Ballard speak of his experiences fighting human trafficking and child exploitation. There’s a movie coming out about this called Sound of Freedom. In the meeting we discussed how we can help.  

How does one raise awareness of this horrific billion-dollar industry that currently thrives on the sexual exploitation and abuse of an estimated 12 million children? The matter is so dark it keeps all but the most intrepid freedom-fighters at a safe distance.

It is inevitable that in certain professions like medicine one is going to see some unspeakable things.

Since the meeting, I have been haunted (again) by an experience I had as a young doctor 25 years ago. Whilst I chose to work in the field of obstetrics because childbirth should be such a joyful and transformative experience that I wanted to help facilitate this, nothing prepared me for what I saw in a gynaecology clinic in a busy South African hospital all those years ago.

The clinic was nearly over for the day, with one patient yet to be seen. I waited a few minutes, and when no one entered the clinic cubicle, I went and asked at the reception. A nurse I had not met before drew back the curtain of an adjacent dimly lit cubicle. “This is your patient,” she said. She gestured to a cot.

I could make out the little bundle in it, and I laughed at her obvious mistake. “This is the Gynaecology Clinic,” I said, “Paediatrics is the floor above.”

The nurse looked grim. “No, Doc, this is your patient.” She drew the cot out from behind the curtain and into the light. An 18-month-old infant lay absolutely still under a blanket, her little face above the covers unnaturally expressionless. My body and soul quietly screamed as the nurse discretely lifted the blanket.

What have they done to you, little one?

The rest of the experience I have tried unsuccessfully to blur over the years. The damage to this little girl’s body – her baby undercarriage ripped into a single unrecognisable bloody gash – may have been repairable with extensive surgeries, but I doubted the wound to her soul ever could be. I hope I was wrong.

A social worker was assigned, and I asked to be regularly updated. I considered adopting the little girl, but this was not an option as she had a family, even had I had the capacity to do so. After surgery and a lengthy hospital stay, I heard that she was sent back to the unstable family environment where the assault had occurred, ostensibly by a drunk uncle.

Deep down I knew she was one of many and I wish I could have done more.

Who does these evil things to our children?

In a different but related experience, on a night shift I was asked to re-install an IV drip of a man in an orthopaedic ward. Shackled to his bed, he turned out to be a convicted criminal. I made polite conversation with him whilst inserting the needle and taping it up.

With the task completed, I should have resisted the urge to know what crime he had committed and left immediately, but he looked so normal that I wondered. So, with a smile I asked, “What are you in for?” The words popped out like a school child asking a friend about a detention they have received.

“Verkragting,” he murmured.

At first, I did not understand his softly spoken answer. It was in Afrikaans. He repeated it slowly, and then again in English, harshly.

“Rape.”

A vast array of unspeakable horrors were unconsciously revealed by the way he enunciated this four-letter word. I was shocked, though I don’t know what I had been expecting. How ordinary he came across, this violent rapist. He was just someone’s brother, a family friend, a neighbour.

During my life I have been unable to expunge the memories of these naïve vicarious experiences of the horrors inflicted by degenerate individuals on so many, mainly women and children. Like you, I did not want to know these things. And yet I do. And deep down so do you.

They are held deep down because it hurts so much. We cannot conceive the many ways we have failed in our human need to love one another and to be loved.

Make no mistake, this is OUR problem. 

Can one judge the whole of humanity by how so many children are made to suffer? Yes, we are all responsible for not looking into the darkness and exposing what has been happening for far too long. With millions of children around the world enduring unspeakable horrors daily it is our permissive attitudes, our disengagement and wilful blindness that has led to an escalation not a decline in these horrors, for which the gateway drug is pornography.

This is not to say that sexual exploitation does not exist without pornography. However, right now, there are over 70 million child sex abuse videos and pictures in circulation. Most of the children depicted therein are below the age of 8. These violent, criminal, hateful, anti-human acts are occurring behind closed doors in every sector of society, fuelled by the ubiquitous moral degeneracy of our times, the degradation of women, and the endless money-driven wars and conflicts.

If we do not open our eyes and engage, we will continue to be complicit.

Painful reflection on what has become of us as a species is now utterly essential, otherwise, humanity’s demise is inevitable.

So, what can we do?

Let’s see this as an opportunity to remember who we are.

We are human beings.

We are loving, compassionate, imaginative, and courageous.

Let’s be brave enough to face this ugly truth.

Let’s speak about these unspeakable horrors.

Let’s expose the monsters who perpetrate them.

Most importantly, let’s help these little girls and boys.

After all, we are human beings. We are loving, compassionate, imaginative, and courageous.

Thank you for reading.

May you find inspiration in this uplifting Warrior Anthem by Kurt Shore and the One Who Sings:

https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/multimedia/we-are-warriors

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