Auckland shame: children for sale

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Reports of child prostitution on the streets of Auckland are focusing attention on cracks in education and social services.

The Department of Child Youth and Family Services is holding meeting of official and community agencies tomorrow at the behest of Social Services Minister Steve Maharey to investigate concerns Maori wardens raised a fortnight ago.

When police picked up an 11-year-old Otara girl prostituting herself on an inner-Auckland street, the group End Child Prostitution and Trafficking cited children selling themselves for $5 or a bag of glue.

But police officers are highly sceptical of a claim attributed to Manurewa wardens that up to 150 girls aged 11 to 13 were selling sex in South Auckland over summer.

The police believe most prostitutes congregating in South Auckland's busiest red light district, Hunters Corner in Papatoetoe, are transsexuals over the age of consent who would not take kindly to young girls sneaking on to their patch.

Otahuhu-Papatoetoe police manager Senior Sergeant Dave Simpson acknowledges that truancy from schools is a big problem and that some minors from broken homes probably end up swapping sex for food and shelter.

"We are talking tragic circumstances. I would have to concede there could be some girls of 13 in that situation, but I can assure you they are not on street corners dressed to the nines in fishnet stockings."

Manukau Maori wardens' leader Gordon Wright is sticking to his guns, saying the police are simply not going to the right places - such as around corners from the older professionals, where he says predators can find girls offering far cheaper rates.

"Sometimes all they want is a hamburger or a packet of fags."

Who are these predators?


End Child Prosecution and Trafficking's spokeswoman, Auckland lawyer Sue Martin, says research by her 53-nation group shows that dedicated paedophiles with a predilection for children are only a small part of the problem.

"A lot are not paedophiles but opportunists. They take the opportunity because they can get sex with a 14 or 12-year-old on the street cheaper than in a massage parlour."

She says most paedophiles prefer the relative anonymity of the internet to find children, set up liaisons, and even transmit live video images of these to other computer users from makeshift bedroom studios.

"The [online] chatrooms are where the paedophiles are now - any paedophile with any intelligence."

As for the kerb-crawling opportunists, she says they include men of all races in the ethnic melting pot of South Auckland.

Manukau City Council is paying for a trial closed-circuit television system to record motorists frequenting Hunters Corner and their licence plates, although it has to be careful how it uses the information.

Besides protections under the Privacy Act, sex with a prostitute is not in itself illegal, and it is difficult to determine a person's age on camera.

But council environment committee chairman Noel Burnside says the clients usually turn up in modern saloon cars, many of which have been traced back to towns all over the North Island, including Whangarei and Eketahuna in the Wairarapa.

He believes accessibility from the Southern Motorway makes the area attractive to travelling salesmen.

Mr Wright says one of his team was approached by a truckdriver whose dalliance was interrupted by police but who had no shame about seeking the warden's help to get his money back.

What becomes of child prostitutes?


Sue Martin says children forced on to the streets by broken homes, sexual abuse by relatives or extreme poverty have to become tough to survive, but end up very emotionally damaged.

An extreme example was Natalie Fenton, an Otara girl who became a prostitute and drug user at 11 and who last year at the age of 15 was sentenced to life in jail for the murder of an alleged former client, 51-year-old Raymond Mullins.

Sue Martin says she is angry that some media reports portrayed Mr Mullins as a likeable old rogue and Fenton as a cold-hearted, natural-born killer, when the girl displayed classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Fenton told a psychiatrist that as she was stabbing Mr Mullins repeatedly in the stomach she saw the faces of men who had abused her as a child.

What can be done?


Commissioner for Children Roger McClay says there would be no child prostitutes without adults who are depraved enough to seek out their services.

"For every child prostitute there will be more than one adult using them - we should take them down and lock them up," is his blunt prescription.

The police cannot charge anyone for paying for sex as such, only if the prostitute is under-age.

Senior Sergeant Simpson says Privacy Act considerations would not stop the police from arresting anyone caught on camera committing a crime, but it is not an offence to have sex with a prostitute down an alley out of public sight.

At the same time, he says police would certainly take action under the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act if a 13-year-old was found selling her body.

An amendment to the Crimes Act has in fact raised to 18 the minimum age for having paid sex, in line with a United Nations convention on child labour.

But Labour MP Tim Barnett, sponsor of a private member's bill to decriminalise prostitution, says the Crimes Act amendment allows the defence of reasonable belief that a prostitute is old enough.

His Prostitution Law Reform Bill, which is before a select committee, aims to put the full onus of proof of age on the client with a penalty of up to seven years' jail for paid sex with anyone aged under 18.

What about truancy and other social problems which may contribute?


Mr McClay and others believe truancy contributes to the drift towards child prostitution, putting youngsters on the streets when they should be safe at school.

He is also concerned about the high rates of stand-downs and suspensions from schools. There were 5108 suspensions and 16,921 stand-downs in 2000, prompting an urgent financial boost of $1.05 million from the Government this year and up to $2.1 million in future budgets for schools to take earlier action to keep children in class.

Given that most of the suspensions are of children aged 13 to 15, and the fact that an enrolment "bulge" is moving from primary to secondary schools, the Education Ministry warns that the numbers will keep rising.

The commissioner says the bulge theory is no excuse.

"The bulge just means a need for more desks and chairs," says Mr McClay. "It doesn't mean more children thrown out."

Education Ministry policy manager Jim Matheson says the Government recognises the need to keep youngsters in the education system by boosting alternative education for those who are too disruptive or alienated to remain in regular classes.

The annual budget was increased from $7.5 million to $19 million last year to expand alternative education places from 1000 to 1820 students aged 13 to 15, at a cost of $11,000 each, so they can be taught in small groups.

They must be taught core literacy and numeracy, whether by a registered teacher or through the Correspondence School.

The rest of the time is spent on activities such as job training, behaviour modification, or Maori cultural learning in the hope that students will eventually be able to return to mainstream schools or progress to further employment training.

One retired teacher believed alternative education was an easy option, an attempt to blunt the high rate of suspensions caused by lack of corporal punishment.

But Mr Matheson noted that 85 per cent of suspended students ended up back in the classroom, usually at their original school.

Papatoetoe Intermediate principal and district truancy service chairman Alan Jermaine said unruly behaviour at school often simply reflected trouble and hardship at home, as evidenced by a huge increase in suspensions after the 1991 benefit cuts.

How much truancy is there?


The Education Ministry says unjustified absenteeism rose from 1977 to 1996 but there appears to have been little change since.

In 1998, an average of 1.3 per cent of about 450,000 primary and intermediate pupils and 3.1 per cent of 275,000 secondary and composite school students were unlawfully absent at any particular time.

Mr Wright says his 14 wardens picked up 240 children in public places around Manurewa in the first term of this year and returned them either to their classrooms or their homes - if any adults could be found there.

A 9-year-old girl found in a public park had no one at home, as there had been a family breakup before Christmas, so the wardens took her to an aunt's home.

They recommended that her school principal notify Child, Youth and Family, but feared she would be accorded low priority against other cases.

Senior Sergeant Simpson, despite rejecting the claim about wholesale child prostitution, agrees that truancy is a big problem and that burglaries and thefts drop whenever the police do a once-a-term swoop on youngsters who should be at school.

He knows of schools where up to 200 students have been unlawfully absent at a time.

The 25 schools in Otahuhu and Papatoetoe have this year referred only 145 cases to their combined truancy officer, retired principal Ian Thornton, but he says that is because he has them well trained to take their own steps to combat the problem.

These include phone calls, letters or visits by school staff to the homes of errant students.

It is illegal to keep children aged between 6 and 16 out of school without good reason, but Mr Thornton prosecuted only two parents last year, and then sought convictions without penalties.

He says most parents, even gang members, want their children to go to school, and just the threat of prosecution is usually enough to ensure compliance with the law.

Mr Thornton does not have evidence of rampant child prostitution, although he was asked one night by distressed parents to find three "thoroughly inquisitive" primary school girls who went Hunters Corner to learn about prostitution.

They went armed with a knife for protection, but were returned home unharmed without having been initiated into the world's oldest profession.