"Mom, we're a laughingstock. We die a laughingstock."Please read these thoughtful words written by my roommate on the above quote.
-- Allan Nerutanga, as he died in Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak, grieving that he would never rescue his parents from poverty.
[7 October 2008 - CRIN Reports] - Cases of child prostitution involving dating-service cafes have been increasing sharply, prompting some local governments to take measures such as banning people under 18 from entering such establishments.
Inside the cafes, men choose women from among the female clientèle and try to secure dates with them. The system has triggered many cases of prostitution involving minors.
In a sizable number of such cases, minors who entered the cafes purely out of curiosity have been targeted.
The local governments, including the Kanagawa and Kyoto prefectural governments, revised their local ordinances to ban under 18s from entering such cafes.
One such facility near JR Yokohama Station displays a sign saying, "Coffee shop with manga library--no entrance fee for women." The floor is separated into two areas by a one-way mirror with the height of the floor in the men's area about 50 centimeters lower than that of the women's.
Male customers, some wearing business suits, gaze at young women sitting on sofas through the one-way mirror.
Female customers cannot see the men.
The cafe displays a notice saying girls aged 16 or older are welcome. The women included girls in school uniforms. Clerks tell the male customers, "If you see a girl you like, feel free to name her."
The cafe is open from 9 a.m. to midnight and about 200 people--both male and female--visit each day.
If a female customer is chosen, she chats with the man for about 10 minutes. If she agrees to a date outside the cafe, the man pays her "transportation expenses."
The man also pays the cafe an admission fee, a naming fee and a fee if he manages to arrange a date, totaling about 8,000 yen.
Women do not have to pay for anything.
According to the National Police Agency, the number of such dating-service cafes began increasing around 2006. As of the end of 2007, there were 77 such facilities in Tokyo and 14 other prefectures.
With 27, Tokyo has the highest number of such establishments, followed by 11 in Aichi Prefecture, nine in Osaka Prefecture, and seven each in Kanagawa and Saitama prefectures. The cafes tend to be concentrated in big cities.
Though 22 of the 77 cafes display signs banning under 18s, an NPA official said, "It's impossible to confirm whether the cafes are actually checking customers' ages."
Some cafes display signs saying that under 18s are welcome.
According to the NPA's data, the first cases of child prostitution and sexual abuse involving the dating-service cafes surfaced in 2007, with 26 such incidents reported.
This year, there had been 22 such cases as of the end of August, including incidents involving two middle school students. This reflects a trend in which the ages of female customers is dropping.
A 15-year-old third year middle school student said she was initially invited by a friend to visit a dating-service cafe in Yokohama. She said she was plied with alcohol outside the cafe and sexually abused.
Investigators of the Kanagawa prefectural police quoted her as saying: "I treated it all very lightly as I thought I'd be able to dine for free. I never thought I'd be taken to a hotel. I regret it now."
A senior official of the prefectural police said: "Many girls hear rumors that they'll be able to dine at a man's expense, and visit such cafes just for curiosity or in the hope of getting money. Though this is no different from brokering child prostitution, the current laws can't cover these cases."
A law for regulating entertainment businesses prohibits people under 18 from entering or working in certain businesses, such as telephone-dating establishments and cabaret clubs.
But the law cannot cover the dating-service cafes and similar cases as the females involved are not employed by the business operators.
The manager of one such cafe involved in a prostitution case said: "I just offer opportunities for people to meet. I can't be held responsible for what happens outside my cafe."
In January, the NPA instructed prefectural police headquarters across the nation to check potentially unlawful acts conducted by dating-service cafe operators. But so far, only one cafe has been investigated over child prostitution.
In that case, the Metropolitan Police Department applied a clause of an ordinance regulating dating clubs that prohibits minors from entering the premises and limits areas where such facilities can operate, against a manager and employees of a dating-service cafe in the Ikebukuro district of Tokyo on suspicion that they allowed a 16-year-old high school girl, who later became involved in prostitution, to enter the cafe.
The MPD regarded the operators of the cafe as brokers in paid sexual services. However, only Tokyo has such a local ordinance.
On Sunday, the Saitama prefectural police detained the manager and employees of a dating-service cafe on suspicion of brokering prostitution services involving adult women.
In the case, the manager paid "waiting fees" to female customers. The prefectural police thus regarded they had an employer-employee relationship.
But in cases in which dating-service cafe operators do not pay or offer other benefits to women, finding ways of cracking down on them is difficult.
Kanagawa prefectural police and some other police forces investigated several such cafes on suspicion of brokering child prostitution services, but no arrests were made.
Police have had to use other techniques, such as applying the Trademark Law, to investigate the cafes.
Yukio Akatsuka, a social affairs commentator, said, "Girls are using these cafes in the same way they use manga or Internet cafes."
"Such cafes are more risky than telephone dating clubs in that the girls could be caught up in child prostitution while they think they are just having fun. The business operators are irresponsible," he added.“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” – Mark 10.14Children have rights and as such they have the need to be empowered so that they can express and demonstrate those rights.
Nevada is the only state in the US that allows legal prostitution, but in its largest city, Las Vegas, prostitution is illegal. When the mayor suggested changing the law, it sparked a huge debate.
Mayor Oscar Goodman grabs the headlines whatever he says or does - and he relishes it. He is proud of Las Vegas' image as "Sin City" and happily calls it "an adult playground".
He boasts about his love of gin, cigars and pretty women and calls himself "the happiest mayor in the universe".
Before he became mayor, he was the top criminal lawyer to the Las Vegas mafia.
But when he suggested legalising prostitution and creating a red-light district and a string of "magnificent brothels" in downtown Vegas, the mayor got his most dramatic headlines yet.
He had opened up a debate on a taboo subject: Las Vegas' illegal prostitution.
Everybody knows it goes on, many businesses profit from it, but in-keeping with the city's slogan "What happens here, stays here", it is rarely discussed.
"It's disingenuous when people say they don't want to legalise it," says Mr Goodman. "Right now it's uncontrolled and unregulated. There's no check and balance as far as the women's health is concerned and legal brothels could be an important revenue-raising device for the city," says Mr Goodman.
"When you speak about it intellectually, not morally, it makes sense," he says. "If we had a referendum or ballot on legal brothels, it would probably pass."
Not without a fight, though. The vested interests in this city are legion.
Spectrum of workers
It is estimated that there are as many as 10,000 prostitutes operating illegally in Las Vegas, in an industry that may be worth as much as $6 billion a year.
Over 150 pages in the Las Vegas phone book advertise "escorts" and "massage", and leaflets promising to deliver "hot babes direct to your room in 20 minutes" are handed out to tourists openly on Las Vegas Boulevard, usually called "The Strip".
"Lucy" [name has been changed to protect her identity] is a top-end "companion" selling her time with men at $4000 a night. She explains how the sex trade functions in Las Vegas.
"There are women who get propositioned in the casinos, bars and hotels," she says.
"There are women who do 'extras' out of strip clubs and who 'give pleasure' in massage parlours. Women who do what we term 'outcall' - going to specific apartments to spend erotic time with gentlemen.
"There are women who work by print ads or on-line. And every casino host has a bevy of girls to call at a moment's notice to satisfy their high-rollers."
At the other end of the spectrum - in the seedier parts of downtown Las Vegas, among the cheap motels and ganglands - there are women who sell their bodies to pay for their drugs. They might charge as little as $20.
Robert Clymer, a former FBI agent in the city working in organised crime, says human trafficking adds to the industry.
"The number one problem, according to the FBI, is Asian prostitution," he says. "That means Asian organised crime and human trafficking into the US, straight into Las Vegas. And it's all fuelled by money."
Strange vacuum
With 600,000 people, Las Vegas is the largest city in Nevada.
Its illegal sex trade operates in a strange vacuum because in most of the rest of the state prostitution has been legalised.
In fact, Nevada is the only state in the US to allow legal brothels, which stems from a 1970 state law allowing Nevada's individual counties to licence their brothels. But this only applies to counties with populations under 400,000, which excludes Las Vegas and Reno.
The question today is - is what is good for Nevada, good for Las Vegas?
There are nearly 30 state-sanctioned brothels in Nevada.
With names like "Mustang Ranch" and "Moonlite Bunny Ranch", their owners say they contribute to the local economies and provide safe, clean sex.
Brothels are so much part of the Nevada culture that Home Box Office (HBO) even films a reality TV show inside the Bunny Ranch called "Cathouse".
George Flint is the chief lobbyist of the Nevada Brothel Association.
"Legal brothels could work anywhere," he says. "They could be huge in Las Vegas. It would be great for the women and for our industry which is today fragile because it remains a teeny business in a big state."
'Sexual slavery'
But some religious groups, academics and campaigners say that all prostitution is wrong and legalising it does not stop sex trafficking or the abuse of women.
"I see it as sexual slavery," says Candice Trummell, director of the Nevada Coalition Against Sex Trafficking. "I think it's morally and ethically wrong for governments to say it's OK to sell humans in that way. The government should not pimp the girls."
When asked if she was calling the government a pimp, Ms Trummell answered: "Yes, absolutely".
Kate Hausbeck, a sociology professor at the University of Las Vegas, has spent nearly 10 years researching both the legal and illegal sex trade in Nevada.
She concludes that the best model for Nevada - and any country in the world - is the decriminalisation of prostitution.
"Empower the women who do the work. Give them labour protection and the rights given other workers. Because it's a job and a choice for many women," she says.
But, when asked about Mr Goodman's idea of legal brothels for Las Vegas, she says she doesn't think prostitution will ever be legal here.
"There's too much money to be made from the illegal sex trade. The casinos and convention industry fear it would be a step too far," she says.
| By Maggie Shiels BBC News, San Francisco |
 The technology is a by-product of anti-piracy software |
Google engineers have adapted a software programme to help track child sex predators and search for patterns in images of abuse on the web.
Google created the technology for the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
It was originally developed to block copyrighted videos on the company's YouTube division.
The programme uses pattern recognition to enable analysts to sort and identify files containing child sex abuse.
Google says its aim in teaming up with the centre's Technology Coalition Against Child Pornography is to develop solutions that would make it harder for people to use the web to exploit children or traffic in child pornography.
"You always hope that your work will eventually be used to do some good in the world, and this was an amazing chance to make that hope real," said Google research scientist Shumeet Baluja.
Overwhelming task
Mr Baluja, who was also the technical leader of the project, said that as more and more predators use the web to ensnare children, "analysts were getting overwhelmed by all of the data they had to sift through".
Since 2002 the NCMEC has pored over 13 million child sex abuse images and videos in an effort to help police identify and rescue children from harm.
In the last year they have looked at five million pictures.
Google says the new tools will enable the centre's analysts to search their systems more quickly and easily as they try to sort and identify files that contain images of child sex abuse victims.
"The programme uses pattern recognition and will work even if the pattern has been modified," explained technology analyst Larry Magid.
"So if police can identify a pattern such as a calendar on the wall or a t-shirt logo, they have a much better chance of finding the exploited child and catching the suspect."
Hi-tech solutions
The technology is an outgrowth of the anti-piracy software Google developed to helps its YouTube division ferret out videos of suspected of being posted without the agreement of copyright holders.
"Criminals are using cutting edge technology to commit their crimes of child sexual exploitation, and in fighting to solve those crimes and keep children safe, we must do the same," said NCMEC President and CEO Ernie Allen.
Google engineers and scientists were able to work on the project on what the company calls "20% time", which allows all employees to dedicate that amount of time to projects they initiate.
Some of those projects benefit stockholders or end users, but in this case the benefit could be to thousands of children.  Maoist supporters with their faces painted red celebrated |
Nepal's Maoist party has taken the lead in results declared so far, after Thursday's elections.
The Maoists have won 14 out of 24 seats declared, and their leader has taken a seat in the capital, Kathmandu.
The party is also ahead in many other seats, for which partial results are coming through as the count proceeds.
The polls, for an assembly to re-write the constitution, are the first to test the Maoists at the ballot box after their 10-year guerrilla campaign.
The BBC's Charles Haviland says Maoist supporters in Kathmandu have started victory processions in some of the main streets, with red vermillion powder smeared on their faces and red hammer-and-sickle flags in their hands.
'Peace mandate'
Although it is too soon to say the Maoists have won the election, there is a sense that the former guerrillas are doing better than most observers had expected, our correspondent says.
Nepal's two traditionally largest parties have gained only four seats each.
The Maoists' leader, Prachanda, called a press conference, where he called the results a "victory" and said he saw them as the people's mandate to consolidate peace.
"All eyes are upon us," he said.
The new constitution is expected to lead to the abolition of Nepal's monarchy, and the partial counts suggest small royalist parties have done badly in the polls.
One of the Maoist leaders who won in the capital, Pampha Bhusal, has said she will work hard to ensure the inclusion of women in all organs of the state, something our correspondent says would be a novelty in the Himalayan country.
 The elections were Nepal's first since 1999 |
He told the BBC: "It's been somewhat embarrassing to me and frustrating to see the United States refuse among all the other nations in the world, including the United Nations, to deal with the Maoists, when they did make major steps away from combat and away from subversion into an attempt at least to play an equal role in a political society."
Election deaths
Mr Carter also talked about the significance of the elections:
"It's the end, I hope, of armed conflict, of revolutionary war in fact", he said.
Nepal held its first polls since 1999 following the Maoists' decision to quit their armed struggle in 2006.
 Voting passed off relatively peacefully |
Results for all the 240 constituencies are expected over the next 10 days. Officials say that polling has been postponed in 10 constituencies.
Many Nepalis and international observers have been surprised that Thursday's nationwide elections, just two years after the end of the Maoist insurgency, took place considerably more peacefully than past votes of the 1990s.
There were four election-related deaths in the troubled south-eastern region.
The Election Commission said there was a turnout of 60%, with polling cancelled due to malpractice in just 33 polling stations out of 21,000.
King Gyanendra seized absolute power in 2005 but was forced to give up his authoritarian rule the following year after weeks of pro-democracy protests.
He has since lost all his powers and his command of the army.
