Madre de Dios, Peru: When Yaneth was years-old, her aunt sent her to work as a waitress in one of the scores of bars along the highway cutting through the Amazon jungle region of Madre de Dios, in the heart of Peru's illegal gold mining region. Credit: AFP. Trapped in a bar that doubled as a brothel, she was forced to have sex with miners who flock in their thousands to the vast and remote southern rainforest hoping to strike gold.
I was ashamed of myself," said Yaneth, who was rescued in a police raid and taken to a state-run shelter. On any given day or night, dozens of women and girls can be seen standing outside the ramshackle wooden bars and neon-lit brothels on the dusty streets and riverbanks of mining towns. Driven by poverty, it is often parents and relatives who sell their children into the sex trade, rights groups say. Other women and girls from across Peru travel along the Amazon river to reach Madre de Rios on their own accord, in search of jobs and a better life.
Poor, uneducated and unemployed women and girls are vulnerable to recruiters' false promises of work as cooks, cleaners and waitresses. They are often forced into commercial sex work. Dangerous work: Flowers adorn a tomb at an illegal gold mining camp in Ananea, in Peru's Puno region.
Credit: AP. The Peruvian anti-human trafficking group CHS Alternativo says there are least bars in Madre de Dios alone where child sexual exploitation takes place, with girls working 13 hours a day. Child sexual exploitation is also driven by a widespread superstition among miners that having sex with a girl - especially a virgin - brings them good luck. They believe it can protect them from the dangers of going deep into mines and tunnels, or bring them more luck in finding gold.
Teenage girls and women are also trapped in debt bondage. Once at the mining camps, traffickers tell them they have to pay for transport, food and accommodation. Rugged landscape: Peru. To pay off their debts, girls are convinced to sell their virginity known as El Pase , Bustos said.
© 2017-2019 CORINAVIP.NET - CORINA VIP 
