The world's youngest profession

HER name is Bunso, which means 'the baby of the family' in the Tagalog language of the Philippines. That is as close to the truth as we can call the witty and affectionate little girl who likes to make friends with the many visitors to the Verlanie home for street children on the outskirts of Makati. Nine-year-old Bunso is a child prostitute, one of an estimated 10,000 who work the mean streets of Manila. She was caught in flagrante delicto with a foreign paedophile in a suburban Malate shack just before Christmas by social workers from the French-sponsored organisation. Bunso likes to laugh just like other little children, but her voice sounds hollow and brittle, like that of a frail old woman. From an impoverished family, Bunso has had a lifetime of sex abuse. Lured by backstreet opportunists, she posed for child pornography when she was little bigger than a baby. Then she was handed to the Spartacus international paedophile organisation, which has links with the yakuza, the Japanese organised crime syndicate which runs most prostitution and pornography in Manila. Bunso turned her first trick when other girls her age were enrolling in primary school. Like about 10 per cent of Filipinos, she had no formal education. She did not learn English, but readily dredges up English words that primary school pupils have never heard of, like the slang for cunnilingus, fellatio, masturbation, sado-masochism and bondage. Bunso was by no means the youngest girl selling her immature body in the streets around Roxas Boulevard. There are girls as young as seven working the strip, according to a report by Carmela I. Torres, executive director of the Department of Labour and Employment's Institution for Labour Studies. Other children, some around the same age as Bunso and similarly homeless, have been picked up by sugar daddies and are kept as sex slaves in the capital. Bunso used to earn between 50 pesos (about HK$16) and 250 pesos a night, while older child prostitutes earned between 150 pesos and 1,300 pesos, the Verlanie social workers said. Many of these children, some working their own 'beat', turn as many as four tricks a night. Underage girls and boys working in brothels run by organised crime might earn as little as 50 pesos a trick, or up to 3,000 pesos for a night, during which they are at the whim of the customer. Virgins, whose authenticity is established before sex, or by the presence of blood after sex, might fetch as much as 10,000 pesos. Sometimes young girls like Bunso go to building sites, where they might charge construction workers as little as 20 pesos a trick and the 'men would sometimes play with them all day', a Verlanie spokesman said. 'God knows how many times these girls might be penetrated.' In two weeks, Bunso and other children like her will be the subject of an international conference on pornography, which is attracting more than 50 religious groups to Manila. The conference is organised by the Religious Alliance Against Pornography (RAAP), a US-based coalition set up eight years ago. One session of the conference, which is a forerunner to a proposed World Congress on Pornography later this year, will present a report on child prostitution in the Philippines. The country is one of Asia's biggest child pornography and prostitution centres. When police broke a paedophile and pornography ring in the resort town of Pagsanjan two years ago, they arrested seven Americans, four Germans, three Australians, two Belgians, a Briton, Canadian, Dutchman, Japanese and Spaniard. Sadly, paedophilia became big business in Pagsanjan after local boys formed alliances with the crew of the film Apocalypse Now, which was partly filmed there. There will also be reports on Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and Africa. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Catholic Archbishop of Chicago and co-chair of the RAAP, said people exposed to hard core pornography suffered severe moral and spiritual injury and desensitisation to the horrors of sexual exploitation and abuse. Dr Jerry Kirk, co-founder of the RAAP, said: 'Pornography is the third biggest money spinner for organised crime after drugs and gambling.' FBI statistics show that one in three girls and one in seven boys will be molested by the age of 18. But while the world talks, Bunso's future hangs in the balance. Even though she has been taken into a home away from the brothels, the nine-year-old cannot easily forget the streets, the money, or the affection she thought she was getting from her customers. And if she goes back, the alternatives are meagre: chances are she would become a child 'entertainer', earning 175 pesos for a 'bold show' on the dance floor, or a commission of one peso for a bar drink ... another victim of a system that has failed Bunsos throughout the world.