Child Abuse Essay, Research Paper
People in the rich world tend to assume that child labor, like
slavery, is something that was abolished a century ago and that now only
exists in third world countries. This can not be any further from the
reality of this issue. In fully developed countries like Canada and the
United States, parents encourage their children to have a job at an
early age, as a way of letting their children gain experience of the
real world. Few people see it as exploite that a child should work
(for example to have a paper route) even if they are paid less than
adult wages and local child-labour laws are infringed by their working
before seven in the morning and after seven o’clock in the evening.
Child labour’ in general is too explosive and negative a word to be
applied to all children workers. It is insulting to those whose lives
are ruined by hard labor to lump them into the same category as those
children who help out in the family shop after school. If people treat
all work by children as equally unacceptable they are trivializing the
whole issue and making it less likely to be able to root out the most
damaging forms of child labor. It is simply the nature and conditions
of children’s work that determines whether they are exploited, not the
plain fact of their work age. Another term that is too loosely used in
the business world and elsewhere is that of a sweatshop’. The term
sweatshop’ stems from the word sweating, originally used in the late
19th century America. It was thought to describe “a subcontracting
system in which the middlemen earned their profit from the margin
between the amount they received for a contract and the amount they paid
workers”. This margin was said to be sweated’ from the workers because
they received minimal wages for excessive hours worked under unsanitary
conditions.
Unlike some problems that are just surfacing in the world today and are
not too predominant, child labor is well developed with around 500
million children enslaved in its trap, including those working as
domestic slaves. Out of these there are over 73 million children that
are under the age of 10. Children, who should be out in the sunshine
having fun with their friends, or playing on a local soccer league are
in actuality slaving over machines in factories or serving families as a
domestic slave. These frail beings work in places like India making
rugs that need 4000 knots per square inch. They are sold as slaves in
Sudan for a mere $15 per child or in Africa for domestic work. In
Pakistan they are enslaved in the brick industry, in Turkey they work in
textile industries, and in Italy they sweat over making shoes that
people all over the world buy and proudly wear. The mines in which some
children are forced to work in Columbia and Peru collapse upon them and
severely injure or kill hundreds of workers. What is unbelievable is
the amount of money that these children are paid for their long hours in
the factory. While most children prefer to work in a factory over doing
domestic chores the conditions are not that much better. Granted there
are hundreds of other children their age surrounding them, but they are
not allowed to talk with them, if they do, they are beaten. They work
between 16 and 18 hours a day, are sometimes shackled to their looms and
can not go to the bathroom or take breaks of any kind. This is indeed
unfortunate, but what may be more regrettable is that children in Canada
complain that they earn only $6.85 an hour as minimum wage. For doing
what, flipping burgers or serving drinks? What they do not realize is
that they can eat when they are hungry, they are allowed to take breaks
(in fact it is mandatory), they can socialize while working and they
work under sanitary conditions with benefits. These children that are
being exploited earn only 31 cents an hour in Honduras, 24 cents in
Nicaragua, and a whopping 56 cents in El Salvador. In Sri Lanka they
are given 18 cents an hour and in China and Vietnam they reportedly
receive 11 cents an hour for their hard work. This may indeed seem like
a very small amount, but it is more than what domestic workers are
usually paid. These invisible millions have money constantly taken away
from them to pay for their shelter, food and clothing. It is very hard
to recognize why as they sleep under the kitchen table in some instances
and their nourishment only consists of whatever falls off that table.
They are denied sleep as they are on call 24 hours a day and are also
sometimes expected (especially if it is a female worker) to provide
sexual favors for the master of the house. As a direct result of this
the girl is beaten by the wife, as she is taking over her role in the
family structure. What is incredibly horrific is that in most cases
people refuse to admit that their worker is a slave. They claim that
they did him or her a favor as they brought them from their poor village
and gave them shelter and a job. The owners admit that they do
household chores, but why wouldn’t they? They are now part of the
household and have some responsibility to keep it up and functioning.
Are these unfortunate village children slaves or are they to be
considered foster children? Ignorance, then, obviously plays a huge
role in discovering child laborers and being able to identify their
situations in order to help them. How are people supposed to determine
whether or not what they are purchasing is made by children who are
being exploited? It is a very difficult task and can only be curbed
when companies take responsibility for their actions, factories and
employees. Unfortunately not many companies are willing to do this, as
they are receiving a greater profit by employing young children because
they do not have to pay them as much money. It is true, however, that
some businesses are beginning to take action, like The Gap, Sears, and
Kathy Lee Gifford’s clothing line with Wal-Mart. However, there are far
too many companies out there that are not. J.C. Penny, a clothing line,
refused to check into their factories that are stationed abroad even
after four warnings from the Labour Department. Parents are unknowingly
buying products from companies like Walt Disney, where their workers
only earn 5 cents for every $11.99 item they produce. They proudly give
these items as gifts to their own children, children that are the same
age as those working in Haiti, not realizing that they are stained with
other’s fingerprints. Another widely known company that exploits
children is Nike. This company pays its workers in Indonesia about
$2.20 a day while the founder of this business has over $4.5 billion in
Nike’s stock alone. Although most of the companies that have been
mentioned have factories in third world countries, this is not the only
place that one can find child laborers, or sweatshops. A 1994 study by
the General Accounting Office found that 2,000 of the 6,000 garment
shops in New York City could be called sweatshops, and 4,500 out of
5,000 in Los Angeles were given the same title. If sweatshops and child
labor are to vanish from the earth, a multi-prolonged effort will be
needed to tackle some sizable related problems such as illegal
immigration, intemperate corporate profit-seeking and inadequate
schooling for the developing world’s children.
Although the above jobs sound dangerous and difficult, the most risky
form of child labor has yet to be discussed: child prostitution.
People in today’s society, and especially those in developed countries,
refuse to admit that this is indeed a large problem. They view children
as innocent beings, not as sexual objects. The fact still remains that
there are enough people out there that are willing to exploit children
in this way. There are over 300,000 children who sell their soul in the
United States, 20,000 in Sri Lanka, while Venezuela is home to over
40,000. India is reported to have between 400,000 and 500,000 and
Thailand has once been quoted to have over 800,000 child prostitutes
invading their streets. There will be an expected one million child
prostitutes joining the industry every year if current conditions do not
change.6 Most of the children enter the industry around the age of 9.
This is not always the case as Bob Matthews, an OPP officer of the
anti-pornography unit, has seen a case where a young girl of 18 months
was depicted in child pornography. This child has only lived for a year
and a half and already she is scarred for life. Children around her age
are also being portrayed through the media. There is a picture that was
published in Marie Claire, a
(of about 2) standing beside a bent over woman (refer to page 10). The
item that was trying to be sold were the shoes that the woman was
wearing. Why does it seem necessary to exploit children in this
manner? Why do people of influence like Anne Geddes, a renowned
photographer, find it essential to portray young naked children as her
sole subject? Most of these children have no idea what is going on
around them, they have no say and no authority over what is happening to
them. This is probably one of the main reasons that they are becoming
victims, they are easy to manipulate. They are more willing to believe
what is told to them, as is the case of Nok (age 14) and Tong (11). A
foreigner came into their village one day and promised them happiness
and fortune if they came into the city and worked as waitresses. Three
weeks later, Nok and Tong were not selling drinks, they were selling
their bodies. They were trafficked across borders into a Bangkok
brothel called Max 29.7 they were told that their freedom would cost
them $2000, but this money would not be easy to earn.8 Just as money
was taken from the domestic workers, so too was it confiscated from
these young girls. Money was constantly deducted for the 4 birth
control pills they were forced to take a day, the clothes they had to
wear, makeup, hairstyles, food, and the condoms that were purchased but
never used.9 without using condoms and having to serve between 6 and 10
customers a day, these children are very susceptible to diseases like
HIV and AIDS and are dying as a result. One girl mentioned that she
felt “just like a machine” which is understandable as she works 22 hours
a day, 7 days a week.0 The girls are forced to take drugs that the
customers bring into the brothel, if they refuse, they are beaten.
Every Wednesday at this brothel there are ritual beatings that take
place between 3pm and 5pm. The captains’, men in charge of the
organization, come into a room in which all the 37 girls are lined up
against a wall and hit them, kick them, and beat them with iron rods and
metal balls on chains. In brothels like Max 29, a girl’s virginity is
sold from anywhere between $40 and $4000.1 something so sacred should
never have a price tag attached to it, but unfortunately it does. In
fact, a young female’s virginity is no longer sacred. These girls are
forced to go through a reconstructive surgery so that to their customers
it feels like they are having sex with a virgin, and a higher profit can
be made . The search for pure virgins’ is a great quest that many
people take to heart. In China it is believed that if a man has sex
with a virgin, power and luck with business will come to him.2 there is
also the wide belief that a virgin is a safer bet when thinking about
STD’s and AIDS. Companies that are involved in the sex tourism
industry, like Bushwhackers in Las Vegas, advertise where people can find
these virgins or “cherry girls” that are usually between the ages of 10
and 15.3 Another well known company is called Big Apple Oriental Tours,
located in New York City. This organization offers an incredible deal
for just $2000. For that money the customer will receive, airplane
tickets, car transportation, luxury hotel accommodations, free drinks,
free food and a personal tour guide that will introduce them to 400
girls. Out of these 400 children the client can pick one or two and for
$20 a night they can do whatever they please with them and throw them
out like trash in the morning. Or, if they took a shining to the girl,
Big Apple Oriental Tours will arrange the immigration papers, for an
additional fee, if they wish to take the youngster home with them.4
One of the biggest problems that these child prostitutes face is that
they have no where to turn. In some cases their parents sold them into
the industry as part of a bondage agreement. This means that they had
a debt to pay that they could not afford and therefore had to sell their
children to do their dirty work for them. Even when a child gathers up
enough courage to go to a local authority their pleas are often
ignored. In one case, a girl who had been a prostitute for a few
months, went to the police and told them her story. The officer in
charge took half an hour to change her statement from one of sexual
harassment to that of rape.5 Why does this happen? It is because
authority figures are profiting from exploiting children. They are paid
to turn a blind eye to several problems like when tourists come into
their country looking for cheap sex and when prostitutes are trafficked
across borders, because this brings much needed revenue into their
country. As for the sexual tours that are arranged the laws regarding
them are very discouraging as well. It is not against the law, in the
United States, to organize tours to exploit erotic nightlife in other
parts of the world. However, it is illegal to sexually exploit children
at home and abroad, which is why most of the U.S. sex tour operators are
very careful about how they word their advertising brochures.6 The
problem here is obviously that there is a very fine line between what is
legal and what is not, and this is why many people can slip through the
judicial cracks. There are also laws aplenty dealing with child labor,
but again they do not seem effective. In India no employer has ever
been imprisoned for employing children. Of 4,000 cases registered
against Indian employers for violating child labor laws, 3,500 were
dismissed or the fines were less than $6. The rest remain before
India’s courts.7 In the Declaration of the Right’s of a Child, which
became a resolution of the UN general assembly in 1959, article 9 states
that: “the child shall be protected against all forms of neglect,
cruelty and exploitation. He shall not be the subject of traffic in any
form. The child shall not be admitted to employment before an
appropriate minimum age; he shall in no case be caused or permitted to
engage in any occupation or employment, which would prejudice his health
or education, or interfere with his physical, mental or moral
development”.8 Who is supposed to decide for these children about what
an appropriate age should be, so that they are not put in danger but are
still allowed to work to support their families? In 1819 there was a
prohibition of children under the age of 9 working in mills.9 Is this
really an acceptable age?
Child labor has been around since the Industrial Revolution, why then
are there still no solutions? If poetry, like Elizabeth Barrett
Browning’s poem The Cry of The Children (refer to pages 11-13), books
and music address the issue, why can people not come to terms with it?
It is because individuals can not relate to the lives that these
children are forced to live. People in Western society find it
impossible to identify with children who are faced with such cruel and
deceiving circumstances.
What is desperately needed is a form of education for these less
fortunate children so that they are free to learn and can determine for
themselves what is right and wrong, thus developing their own moral
beliefs. This is essential so that they will be less likely to enter
exploitied circumstances in the first place. Governments and people in
general are so concerned about finances that they refuse to acknowledge
that they do have spare cash that could be spent on furthering
education. Sub-Sahara Africa currently pays $12 billion in servicing
its debts, yet just $2 billion would be enough to ensure that every
child in the region could have a place in school and a better chance of
Survival.
Are people willing to just sit idly by as the children, the future,
fall one by one into the deadly trap of exploitation? Is it possible to
say to them, that this problem will eventually solve itself, and just
hope and pray that they do not die in the meantime? Children are losing
their innocence and their childhood because people refuse to admit that
this issue of child exploitation can affect them in their town, in their
country. These children are not free to play or to socialize at all.
This deprivation leaves scars that can take years to heal. They lose
trust in others, particularly adults and become vulnerable to further
exploitation. Can people still use children as sexual objects, or keep
them in working conditions that are unacceptable after they realize the
devastating results these acts can have on children? This is the
question that must be answered. People must find it in themselves to
protect these children and no longer ignore them.