Schoolgirls lured into prostitution in Colombia

Bogota, Sep 12 (IANS/EFE) Criminal gangs in Colombia are reportedly luring young schoolgirls into prostitution in the South American nation, a media report said.

This phenomenon is fast catching up in the slums of Medellin city, the El Tiempo newspaper reported citing an aid organisation named Con Vivamos.

“There’s a ring dedicated to this, but it’s a terribly delicate matter because we know they are members of gangs and armed groups, but we haven’t been able to go any deeper into it than that,” said psychologist Clara Ortiz, coordinator of Con Vivamos’s childhood programme.

Young women who belong to the gangs reportedly contact schoolgirls who try to find out who among their classmates are virgins. The latter are then convinced to have their first experience with men, who pay them as much as $220, the report said.

“In that way, a chain of prostitution and child abuse is created which is fostered by the poor economic conditions in which the victims live,” the newspaper said.

A 17-year-old girl recently told Con Vivamos of a man who asked her to look around her school for possible students who could agree to the offer.

She said two of her friends who saw the money she was making asked to be enrolled and they themselves began to seek out more girls.

If the girls wanted to leave the ring, they were threatened by the gangs and had to move away from the neighbourhood with their families, the girl said.

Another common situation is that when young women from poor neighbourhoods become girlfriends of gang members, who get them hooked on drugs, and then drop them when they get tired of them and find somebody else, the newspaper said.

–IANS/EFE