By M. Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- On the back streets of major cities in East Asia and Central America, children are for sale -- for an hour, for a night, or maybe for a week. Rich men from abroad are paying for the sexual services of these innocents, and a new campaign to stop them began October 12.

Posters bearing a photo of faceless hands behind jail bars are going up at key entrance points for foreign visitors to Costa Rica, Thailand and Cambodia. The message says: "Abuse a child in this country. Go to jail in yours." Two U.S. government agencies, the governments of these three countries and the nongovernmental organization World Vision are teaming up to target the sexual exploitation of children and ensure that U.S. citizens committing such crimes are brought back to this country for prosecution.

In presenting the campaign at a Washington news conference October 12, the agencies estimated that 2 million minors -- some as young as 5 -- are being held in virtual slavery in the global commercial sex trade. Although evidence is anecdotal, officials say most people who exploit the children are from Europe, Australia and the United States, attracted to the anonymity that protects them in developing-world capitals, the availability of the children, and law enforcement systems that are often weak or corrupt.

"What we have today is the start of an abolitionist struggle directed against child sex tourism," said Ambassador John Miller, the director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. Department of State. "[It is] a struggle that's involving cooperation of governments like Costa Rica, involving the cooperation and support of U.S. taxpayers, and involving, most of all, World Vision and its thousands of people around the world who are acting as agents for positive change."

The U.S. State Department is helping launch the program with a $500,000 grant. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brings law enforcement powers to the project. The agency is involved in prosecuting human smuggling, trafficking in persons, drug smuggling, child pornography and child sexual exploitation.

"I find the people who prey on children to be the most vile and despicable criminals with which we deal," said John P. Clark, ICE deputy assistant secretary.

The Child Protect Act passed in 2003 gives U.S. law enforcement greater authority to pursue sexual predators across borders. It authorizes a penalty of up to 30 years in prison for U.S. citizens engaged in an act of child sexual exploitation, even if it occurs in another country. Since the law was enacted, ICE has indicted seven individuals under the law for sexual exploitation occurring in other countries.

World Vision, a Christian relief and development organization, has a staff of 22,000 active in 100 nations. With a particular focus on providing services and support to children, World Vision's Joseph Mettimano says the agency's staff will become "the eyes and ears" of law enforcement to find children who are being sexually exploited.

"A year and a half ago, a 12-year-old girl comes into one of our programs for street children in Phnom Penh. She tells our staff member that she is ‘dating an American,'" Mettimano said. "What that meant was he's coming in on a monthly, bimonthly basis, buying her for a week and having sex with her." The girl also had photos of the man, letters from him, and his name and address. She gave those to World Vision. They were passed on to ICE, Mettimano said, for further investigation.

Mettimano said World Vision research indicates that most Western men who become involved in child sexual exploitation are what he called "situational offenders." They are traveling in a developing world city, alone, in a bar; they are offered a sexual encounter with a minor and take it. The new media campaign is targeted at these offenders and attempts to raise their awareness about the criminal nature of these encounters and their vulnerability to prosecution even though the crime may occur outside the United States.

World Vision will run similar announcements on an airport television network with an audience of 700 million people. At developing-world destinations, billboards, street signs and tourist maps will also drive home the warning that children are not a tourist attraction, that sex with them is a crime.

Rosalia Gil, Costa Rica's Minister of Children's and Adolescent Affairs, said her country has worked hard to promote tourism as a productive, nonpolluting industry. She told the news conference that she and other government officials are dismayed to find that Costa Rican destinations are listed on almost 30 Web sites on which sex tourists exchange recommendations. For that reason, Gil said Costa Rica is eager to participate in the newly announced partnership, as the nation simultaneously undertakes a number of other actions to stop child sexual exploitation.

Gil said Costa Rica is one of the first nations to adopt a code of ethics in tourism that establishes training programs among workers in tourist areas -- hotel clerks, waiters, taxi drivers -- to be watchful of child sexual exploitation and report it to authorities.