Painful Profiles in Prostitution

Child prostitutes can be found in cities across the globe, some bewildered by what has happened to them, others hardened by life in the streets. They are the victims of broken families, social injustice and criminal exploitation. The stories of three:

Porto Alegre, Brazil

At 11 V.B.A. felt she had run out of options.

For two years, her drug-addicted stepfather had raped her regularly, although her mother refused to believe it.

So V.B.A.--who under Brazilian law can be identified only by her initials--stuffed a few belongings in a bag and hopped a bus to Tacuara, a city 36 miles north of Porto Alegre, the capital of Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul.

She hoped to find work as a nanny. Instead, she was picked off the streets by a woman who offered her shelter, alcohol and marijuana.

The woman was a madam with a stable of young runaways. She put V.B.A. to work at the local bus station, telling her to approach solitary male travelers and lure them to a seedy hotel for sex at $20 each.

She worked the bus station for months, until a friend told her she could earn more at a nearby boate, or night spot. For the next three years, she cajoled customers to buy drinks, dance and sex, for $50 an encounter.

V.B.A., now 16, doesn’t know which one gave her AIDS.

“I did what I did to survive,” she says with a shrug.

Last summer, V.B.A. and two other minors were caught in a raid on the boate by a special police unit created to deal with crimes against children, the first such unit in Brazil.

V.B.A. ran away shortly after she was interviewed for this article at a state children’s home in Porto Alegre. She later called social workers to say she had found work as a maid.