Adolescent prostitution is a major social problem in most countries,
and in industrialized countries often involves extreme exploitation
of a vulnerable group, already victimized by family dysfunction and
abuse, and the hazards of the street. In the US this is most clearly
brought out by the San Francisco research of Silbert and Pines
(1981). Subsequent US studies pointing to similar findings are
reviewed by Bagley and Thurston (1996). A Canadian study (in the
cities of Calgary and Edmonton) using Silbert’s questionnaire
produced results quite similar to the US findings.
A TV documentary shown in Britain (Carlton, 1995) featured an
Irish priest who claimed to have discovered networks of child
prostitution involving both boys and girls up to the age of 12 in the
northern island of Luzon (which includes metropolitan Manila).
The documentary claimed, quite falsely, that ‘the Philippines is the
sex capital of the world’. From extensive experience of Manila (and
other northern cities in the Philippines) and of Calgary and other
Canadian cities, I am certain that problems of child and adolescent
prostitution are appreciably worse in Canada than in the Philippines.