La Strada Documentation Center

The Sex Exploiter

Document number
1627
Date
2001
Title
The Sex Exploiter
Author/publisher
Julia O’Connell Davidson, University of Nottingham
Availability
View/save PDF version of this document
Document type(s)
Research/Study/Analysis,
Keywords
Theme paper for the Second World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, Best Interests Principle, Child Victims of Trafficking, Separated Migrant Children, Unaccompanied minors, Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Child protection systems, Child Trafficking, Child Prostitution, Child Pornography,
Summary
This paper emphasises the fact that there is no ‘sex exploiter’ as such. Instead, there are people (adult and child, male and female) who sexually exploit children in many different ways, for many different reasons and in many different social contexts. In particular, the paper argues that questions about who sexually exploits children cannot be reduced to questions about ‘paedophiles’. Though we must urgently address the existence of, and harm caused by, those who consistently and consciously seek out young children to abuse, questions about why children are sexually exploited and by whom do not end here. The paper considers the diversity of ‘sex exploiters’ in terms of their identities, attitudes and motivations, reviewing evidence on those who sexually exploit young children and adolescents in non-commercial settings; in the commercial sex industry (including those who exploit children for financial gain, rather than sexual gratification); and in the context of more diffuse and long-term sexual-economic relationships.
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