published in Eastern Economist #396, September 4, 2001
The 10th anniversary of independence has come and gone, but some unspoken problems seem to be rearing their ugly heads in Ukraine’s capital. A friend of mine was recently posted to Kyiv unexpectedly for a couple of years. Packing up the family lock, stock and barrel – they have three kids –, he and his wife showed up in late August, just before the partying began.
About two days after they arrived, I got a distraught call from his wife. She’s never been to Ukraine before. “What kind of a place is this, anyway?”
My friend’s Ukrainian, his wife is Irish; they’re both Catholic. From the tone of her voice, I knew we were talking about morality. “What do you mean?” I asked her. She explained.
It appears she had picked up a popular English-language entertainment weekly at an ex-pat watering hole and was leafing through the classified section, looking for the numbers of the international schools in the nation’s capital. Two of her kids are school-age and the whole move happened so quickly, she hadn’t even looked into schooling.
“There I was, looking under Education, and right next to it, a girl with big naked – boobs,” she said, outrage making her voice tremble.
In my experience, most western publishers are a bit more politic than to put advertising for sexual services next to family-oriented stuff, so I decided to look at the issue in question myself. Sure enough, right after the classification “Education” in this magazine comes – you guessed it – “Escort Services.”
Advertising for “escort services” and “private massage” has been around in Kyiv for a number of years, more often than not, three-word slogans in imperfect English accompanied by pictures of long-haired young women. Other than strip bars, I hadn’t noticed naked breasts in any of the ads in the English-language press. But I haven’t paid much attention to this stuff, either. My attitude is that what transpires between consenting adults is their entire business.
My friend’s wife, however, was big-time upset about something, and it wasn’t consenting adults.
Now that I had the offending column in front of me, I could see what she meant. There, bursting out of a white transparent blouse was a young damsel of Dolly Parton looks and nearly Dolly Parton proportions (only with the more modest smile typical of young women here). Right next to her bounteous attributes were the French Dental Clinic, the Swiss-Ukrainian Dental Clinic Porcelain, the American Academy of Foreign Languages, and the British International School. Not much further away were the British Council, Pechersk School International and Kyiv International School. Most of these organizations are family-oriented and the schools mostly cater to kids aged 3-18.
Since I rarely look at the magazine in question (I have my own sources of arts and entertainment information), I’m not sure how long this juxtaposition has been going on.
But something else caught my eye that was definitely new to me, here in Kyiv. Above and below the well-endowed beauty were the following adverts: “Girls, ladies visit,” “Boys and girls,” “Young beauty,” and “Hot girls.”
These ads clearly are promoting underage sexual services, both male and female. This, in view of all the problems with trafficking in Ukraine and with child abuse the world over, got my goat.
So I turned to some people I know in Ukraine who are working this general area. When I asked Elly Valentine, director of the Winrock International project on trafficking prevention, about domestic statistics and statistics on child prostitution specifically in Ukraine, she said, “We don’t have anything. Even the most developed countries have virtually no hard numbers on children in the sex trade because it is all so completely underground.”
A joint survey among girls and women age 12-30 carried out last January notes that 9.6% of 12-14 year-old girls in Ukraine, 9.7% of 15-17 year-olds, and 12.1% of 18-20 year-olds are at risk of getting trapped in the trafficking industry. This is a fair chunk. And numbers for those at risk of getting into the skin trade in their own home country are most likely significantly higher.
Ironically, present-day young Ukrainian women are very critical of the situation in Ukraine. They aspire to overcome squalor and to live better than their parents from the financial point of view. Moreover, they are eager to work hard and are mobile and enterprising, according to the study. This fits in with all the anecdotal and other impressions of most westerners working and living in this country for the last 10 years.
The problem is not awareness. Young Ukrainians will tell you themselves, the risks have been written up plenty in the local media, print and broadcast alike. 83% of respondents in the survey said they were aware of this issue, and even among schoolgirls the number was an impressive 73%.
But 64% of young Ukrainian women live at or below the poverty line today.
According to the survey, finances seem the key factor at the root of risky decisions. 59% of all young women and 73% of those already in the commercial sex trade mentioned money problems as a major factor affecting their decisions.
More to the point of what upset me reading those ads, and what obviously upset the mother of my friend’s children, the study shows that those women who are sex service providers started their sex life at least two years earlier than the average Ukrainian woman. And most were coerced into it.
Prostitution is not a “victimless crime” when one of the parties is underage.
Most of the family-oriented services advertised on this offending page are run by westerners. Can we not at least make the decision not to support any form of promotion of the sexual use of children in Ukraine? •
– from the notebooks of Pan O.
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