Youth voices to dominate sexual exploitation conference

Most of the voices condemning world-wide sexual exploitation of children at the 1996 UN conference on childhood prostitution in Stockholm, Sweden belonged to adults. At an upcoming follow-up conference in Victoria, youth will dominate the discussion, the program and the podium. "Out From the Shadows," an international summit of sexually exploited youth, will be held in Victoria March 7 to 12. While the majority of the program is only open to the youth and adult delegates from throughout the Americas, a free public forum will be held March 11 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Victoria Conference Centre. "Into the Light" will focus on the problem of child prostitution in B.C. and will feature a panel of B.C. youth representatives and delegates from the conference. The forum will emphasize creating safer places for youth who want to leave the sex trade.

The conference is sponsored by UVic's School of Child and Youth Care, Prostitutes Empowerment, Education and Resource Society (PEERS), and the Office of the Ombudsman, Province of British Columbia. Conference co-chairs are Senator Landon Pearson, the federal government's advisor on children's rights, and Cherry Kingsley, a Victoria resident, youth advocate and former sexually exploited youth who spoke at the Stockholm conference.

"She was one of the few youth delegates there speaking from experience and she thought it was important that youth organize their own conference," says Dr. Philip Cook (Child and Youth Care), a member of the conference steering committee whose research frequently receives UNICEF support and is initiated in response to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. "All of the youth delegates have been involved in conference-related focus groups in Canada and in their own countries and most have managed to leave the sex trade and now want to help others do the same."

Cook warns against thinking that child prostitution is a problem for other countries. "We've uncovered some pretty horrific things in Canada. There are organized groups who recruit children for the sex trade in Canadian schools. There are cases of girls and women being trafficked over the border into Canada."

The first three days of the conference are dedicated to the youth delegates, who will attend workshops to discuss preventing sexual exploitation of children, methods of risk management and harm reduction, ways to heal and connect with one another, and how to handle emergency and crisis situations. The youth will then meet with adult political leaders from Canada and other participating countries and the UN to discuss implementation of their proposals. All these sessions will be conducted in private.

"There is a systemic, organized network of people preying on kids," says Cook, who expects the youth to urge governments to offer prevention education programs to younger children. "We've discovered kids as young as 10 involved in the sex trade in Canada. The problem is more extensive in this country than most Canadians realize."

For further information about the conference program and registration contact UVic Conference Management at (250) 721-8470 or by email at

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