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Survival sex: Child Sexual Abuse in Chiang Mai Gay Venues

Survival sex refers to a type of prostitution that goes beyond simply trying to earn a living. Throughout the world, regardless of the north/south divide, there are women and men who are forced to prostitute themselves as a matter of course: their very survival depends upon it. In this You-Tube video, Steve Sandford, a professorial journalist based in Thailand speaks to hill tribe boys who found that poverty left them with no choice but to prostitute themselves.

For more detail see The VJ Movement (www.vjmovement.com)

Around the gay bars behind Chiang Mai’s Night Bazaar, known locally as sleaze alley, young immigrants in Chiang Mai, Thailand find work in the underground sex industry which has become a magnet here for foreign pedophiles. One of the boys interviewed tells how he was coerced into the sex industry at only twelve years old (Hint:enable subtitles using CC button).

As gay people who love Chiang Mai we are always saddened to see stories like this about the city. Most of our gay friends here, tourists, ex-pats and Thais are good people who respect the laws here and find it abhorrent that a very small minority come to Thailand to exploit it’s vulnerabilities and sexually abuse young children. These few people besmirch the name of Gay people everywhere and the vast majority do not welcome them in Chiang Mai.

If you know of Peodphile activity in the city among ex-pats, please take action. The best thing you can do is to report it to one of the international organisations or NGO’s who have direct links into the appropriate Police departments, rather than simply approaching the local Police. Hearts of The Streets have run a campaign against child sex offenders in Chiang Mai and can help:

Stop child Sex offenders. Pedophiles are not welcome in Chiang Mai

Otherwise you can report them to the embassy of the perpetrator, or even your own embassy. The U.K. Police’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. have a dedicated website too.

British journalist Andrew Drummond has some sage advice on Reporting Child Sexual Abuse at the end of this article on his website, or you can contact him directly

Please remember:

It is a crime for foreigners to have sex with someone under 18 in Thailand

upon returning home child sex offenders can be prosecuted under extraterritorial laws

  1. admin says:

    If we were trying to trivalise the issue we wouldn’t have written the article! With 15.9 Million tourists coming to Thailand last year the number involved in child sexual abuse is a VERY small minority of that total.

    However, the point was actually in the context that it is a very small minority of gay people who abuse children, something which the rest of the gay community finds abhorrent.

    We agree however, that the worst exploiters are not tourists or ex-pats at all. But that is a dangerous subject to discuss here.

  2. Lee says:

    “a very small minority come to Thailand to exploit it’s vulnerabilities and sexually abuse young children”

    I would fervently disagree with the notion that it is “a very small minority”. Can you trivialize the sexual exploitation a little more, please?

    Besides, everyone knows that the vast majority of rape, purchasing of prostitutions, human trafficking, and other forms of sexual exploitation is in fact perpetrated by country residents/citizens, versus expats.

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