In Bandung, Activists Fight Adolescent Prostitution
Underage prostitution is booming in Bandung, activists warn, as girls from broken homes try to find a quick escape. (JG Photo)
Bandung. A call to Cimoy's cellphone interrupts our interview and almost immediately, without excusing herself, she answers it. The conversation is brief, and from where I'm sitting all I can hear is a mumbling as she tries hard to keep her conversation private.
"A client?" I ask to confirm my suspicion. Cimoy, who refuses to provide her full name, nods without a word. Her eyes remain fixed on her phone. She makes a call to one of her "ladies," asking her to go to a place the client has specified: a karaoke parlor in the central Bandung area. "A [political] party official is having a birthday," Cimoy says; the client has requested eight escorts.
Cimoy is in her early 20s, but has since the age of 14 been pimping out a harem of 19 teenage girls to paying customers.
She says it all started when she was tricked by her sister's boyfriend into coming to a hotel. Her sister's boyfriend told Cimoy to pick him and her sister up.
"When I got to the room my sister wasn't there. Instead, there was a man," she says. He tried to rape her and she fended him off. "I punched him. But eventually I told him that I knew a friend who might be willing [to sleep with him]. He said OK."
Cimoy soon realized that she could make a lot of money pimping her friends. Initially she recruited four of her friends to run the business, and over time the number grew to 19, most of them aged 15 and 16 years old.
Cimoy's girls are among the thousands of underage prostitutes working in Bandung today, according to Hadi Utomo, chairman of the Bahtera Foundation, which fights sexual exploitation and trafficking.
The foundation and two other nongovernmental organizations have interviewed more than 700 underage prostitutes and concluded that like Cimoy, most are not in it just for the money.
"Our research has dismissed all these expert opinions that suggest that [prostitution] is driven by economic pressure," Hadi says.
Instead, most of the underage prostitutes operating in Bandung come from a broken family, the interviews found. Prostitution provides the girls with an escape from the domestic problems at home and allows them to be independent, living on their own.
Cimoy says there is strong demand for escorts and prostitutes, particularly from public officials and businessmen, who often stage meetings and seminars in the scenic West Java capital. A number of hotels in Bandung even keep a list of her girls along with their rates, she says.
Cimoy says that when she started six years ago, her girls were commanding fees of Rp 300,000 to Rp 500,000 ($26 to $43) for each encounter with a client. Today, they charge from Rp 1 million to Rp 2.5 million per date. Cimoy says she makes Rp 30 million a month.
With very little protection from law enforcers, victims of sexual violence in Indonesia can wind up in a vicious cycle that pushes them into prostitution.
Sixteen-year-old Putri (not her real name) says she was raped by her boyfriend when she was 13 and had to undergo an abortion.
She says that after she was raped, she was stigmatized. Not even her teachers offered any comfort or counseling let alone protection, and her friends at school called her a whore. At home, neighbors whispered all sorts of things about her. She dropped out of the eighth grade a few months later.
She began working as a hostess at a karaoke parlor in north Bandung. Putri says the job offered her freedom, away from the shame she felt at home and at school. But the hours were long, lasting until 3 a.m., and she was often harassed by clients. "Once there was someone who tried to undress me. I hit him with a glass," she says.
Putri says her stated salary was just Rp 750,000 per month, but she made substantially more in tips. The money was enough to feed herself, her mother and two sisters, but the temptation to earn more always lurked.
After several months of working at the karaoke parlor, she agreed to have sex with a customer who offered to pay her more than what she made in a month.
Hadi says sexual exploitation and trafficking in Bandung have reached alarming levels, and accuses the government of doing little to stop them. Authorities at the national, provincial and municipal levels have enacted laws and regulations to prevent sexual exploitation, "but they are just words without actual implementation because there is no institution tasked specifically to enforce out these [regulations]," he says.
The police have their own unit for women and children, which deals with underage prostitution, and there are institutions like the National Family Planning Coordination Board (BKKBN) and the Indonesian Commission for Child Protection (KPAI), but they each only deal with narrowly defined aspects of this complicated issue, Hadi says.
The government's Social Affairs Ministry has a program to rehabilitate prostitutes by giving them vocational training. Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil also plans to build a seven-hectare facility to provide counseling and get underage prostitutes off the streets by teaching them sewing, cooking and hairdressing skills.
"This is a problem of damaged souls, morals and emotions, but they try to fix these with skills. This won't lead to improvement," Hadi says.
Ridwan acknowledges that addressing underage prostitution is not high on the list of issues facing the teeming city of Bandung. "But that doesn't mean we ignore [underage prostitution]. I've only been mayor for three months," he reminds the Jakarta Globe recently.
"We all know West Java, and Bandung, is a major route for human trafficking. I want to invite NGOs so we can formulate a solution together. The bottom line is… I am also concerned about this."
Hadi says it takes patience and persistence to combat sexual exploitation, a mind-set he says is lacking among government agencies and officials.
"We need to treat the girls as dignified human beings, without prejudice or arrogance that they are prostitutes," he says.
"Only when mutual respect is earned can we start to discuss with them the dangers of their profession."
Hadi's foundation has been tirelessly advocating for protection for children against sexual exploitation since 1995. Roni, one of just 10 volunteers working for the foundation, says he spends most of his time talking with these girls who often feel abandoned by their family.
By engaging gradually with them he gains their trust. Only after one or two years of getting to know them do they talk more openly about their sexual activities and how they are trapped in their profession, allowing Roni to map out just how deeply they have been exploited and identify the culprits.
Roni says he counsels around 200 prostitutes, all of whom are between 13 and 17 years old. Most are like Putri, working at karaoke parlors, officially as hostesses but in reality as escorts and prostitutes.
For most it is hard to escape life as a prostitute.
"According to these kids the job is easy… and profitable compared to being a store clerk, for example, who only makes Rp 1.5 million a month," Roni says. "They know the risks… but they consider them challenges or occupational hazards."
Cimoy knows the risks all too well. Her relationship with her family is shattered. She hasn't seen her parents in ages. At one point she developed a drug addiction, and today has three children with three different men.
"The government won't do anything to stop this from happening. They are the very people who use my services," she says.
Roni remains hopeful about the Bahtera Foundation's advocacy, saying that 40 percent of the girls he talks with are slowly starting to move away from prostitution, including Putri.
Putri recently quit her job at the karaoke parlor and plans to look for steady work. Cimoy, meanwhile, swears that she only provides escorts and doesn't sell sex, but Roni is apprehensive.
"Most of the time they return back to their old profession, because it's like an addiction," he says.
He says the girls are under the illusion that they are enjoying freedom. But what they don't understand, he says, is at what price that freedom comes, and what happens next for them.
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