Burundi's child sex slaves include girls from poor rural backgrounds and
those brought up in middle-class families in the capital. Photograph:
Imagestopshop/Alamy
Pamela comes from an affluent family and was doing well in one of
Bujumbura's best-performing high schools – until two years ago, when she
became a sex slave.
She recalls befriending a group of
girls when she was 14, who at first proposed she join them when they
went out. The trips led to dates with older men who would pick up the
bill, initially without asking for anything in return.
One night she was taken to a house in Kiriri, a smart residential district in Bujumbura,
Burundi's capital, where she was held for three months under the supervision of men in police uniform.
"When
a client came, if you didn't want to go with him they would slap you
and whip the soles of your feet," Pamela says, her voice trembling. She
was freed in a police raid after her mother reported her missing.
"Such
places exist in every part of town. You just have to open your eyes to
see them," says Florence Boivin-Roumestan, who leads Justice and Equity, a Canadian NGO that has exposed the vast scale of sex trafficking in the small central African nation.
"After
months of investigations, we're seeing that human trafficking and sex
trafficking in particular exists in Burundi on a scale no one would have
imagined."
Victims include girls from poor rural backgrounds and those brought up in middle-class families in the capital.
In
a months-long investigation, Justice and Equity found that young girls
were being recruited across the country and either forced into
prostitution or sold abroad. "You find girls of nine or 10, but most of them are in the 13, 14, 15 age range," Boivin-Roumestan says.
The trafficking takes different forms. In Bujumbura, it is girls from
well-off families who are targeted in the best schools. Fellow pupils
of both sexes are recruited by pimps to play the role of intermediaries.
They gradually gain the confidence of the victims, who eventually end
up in brothels.
Keza, who comes from a poor district in the
capital, says she was locked up and used as a sex slave by a senior
intelligence officer for several months when she was 15. "He threatened
me and he threatened my parents," she says, adding that she no longer
wishes to see her family after the ordeal.
"I filed a formal complaint against him and he received several summons, but he has never shown up. The case has gone nowhere."
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