Harvard report details rampant sexual abuse of child migrants
Closed borders, unsafe holding camps, and increasing desperation have created an “emergency within an emergency” concerning child sexual abuse and exploitation among migrants who are stalled in Greece, according to a new report by Harvard’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (FXB Center). The report released last week describes abuses in the crowded, makeshift holding camps, unstaffed at night and with inadequate lighting, where lone men and those associated with criminal gangs prey on children left unattended. Older boys and girls are allowed to leave camp and sometimes engage in prostitution in hopes of saving enough to pay traffickers to smuggle them to their destination country, often Germany, Britain, or Sweden. The sex they provide brings in so little cash, €15 an encounter, that smugglers’ fees often remain out of reach. Drug use increases the danger the child will become trapped in the commercial sex industry, said the report, “Emergency...