U.S. companies slow to fight sex tourism

he U.S. travel industry is under growing pressure from government agencies and nongovernmental organizations to help authorities root out illegal sex tourism and the market it provides for criminal networks that traffic in child and adult prostitution. But the response of travel and tourism service providers has been lackluster, officials say, leaving authorities and humanitarian organizations scratching their heads over why travel companies have not taken up programs to communicate with tourists about the fight to end human sex slavery.

U.S. travel providers and companies that supply the infrastructure of tourism -- airlines, hotels and tour services -- have repeatedly rejected pleas from humanitarian groups to help them educate the traveling public about exploitation of children and women by sex tourism, efforts that have been ongoing since the mid-1990s.

"We have been trying for years to get U.S. companies to participate, to no avail," said Carol Smolenski, executive director of Thailand-based Ecpat-USA in New York, an international child protection organization. (Ecpat stands for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes.)

"There are a couple of reasons that [they] ... have not done this," she said. "I think they have not had a reason to show an ethical responsibility. In this country you are admired if you become big and rich, not if you do good. European companies have had to show, by public demand, that they are a good company, not just a rich company."

The fight against sex tourism -- and the accompanying problem of child prostitution in neighboring countries such as Mexico and Canada, in Caribbean countries and in the higher-profile sex tourism capitals in Southeast Asia -- has been getting new attention since the Bush administration got behind a push by conservative, faith-based organizations to raise public awareness on those issues.

With lobbying from religious and humanitarian groups, the Bush administration pushed

legislation through Congress that specifically targets criminal organizations that engage in human trafficking, which authorities say is replacing drug trafficking as a major source of money for criminal networks linked to terrorists.

The Protect Act

The new law, known as the Protect Act, seeks cooperation from the tourism industry in uncovering sexual abuse of children both within the U.S. and from U.S. citizens who engage in such practices while traveling abroad.

Yet to date, only one major U.S. corporation, Carlson Hotels Worldwide, has taken up the activist banner within the industry to work against child sex tourism by signing a tourist industry code of conduct that establishes guidelines for anti-sex tourism activities.

Carlson has been, advocates say, the exception to the rule.

And only three smaller U.S. companies have signed the code since it was introduced for U.S. signatories at the United Nations in a ceremony in April -- Ela Brasil Tours in New York, Flamingo Travel Group in Philadelphia and Washington-based Royal Regency International Hotels.

None of the other signers has the financial clout or high profile of Minneapolis-based Carlson. Only one major U.S. travel-related association, ASTA, has joined the effort.

The Society signed the code in March, pledging to take a leadership role within the travel industry on the issue of child sex tourism.

Calls to ASTA were not immediately returned, but Richard Copland, its president and CEO, said in a statement earlier this year that the organization intended to take an aggressive role.

"We in the industry are in a unique position to help put an end to the victimization of children, and ASTA, as the representative of the travel industry, is the group to lead the charge," Copland said.

"Nothing would give greater satisfaction to my travel industry colleagues than seeing this scourge eradicated."

The code, created by Ecpat International in cooperation with its affiliate organization in Sweden, has been endorsed by the United Nations, Unicef and the State Department as a way to motivate the industry to help police itself.

Its signers pledge to train their employees to be on the lookout for evidence of child-sex exploitation by tourists.

They also promise to alert appropriate authorities of suspicious activity involving children in hotels or elsewhere, to restrict their use of suppliers or vendors to those who shun sex tourism or are code signers themselves, and they agree to warn

Europe participation high

Ecpat's Smolenski and others pushing the worldwide adoption of the code said they are puzzled by the fact that U.S. airlines have refused to show child-sex tourism warnings on international flights and are surprised that more U.S. companies have not rushed to participate if only for the good will it is expected to create as a socially responsible move.

In Sweden, where Queen Silvia has led a worldwide drive against child exploitation and personally enlisted the support of Carlson, an estimated 90% of travel and tourism providers have signed on.

The participation rate in Europe is much higher than in the U.S., as well, officials said. Some 50 major corporations outside the U.S., including major world airlines such as Air France, are participating.

Carlson's endorsement is being used to argue the case before other major industry players -- from hotel operators to airlines to tour agencies -- to get them to help in a worldwide education campaign and to assist authorities in spotting and bringing to justice pedophiles and tourists who engage in sex with underage prostitutes.

Smolenski said Ecpat and its partners are preparing new outreach programs aimed at the industry and over the next few months will escalate efforts to get U.S. tourism providers to draw a line in the sand over child sex tourism, which they say is fueled by the adult sex tourist industry.

"We are seeking a full-time coordinator later this year to help with that effort," Smolenski said. "We'd be quite happy if we could sign up all of Travel Weekly's Power List travel companies."

A 'very difficult' issue

Carlson Cos. Chairman and CEO Marilyn Carlson Nelson, who signed the document on behalf of her company at the U.N. ceremony, said Carlson's directors carefully considered the issue before adopting the code. She said they wanted to be sure that they could make the program work in a way that it would set an example to others.

Those concerns outweighed the reluctance that many companies feel, she said, in raising a "very difficult issue" in front of the traveling public, which is presumed to be interested in something other that social-responsibility education during leisure trips.

"There was also the hope that this would encourage the travel industry to collaborate and inform its employees and its suppliers and its customers about the issues," she said, "and that it would help us all take a stand, as an industry, that we don't do business with people who commercialize children and profit by their exploitation."

Carlson has just started to implement code provisions, which include training, cooperation with authorities and annual reports on what the company has accomplished through those efforts.

Nelson, who became involved in child welfare issues internationally long before Queen Silvia and Ecpat enlisted her support, said she hopes Carlson's efforts will help convince the U.S. travel industry that it can have a significant impact on the problem.

That effort, she said, must go beyond U.S. airlines using traveler contact to educate consumers about the issues or the use of personnel at hotels to help be eyes and ears for authorities in exposing those who take child prostitutes to their rooms.

Industrywide social responsibility must promote programs that attack the root causes of child prostitution, including third-world poverty and lack of education, Nelson contends.

"We have a partner in Japan, one of our major franchisees, TGI Friday's restaurants," she said. "This is a dark and difficult subject ... but the best way [they] have found to address it was to start schools in Cambodian villages where there were no schools."

She said the organizers have gotten help from the World Bank and from teachers who were able to identify families they thought were at risk based on poverty and numbers of children, and those that might be likely to traffic their children. She said the program has made a difference.

'Shadow tourism'

Enabling sex tourism is a byproduct of what some describe as a "shadow tourism industry" that exists alongside the reputable travel industry.

And although some sex tourism operators told Travel Weekly that they shun any sort of connection with those who offer child prostitution, authorities said they help create the market for child sex because both revolve around similar criminal networks involving prostitution.

The sex tourism industry itself, a business that all concerned acknowledge is heavily dependent on the reputable travel industry's network of transportation, accommodation and tour services, has come under increasing scrutiny in the U.S. over the past year.

U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) has campaigned for legislative and legal action against sex tourist operators and identified 25 such companies promoting sex tours from the U.S., mostly through the Internet.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer obtained indictments in March against two men who operated Big Apple Oriental Tours, charging them with promoting prostitution through sex tourism. That case is pending.

In Hawaii, lawmakers have passed legislation that makes it illegal for Hawaii-based tour operators to offer overseas sex tourism. Other states are also said to be considering such legislation. And President Bush, in a speech before the United Nations late last year, focused on sexual trafficking of children and young women in urging the tourism industry and others to make stronger efforts to control it.

As recently as July 15, the president, in an appearance at the Justice Department's first National Training Conference on Human Trafficking, held in Tampa, cited a rise in such criminal activity in the U.S. and Cuba.

John Miller, a former U.S. senator appointed to direct the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, was named by Bush last month as an ambassador at large, a move that is widely seen as raising his office's profile and underscoring the importance the administration places on its efforts.

'A multibillion-dollar biz'

The sex tourism industry -- and the sale of children into sexual slavery -- has been described by the U.N. as a "multibillion-dollar business" involving hundreds of thousands of tourists who either travel expressly for paid sexual liaisons in underdeveloped countries or take advantage of being far from home to engage in sexual activity they would not try at home.

"With Unicef, we estimate that about 25% of child sex tourists are Americans," Ecpat's Smolenski said. "That is based on three independent surveys done on three regions, all of which showed that 25% of arrests are Americans."

But those perspectives are controversial in some circles.

The controversy arises in part because of large, and unsubstantiated, numbers provided by human rights organizations, whose estimates of those affected have been pieced together from less than scientific evidence.

The estimates suggest that there are 2 million children worldwide in forced sexual slavery and as many as 800,000 child prostitutes in Southeast Asian countries alone.

Miller said there are estimates of 300,000 children being coerced into sexual slavery in the U.S., and the numbers in Mexico and Canada, which his office has identified as centers for human trafficking, also reach into the thousands.

Sexual liaison tours

But estimates that hundreds of thousands of children are actively -- and openly -- engaged in prostitution in Thailand causes some to question those figures.

Among them is Frank Scott, a retired American living in Thailand who, with his wife, Sheri, provides guided tour services in Bangkok for sightseeing and shopping -- and for those seeking sexual liaisons in Thailand.

Scott insists that casual tourists, including those interested in hiring prostitutes, seldom encounter the kind of child sex tourism that organizations say is prevalent.

"It exists, but it is very much underground here," said Scott. "You have to go looking for it, and you have to look very hard. The brothels where you do find it are not places you would want to go. They are not safe, they are filthy and you see rats. It's disgusting. Who would want to go there?"

Scott said he, like many engaged in the sex-tourism trade, agree that pedophiles who seek sex with children should be vigorously prosecuted.

But he believes that what he calls "antiprostitution organizations" use the child sex argument to support other agendas, which, he said, is to end prostitution entirely.

"That is the real agenda of these faith-based, conservative organizations," he said.

Eric Dexter, a Californian who runs Dexterhorn.com, a Web site that offers American men "opportunities" to meet adult women in Thailand and the Philippines for sexual purposes, insists that he has been approached only twice over the past several years by someone seeking sex with underage girls or boys.

"I've only gotten two phone calls from individuals seeking that kind of thing," he said. "One of them was from a cop -- I know because I'm also a private investigator, and I tracked his phone number." The other call, he said, "was from a nut."

Scott said he, too, rarely encounters anyone actively seeking children. And he insists that in Thailand, laws that keep minors out of bars, massage parlors and other places where American tourists find sexual encounters keep children out of those places, as well.

But Smolenski notes that tourists who engage prostitutes -- and the companies that help them -- can be unwittingly at risk.

"Ecpat has shown there is not a separate under-18 market, and that people who are sexually exploited, whether they are age 12 dressed up to look 16 or are 24, are all sort of in the same market," she said. "So any man who is in the business of trying to purchase sex from a woman or girl may well end up with a child, whether they know that or not."

The industry nexus

Cynthia Messer, an associate professor with the Center for Tourism at the University of Minnesota, has worked on sex tourism and its relationship to the industry since becoming involved with a World Travel Organization task force on the issue in 1997.

"The tourism industry is not responsible for the growth of sexual exploitation in the world," she said. "The reputable tourism industry does not knowingly or willing participate.

"But where the potential intersection occurs is primarily with those who travel ... [for sexual reasons] but use those [industry] services. For example, an airline is used to transport. It doesn't know why people are going. So, in combating this, an airline actually can be a wonderful way to communicate our viewpoint. An airline video can help."

Such programs exist. Air France has been showing videos warning about child sex tourism for the past year and has just prepared a new video that is even more explicit in its warnings.

Miller, whose State Department office received its mandate two years ago to uncover and inhibit human sex slavery and human trafficking around the globe, said he is encouraged by those industry efforts and hopes for more U.S. industry involvement.

Miller said he has seen first hand the kind of underage trafficking that exists in Asia and elsewhere and has traveled extensively to meet with persons who have been identified as victims of human trafficking.

"I've talked to teenagers in Thailand, and there is child sex tourism going on," he said. "When I visited Cambodia, I walked down the street, and I wasn't just offered sex. I was asked, 'You want a 14-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 10-year-old?' "

Despite the higher profile of the issue brought by people like Miller, efforts so far to enlist major national airlines involved in international travel have been met with resistance.

Miller and others said private meetings with airline operators reflect concerns companies have about what "image" they will project if they advertise against sex tourism.

Taking a stand

But Nelson said research in other countries has shown that travel operators who take a stand against child sex tourism find their customers react favorably and perceive them as doing something positive.

"No one wants to be interruptive of something that in any way compromises the positive experience that travelers have," she said.

"But we're also looking for quiet ways to make a difference. We have gotten very positive feedback from customers that they respect us for doing this."

Under Miller's guidance, the State Department has launched a series of efforts with nongovernmental organizations like World Vision, a faith-based humanitarian organization, and Ecpat, but he sees the travel industry itself as a

linchpin in combating such sexual slavery.

"People are not bumming their way across on freighters," Miller said. "They are flying on airlines and staying at luxury hotels. And when they arrive they take these kids into these hotels.

"Look at the travel associations, hotel and restaurant associations," he said. "If these organizations join the President's call and Congress' call, they could make a real dent in this effort. And they could save the lives of thousand of children, not to mention throwing hundreds of traffickers and pedophiles in jail."

He sees the participation of Carlson as a major step.

"We are just starting to reach out, and that is why it's such a big deal ... that Carlson stepped forward," he said. "[They] are working on reaching out to other companies, and we are hoping that other companies, airlines and travel associations will respond.

"We don't want to anticipate objections because I am anticipating they will all want to do this," he said. "It should not kick a dent in their profits, and it can be done in a tasteful way. I think they should see it as an opportunity."

A criminal offense

Joe Mettimano, director of efforts to combat child prostitution and sex tourism at World Vision, has used a $500,000 federal grant through Miller's office to pay for billboards outside airports in Bangkok and Phnom Penh, Thailand, and for other communications campaigns to warn tourists that sex with underage prostitutes is a crime.

"We are trying to send a message to men who are potential sex tourists that engaging in sex with minors is breaking a U.S. law and that if they are caught exploiting children, they are going to go to prison," he said.

Mettimano said World Vision is also working closely with the newly reorganized Immigration and Customers Enforcement agency (ICE) to help spot and stop American tourists who travel to have sex with underage girls and boys and the so-called "situational" tourist who may be lured into having sex -- sometimes unknowingly -- with minors.

"World Vision has 20,000 people working around the world," Mettimano said. "Imagine how many eyes and ears that can be to help authorities."

Enlisting U.S. travel companies to help them uncover trafficking in humans through watchdog programs of hotel, airline and travel services only adds to a network that can make it more difficult for those who abuse children sexually to get away with it, he said.

Indeed, enforcement efforts against Americans who travel for sexual contact with children have resulted in arrests.

ICE, through a program called Operation Predator, has participated in more than 3,200 arrests related to domestic sexual exploitation of children and use of the Internet to traffic in child pornography.

Six Americans have been arrested through ICE's efforts for allegedly engaging in sex with children while traveling. Two pleaded guilty to charges last month.

To contact reporter Dan Luzadder, send e-mail to [email protected].

The Code of Conduct asks tourism providers to:
• Establish an ethical policy regarding commercial sexual exploitation of children.
• Train their personnel in the country of origin and travel destinations.
• Introduce a clause in contracts with suppliers stating a common repudiation of commercial sexual exploitation of children.
• Provide information to travelers by means of catalogues, brochures, inflight films, ticket-slips, home pages and other means concerning child sex exploitation.
• Provide information to local "key persons" (authorities) at the destinations.
• Make annual reports of their efforts.

The code was developed by Ecpat International (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes).