Sex Business on the Border

Cheb, a small town in the Czech Republic and a stone’s throw away from the borders of Saxony and Bavaria, has a nasty secret. The small Czech town has developed into a sexual oasis for pedophiles.

But although the Czech Interior Ministry admits that child prostitution exists on the border area, officials maintain that the child sex trade is not an organized phenomenon.

Catherin Schauer and Ludmilla Irmscher beg to differ. The two social workers (Schauer is from Germany, Irmscher is Czech) have been working on a community project there since 1994 seeking to protect both children and adults working in the sex industry. Reports from German media hold that children as young as 5 years old are involved with prostitution on the border.

The so-called Karo project works to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections among prostitutes and drug users working in the border region.

A mecca for pedophiles

The border region between Germany and the Czech Republic has long been developing into something of a mecca for pedophiles. Schauer and Irmscher say pedophiles travel intentionally to the region where child sex workers are easy to find.

That the trade in child prostitutes is still big business is no real surprise in an area which is still very poor. Children from Slovakia and the former Soviet Union are kidnapped then smuggled into the area to work as prostitutes and in many cases mothers will offer their own children up for prostitution, “effectively selling them to pedophiles”, Schauer says.

But there are no easy answers. Although Schauer and Irmscher look after the children at risk several times a week and report the licence plate numbers of suspicious German cars to the respective authorities that is all they can do. “What we’re doing at the moment is solely crisis intervention, damage limitation,” Irmscher says.

“We can’t just go out onto the streets and take the child away – that would be abduction.”

Czech-German cooperation offers hope

But closer cooperation between the Czech and German authorities may offer more hope in the fight to beat pedophilia in Cheb. Two years ago, the Karo project – which receives EU funding as well as financial support from the family ministry in Saxony – joined forces with a larger group set up to fight trafficking in women. Additionally, the Saxon authorities have also made progress in the battle, distributing leaflets in the area to raise awareness of the problem.

And now, negotiations are under way between the German police in the state of Saxony and Czech police. Horst Rasch, the Interior Minister in Saxony said the new cooperation would “enable us to follow up the people who are engaging in this criminal activity.”