“The street children of Romania”

After the collapse of communism in Romania, the country fall in great economic devastation and a huge number of abandoned young boys and girls started beg on the streets of Bucharest. The street children of Romania became also the children of the sewers. Having no place to stay they used the tunnels of the sewers as a home while  sniffing glue from plastic bags  was the escape  from hunger. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3665646.stm

  Since 2007 and  the accession of Romania in the EU things have been better although poverty and marginalization is still a problem.  Despite the fact that the issue of the Romanian street children assembled the attention of many NGO’s and other humanitarian organizations,  the problem still remains. According to the Romanian Law the sexual abuse of children  is punished with prison sentences of up to fifteen years. Romania ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in October 1990, and in January 2002 it ratified the optional protocol on child trafficking, child prostitution, and child pornography.

   The Romanian reporter Liviu  Tipurita in 2003 made a documentary over this issue.   A Channel Four television documentary, “Cutting Edge: The Child Sex Trade,” refers to child sexual exploitation of children in Romania. In Bucharest, the reporter meets up with 15-year-old Laurentiu, who has lived on the streets for most of his life.  Laurentiu and his friends live on the streets. Every one of them has their own story. Of the little money they earn, mainly from begging and selling sex, much is spent fuelling their addiction to sniffing glue.

    The documentary exposed how Western pedophiles were coming to Romania posing as tourists, and were then procuring boys for underage sex.  The reporter follows up stories of  trafficked children  to Italy, and on the streets of Milan films a fourteen year old boy being pimped by his own father. Over weeks of investigation, several more cases of families selling their own children for sex are documented. ( See the documentary)  http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/cutting-edge-the-child-sex-trade/