Santo Domingo.-  Thirteen year-old Yulissa has been sexually and commercially exploited for just a short time and considers it “a temporary business” at which she arrived without trying and wishes to leave it behind today.

She says her mother has no job and depends on the money she gets from her exploiters, mostly foreigners, who visit beaches of Boca Chica.

Miralis is 12 and has a similar experience in another community, which has marked her adolescence with physical and emotional scars.

Teresita and Luisito are also victims of a reality revealed by the Study on Abuses of Minors, registered in 11 branches of the Office of the Prosecutor, conducted by UNICEF, which found that 1,683 cases of abuse of 12 to 17 year old minors were notified in just six months last year.

Central American and Dominican experts will debate the problem during the Subregional Congress on Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents from March 16 to 18,.

“When she (her mother) comes to me to talk about the things I do to make money, I put the money in her hand and right away she laughs, then, she tells me, daughter be careful, but she already has hers. If I don’t bring her anything, we don’t do so good,” Yulissa tells UNICEF.

Teresita’s story is just as heart wrenching. She lives in Santo Domingo, and at 13, already maintains her seven month old baby. “The say of this country forces women to throw themselves to the street. In this country there are no men because what the few that there are do,  is get little girls pregnant. My grandmother is 38, she had my mother when she was almost 15. My mother had me at 11 and she is now 24 years old.”

SOURCE: listin.com.do