By- Aruna Rashed Toma Bangura
Teenage prostitution is one of the most social vice among teenage girls in the Sierra Leone as if these sets of girls are not captured by the First Lady Mrs Fatmata Bio’s Hands Off Our Girls’ campaign. A project advocating for the safety of women and girls from rape and other forms of abuses of against women. The initiative is expected to also remove girls from the streets and those in harmful and informal activities with tendencies of causing negative impacts on the society. But only focus of schools of the First Lady’s choice. And the spate of sex trade teen girls are involve in these days, mostly practiced by teens between the ages of 16-19 years old is unacceptable. Their immoral behaviours continue to have a huge devastating effect on the country’s already collapsed economy, portraying picture of severe economic problem in the country, which is probably prompting them to trade their bodies for money. The high volume of badly hit poverty stricken homes have led to the rampant incessant increase in teenage prostitution across the country. Owing to the fact that most parents hardly provide their children and their basic needs, especially their vulnerable daughters, cause lot of traumas in so many homes wherein they are somehow compelled by these forces of economic needs to go out late in the night in order to get their daily survival by having unsafe sex with different men, irrespective of their partners’ health status. The situation cuts across the country, as it is not only practiced in Freetown. In provincial cities of Bo, Makeni, Kenema and Kono teen girls as old as 14-16 hardly study at night, but roam around the places in search of men they can have affair with for money.
I still could recalled one Sunday night at around at 9:30 pm while I was returning from a friend’s wedding reception, hosted at the Lumley Atlantic Hotel in the West of Freetown, when I decided to take walk along the beach road, from that end to the Lumley Roundabout so that I can board a ‘poda poda’ that will take me home. As I was approaching the Lumley Roundabout, a young girl whom I suspected her age to be around 17 years old, half naked with make-up face and glossy lips majestically spotted towards me saying: ‘yes Sir na bizness?’, and there were other young girls standing at the foot end of the road. I stunted at her approach and gave her a queer look for her to notice my response but she was bold enough and stood in front me and asked me again ‘na short time you want or take home?’ I stood at the normal transport terminal when another girl whom I suggested is younger than the first one also approached me and said to me ‘na bizness broda’, I then turned to look if she was talking me or the other guy standing adjacent to me.
She then said again ‘fayn man na bizness you kam luk for?’ I noticed that she penetrated her looks towards me and I had to reply her softly saying ‘no madam’; then she walked pass me.
The high rate of teenage girls roaming the streets at night has become a severe and chronic social problem, amid the much talked about Frist Lady’s flagship programme, the Hands off Our Girls. It is now causing great damage to the country’s economy as most of the teen commercial sex workers are pre-high school and high school dropouts. Most of them seem to be coming from a single parent homes where either the mother or father cannot provide them with their needs, not even the basic parental supervisions on their dos and don’ts.
So many teenage girls are out there in the streets chasing men old enough to be their dads, elder brothers uncles etc. to hang out with them in pubs, night clubs brothels all because of money. They are in it with drug addictions, which most of them believe serve as their huge influencer in the sex trade. A trade of their moral pride as well. These set of teenage girls who sell their prides to bug men in a bid to look after their respective homes, are being referred to as PEKITO by men who get along with them, escalating menace of teen prostitution in Sierra Leone.
For certain young men teenage prostitution serves as a whole market for them, as they are hired by most of these old men to scout around for teen girls for them and get things nice with them (teen girls), with whom to either have some short time with or pass the night over with at their places. Despite selective approach by the Hands off Our Girls project, teen prostitution in the sex trade is now a common practice in Sierra Leone, especially in bigger town and cities, where youth are specially hired by some affluence old men known as ‘SUGAR DADDIES’ to find them these teenage girls to hang out with during the weekend at different hotels and guest houses just for a meager amount of money, after all they would have undergone in the hands of these sex predators – sugar daddies.
Another social problem that has speedily increase teenage prostitution in the rising sex trade in Sierra Leone is the rampant misuse of the social media platforms, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter to name but a few. Most teenage girls are highly influenced by these new media platforms, as they also know pornographic website addresses for almost all the world class pornographers. They easily fall in for these uncensored sex videos moving their attention away from their school activities. Peer group influence has moved so many of these girls into teenage prostitution toppled with the anxiety to get themselves these expensive phones which will drive them into the fanciful world of social media.
However the rampant sensitization and education on sexual and reproductive health in schools have also caused great danger leading to teenage pregnancy and child abortion. In some homes you will hardly hear parents or guardians discussing with their girl child on sexual and reproductive health, owing to the fact that such topics will broaden their minds on sex and other related matters. Also causes of rampant teenage prostitution are the deadly Ebola virus, the COVID-19 pandemic and the August 14 mudslide. These three great shocks left many families and households in a shambolic manners as so many teenage girls lost their parents. Majority of these homes that were left in disarray are having their daughters out in the streets during the odd hours at night in search of their daily survival via commercial sex.
A responsible government should fight this debauched menace tooth and nail making sure that they provide and establish rehabs, recreational centers and more vocational institutions across the board in a bid to curb teenage prostitution and sex trade. The government should ensure that access to girl child education should be free with no cost attach to it at all levels of formal educational institutions as well as employment opportunities for women and girls.
