There are a number of reports on child prostitution in Australia but none of these reports discuss trafficking in any great detail. [2] Most of these reports reveal that there are a significant number of children who have been involved in or subjected to commercial sexual activities (i.e. selling sex in return for some benefit to themselves or a third party). The reports all find that child prostitution is mostly an opportunistic activity engaged in by children who require food, shelter, clothes or drugs etc, rather than an organised activity aimed at exploiting children. [3]

The non-governmental group End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) produced a report entitled Youth for Sale in 1998 which reviewed literature on this topic and reported on the results of its surveys and interviews with government agencies and other groups dealing with youth. The report found that trafficking in children for sexual purposes was not an issue raised with survey participants or dealt with in the existing literature. [4] Thus, the mere fact that most reports do not find child prostitution to be the result of organised activity, does not mean that it can be said that child trafficking does not exist.

In a recent example, the parents of a Gold Coast teenager prostituted their 12 year old daughter, using a website to hire up to 200 clients. [5] The girl said her parents would often pull her out of her Gold Coast special–needs school to see clients, telling the school she had a medical appointment. After a tip–off regarding the website, the girl’s parents were arrested in October 2004 and pleaded guilty to all charges. In January 2008, the mother was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for 62 offences. The charges against her included knowingly participating in the provision of prostitution of a minor and procuring a minor to engage in prostitution. Both offences carry an aggravated sentence of 14 years as the daughter was a minor. The father was sentenced to 10 years for 41 counts of the same offences. Further, on the charge of maintaining a sexual relationship with a child, the mother was sentenced to 6 years and the father was sentenced to 7 years. For the remainder of the offences concurrent terms of imprisonment were imposed. The prosecution appealed the parents’ sentences for maintaining a sexual relationship with a child. The mother’s sentence was increased to 9 years, while the appeal in relation to the father’s sentences failed. [6] Although the parents were not dealt with under trafficking or slavery provisions of the Criminal Code (Cth), their actions fit within the United Nations definition of trafficking in persons, [7] as the couple forcibly kept their daughter and used her for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

Puangthong Simaplee

A highly publicised incident of child trafficking involved Ms Puangthong Simaplee, a Thai national. [8] In 1986, Ms Simaplee, then aged 12, was sold by her parents to traffickers and brought to Australia on a false Malaysian passport. She was forced to work in a brothel for the next 15 years until 2001, when immigration officials picked her up during a raid on a Sydney brothel and put her in Villawood Detention Centre. By this time she was addicted to heroin and severely malnourished. Ms Simaplee was seriously ill and despite receiving medication at Villawood she died three days later.

It was not until a coronial inquest delivered a verdict on Ms Simaplee’s death in April 2003 that this case made headlines around Australia. The coroner found that Ms Simaplee had died from pneumonia and malnutrition and called on authorities to use whatever means necessary to eradicate trafficking in persons. Additionally, the coronial inquest’s finding that Ms Simaplee was trafficked into prostitution attracted significant public attention and placed pressure on the Government to take action to address this issue. As a result of this incident a joint Parliamentary inquiry into the trafficking of women for sexual servitude was held. [9]

Ms Jetsadophorn Chaladone

In April 2007, Ms Jetsadophorn Chaladone (known as ‘Ning’) received compensation from the New South Wales Victims Compensation Tribunal for post-traumatic stress and depression suffered as a result of being sexually abused at the age of 13, when she was forced to work in a Sydney brothel. [10]

Ning was trafficked to Australia in 1995 with the consent of her father who thought she would be working as a nanny. When she arrived in Australia she was put to work in a brothel. Her traffickers told her that she had a ‘debt’ of AUD 35,000 which she had to pay off by having sex with 650 men. Ning was found in the brothel ten days after her arrival during a routine compliance inspection by immigration officials. She claimed that during that ten-day period she had had sex with as many as 100 men. No police investigations were ever carried out against the traffickers, despite pressure by immigration officials on the NSW Police Force, evident from correspondence between the two agencies. [11] It is worth noting that no federal anti-sexual servitude and no trafficking offence existed at that time. As a result, the AFP lacked jurisdiction to investigate the offences committed against her. It has also been alleged that neither state nor federal agencies were notified of the fact that Ms Chaladone was a minor. [12] However, media coverage of her case in Australia led Thai police to investigate her traffickers, leading to the conviction of three Thai nationals who were sentenced for up to 19 years in jail. [13]

Ms Chaladone’s story was the subject of a 2005 documentary entitled Trafficked, which also examined the case of Ms Puontong Simaplee, who died in immigration detention in Villawood (NSW) in 2001. The director and producer of this film, Mr Luigi Acquisto, travelled to Thailand in an effort to track down Ning, aided by a former AFP agent who had set up anti-trafficking operation in the early 1990s. The pair succeeded in finding Ning, who by then was 25, married and with a newborn son. [14]

Other Cases

Another reported case of child trafficking involved two Australian men who went to Solomon Islands to live and work for a period. [15] They set up businesses there and were well regarded by the locals. The men then invited a 14 year old boy back to Australia with them for a Christmas holiday. He went with his parents’ knowledge, and called them from the airport to tell them that he had arrived safely. The boy was not heard from again until he was found by the police after being sexually abused by the men. After police intervention the boy was returned home. The report of this incident does not detail whether the two men were ever charged or even investigated. As there is no additional information available, such as dates or names of the persons involved, it is not possible to investigate this case any further.

A relatively unexplored aspect of child trafficking has been the way in which inter-country adoption arrangements may be vulnerable to exploitation for child trafficking purposes.

In August 2008, an investigation by Time magazine revealed that gangs of criminals operating in the poor parts of southern India had been kidnapping ‘pretty’ children from the streets and then selling them to local adoption agencies/orphanages who changed their identities and arranged their adoption to unsuspecting couples in wealthy countries such as Australia, the United States, and the Netherlands. [16] A human rights lawyer in Chennai estimated that 30 of the nearly 400 Indian children adopted into Australian families in the last 10 to 15 years were potentially trafficked. [17]

The scam was originally uncovered and reported in the Indian press when, in 2005, local police overheard accusations of child abductions during a brawl between two men at a local bar. [18] Four people were subsequently arrested and the information they provided resulted in the arrest of the owners of Malaysian Social Services (MSS), an adoption agency based in Chennai, India, that had organised numerous adoptions to Australian couples. MSS originally had its license previously suspended after it was suspected of being involved with the abduction of four babies from a hospital in 1999. These children were passed on to another adoption agency, Madras Social Services Guild, which has also sent children to Australia and has since been implicated in a least one Australian case of suspected adoption fraud. [19] Charges against both agencies, however, were later dropped and their licenses restored when it could not be proved that the agencies involved knew that the children concerned were stolen.

In 2007 a writ of habeas corpus was filed by human rights lawyers in India to demand action from the High Court in Chennai, which ordered the country's Central Bureau of Intelligence (CBI) take on the investigation into MSS. The case against this agency has since been registered by the Indian courts, although one of the owners died in 2006 and the other is now on bail.

In 2009, an Interpol request was sent to Australia to request an interview with Queensland authorities and a couple who have adopted a child who is suspected of being trafficked. A senior police officer in Chennai stated that the investigation into MSS is ‘still in its initial stages’. [20] No further information is available with respect to the status of any relevant criminal prosecutions against the adoption agencies involved.

Whilst the adoption scam was first uncovered in 2005, it was the Time magazine report in 2008 that subsequently sparked numerous reports in the Australian media. [21] The Australian Government has since identified 12 children from India who may have been kidnapped, sold to orphanages and then adopted by unsuspecting Australian families. [22] Media reports have, however, focused only on two alleged Australian cases. [23]

The ensuing political debate in Australia centred on how authorities should deal with any potential custody battles over the children, as well as claims that a number of State authorities, particularly those in Queensland, had ignored early warning signs of suspicious dealings with the MSS adoption agency. [24] The Time report claims that Western Australia cancelled an adoption from MSS in the early 1990s after an Indian court found the orphanage was lying when it had claimed that the child to be adopted had been abandoned. [25] Western Australia then ceased any dealings with MSS in 1995, sought a report on the case and was informed in 1999 that MSS had its license suspended. [26]

Despite these early warning signs, a number of other States continued to arrange adoptions with MSS. The authorities in these States, who no longer deal with the agency, are reportedly investigating any potential cases of adoption fraud or child trafficking. [27]

In Queensland, there have been particularly controversial allegations that the state’s Department of Family Services ignored a letter sent in 1995 warning that MSS was suspected of involvement in child trafficking. [28] Further controversy was generated when it was revealed the Queensland Government became aware, in May 2008, of one case of an alleged fraudulent adoption arranged by MSS, well before the Time publication exposed the same case to the public. [29] An audit of Indian children who were adopted into Queensland between 1995 and 2007 found only two of 23 children were from MSS. [30] The Queensland Government is continuing to investigate one of these cases, however an audit into all 23 has recently been ordered by the state’s Child Safety Minister. [31] The Opposition child safety spokeswoman, Jann Stuckey, has since asked the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) to examine the government's handling of the one alleged case and whether there had been any interference with public documents. [32]

A report by the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent TV program also suggests that ‘a case is before the courts’ in relation to the adoption of an Indian child by one Australian couple, suggesting a possible custody dispute. [33] Despite some recommendations from the Federal Opposition that any stolen children should be returned to their country of origin, [34] the Federal Government has confirmed that the courts are best placed to determine any issues arising over custody. [35] Under Australian law the children are Australian citizens and legal children of the adopting parents, however the birth parents could, under The Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Inter-Country Adoption, [36] bring an action in an Australian court to have the adoption revoked. [37] A former Family Court Judge, writing extra-judicially, has noted, however, that the chances of the biological parents reclaiming their children are remote because of the overriding requirement to consider a child’s best interest. [38]

It is possible that the ‘Indian adoption scandal’ reported in 2008 is an isolated instance of child trafficking into Australia. The report and its aftermath, however, reveal that Australia’s inter-country adoption programs may be vulnerable to exploitation by child traffickers, as ‘very few checks seemed to have been done into the source [country] of the children.’ [39] Particularly concerning is the apparent lack of communication between State authorities tasked with monitoring inter-country adoptions. The Federal Government has since promised tougher scrutiny on inter-country adoptions and frozen a number of adoption applications pending further investigation. [40]