The hell of sexual exploitation of children in Tijuana

In Tijuana, Baja California, many ads are written in English and you are constantly offered "beer and girls".

Many people will ask you where you are from and what you want. You will be offered powdered handicrafts brought from China in 1980 and the typical photo riding a donkey painted as a zebra. Others will whisper at your ear: “do you want to be with a child?”

Carlos, 17, says that in Tijuana these deals are closed with a handshake at internet cafes.

Children wait playing Candy Crush on a computer until a greasy man in his fifties with double chin and a round belly shows up. The standard rate ranges from 20 to 50 dollars for one night.

Carlos was withdrawn from the “business” this year. After being prostituted for seven years, there is no market for a young man who has just contracted HIV.

Sex tourism

Tijuana is a destination for sex tourists: a couple of weeks ago Joel Wright, a seminarian from Ohio, was arrested by U.S. authorities at San Diego airport after he expressed his intent to abuse Mexican baby girls.

Wright put an ad on Craigslist requesting a tour guide in Tijuana. Once he started to exchange e-mails with some of them, he expressed his desire of being with a one-year-old baby and a four-year-old. He was reported and undercover agents passing as “child pimps” contacted him.

Years ago Connie Youngkin, 60, traveled to Tijuana invited by a Christian congregation. In that trip, she found out that some mothers prostituted their own children while others were used by dealers to hide drugs from police.

Almost two decades later she decided to sell her home in California and came to Mexico to live in a small condo with her husband. The couple invested all their savings in a shelter to accommodate abused children.

Six years ago they founded “La Promesa”, a shelter for children of prostitutes or sexually exploited in the northern zone of Tijuana.

These children have been beaten so badly that they lose the ability to concentrate and their brain is damaged. But we want them here. Some of these children are exchanged by their own mothers for drugs: they send them to get drugs and force them to have sex with the people who sell them.

“Here we received a six-year-old girl that was sexually exploited by her own mother and was also raped by her mother's boyfriend. She had a little sister who was raped and murdered in front of her by a pederast,” Connie said with a grave voice.

The shelter overlooking the Pacific Ocean has a pool, a dining room and dozens of rooms with large windows where children wake up each morning to the sound of the waves.

Connie and her husband Tyler, a retired pathologist, keep the shelter with their retirement money and funds from Children of Promise International, a non-profit mission organization that provides care for orphans and destitute children.

The shelter has an average monthly expense of US$25,000 and it has accommodated more than 500 children. At “La Promesa” all children learn to swim and surf; Connie says that the sea is reassuring for them.

Many of them feel guilty for the situation they experienced, but we teach them that was not their fault and help them heal.

In 2015 the Association “Unidos contra la Trata” (United against Human Trafficking) estimated that at least 50,000 children are prostituted at the U.S.-Mexico border and 20,000 more in the rest of the country, especially in tourist destinations such as Cancún and Acapulco.