It’s a warm Friday night in the tropical city of Cartagena on the northern coast of Colombia, and the city’s town square is filled with tourists and beautiful young women.“Cartagena has two faces. One by day and another by night,” says Wendy Vivero Pascuales.
“It is shocking to see how sexual exploitation is made invisible when it is so visible,” she told SBS Dateline. “You’re at a disadvantage because you are a woman against those huge men, and I felt like a grain of rice. I felt tiny,” she said.Credit:As Colombia’s tourism sector is recovering from the pandemic and visitor numbers are surging, among the arrivals are foreigners who come for brothels, sex parties and favourable exchange rates.
“There are some cases where mothers have prostituted their daughters from the age of 10 with foreigners.”Conditions ripe for exploitation Shirly Faneyte Sanchez, a local community leader in La Boquilla, says foreigners take advantage of poverty and the lack of sexual abuse awareness to prey on children.“I had a case where I helped a 14-year-old girl,” Sanchez said. “She said to me, ‘I didn't know that being touched by someone older than me was sexual exploitation.’ I was in shock.”
“At first, it was just very open. Every time we went into a [brothel], we would find a minor,” González-Forero said.