YES, short for Youth Enhancement Services, has been providing services
to young women and girls for 21 years.
And, now the NGO has gotten CARSI funding from the US to train public
officers on how to protect victims of commercial
sexual exploitation of children and adolescents, trafficking and
domestic violence in
Belize.
Today we stopped in on the second round of training at the ITVET
building where police were getting instruction on how to handle
sensitive cases of child exploitation:
Karen Cain - Director, YES
"Our two-day training this week has to with CSEC and children who are going
through that issue. We're looking specifically to make the officers be
aware that these children cannot give consent first of all because they are
underage and one of the other important things that we want to bring out is
that because they are children, they are victims and so they should not be
treated as a commercially sexual person who is giving it freely and I think
from the training that we have done so far, the officers because we're
dealing with public officers are all aware of that and some have this idea
that they do want to help and they and they do want to see the children get
out of this issue."
Reporter
"What are some of the ways that they can?"
Karen Cain
"Well one of the things as an officer is that you don't want to revictimize
the victim when you're doing the interview and so that's a sensitive area
where they as police officers should hand in hand with social workers. So,
this is a multifaceted approach where the police cannot do it alone and the
social workers cannot do it alone and so they should come together and work
in a fashion whereby it's in the best interest of the child."
Anita Zetina - Consultant, YES
"Well we are aware of what we term the sugar daddy, so that is an example
of how young girls and maybe young boys would be taken the opportunity to
pay for their school or buy their necessities in exchange for sex. So, they
get paid to do that but they're children and that is against the law."
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