The first World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children continued Wednesday in Sweden. The Nairobi bureau chief reports that sexual abuse of children starts among the very young in Kenya. On the streets of Kenya's capital, growing numbers of orphaned and abandoned children are victims of poverty and a breakdown of traditional family order, conditions that translate into graphic sexual abuse.
Some homeless children get food and shelter from private charities.
But tens of thousands fend for themselves, the tragedies in their lives largely unheeded. Sexual exploitation is a fact of life for them. They can't avoid sexual abuse because when they sleep, wherever they sleep, it's on the streets. For girls on the streets, as young as six or seven years, sexual abuse usually starts in gangs. Solomon, now at the Shangilia Mtoto Center, spent years on the streets and witnessed such abuse, again and again.