SHOCKING DETAILS OF CHILD PORN

Shocking details of child porn
Updated 37 min(s) ago
By Oscar Obonyo
Sex pests and perverts are on the increase in Kenya, operating under the veneer of a highly religious society and off the radar to security agents. They mimic the Western flesh culture and commerce with equal precision, but with modest profit. Courtesy of technological advancement, parents have now to battle with the sex bug ripping apart lives of their teenage daughters — some as young as 13. Initially fought off by targeting video halls where pornographic material was aired for a fee, today, the stuff is everywhere. It is on the Internet in offices, at home, on mobile phones and even in matatus. Other than being consumers of the explicit sex material, the children are now part of the cast. Investigations by The Standard On Saturday reveal that girls are stripping naked or engaging in live sex with strangers as cameras roll — for a pittance.
Kenya Films Censorship Board Chief Executive David Pkosing is a worried man, and so should we all.
Girls, as young as 13 years, are stripping naked and parading their bodies as cameras click away for a fee.
Scores of others are getting deeper than that. They are hopping into bed with strangers and willingly getting captured in action. The videos — samples of which our team purchased from Nairobi's backstreets — are sold locally and abroad in what is quickly emerging to be a multi-million sex industry.
That pornography has reached frightening levels is a fact that scares the Kenya Film Censorship Board.
"You may not believe it, but our country is absolutely rotten. There is too much consumption of pornography. It is rampant, it is scary, it is beyond our control," concedes Mr David Pkosing, the board's CEO.
Pornographic literature
Pkosing's unease is indeed understandable. During a swoop on downtown Nairobi in April, his team confiscated thousands of tapes from video vendors featuring local girls. Most shattering is that some of them are filmed having sex with domesticated animals — dogs and horses!
What might shock most parents, as The Standard On Saturday established, is that some of the teens are hooked to the illicit practice not because of money but out of sheer fun.
They consider it fashionable and as one youth mentions, "live-porn is the in-thing if you are not aware".
Most parents, as well as child welfare officers, have all along battled accessibility of pornographic literature by children. But they never envisaged involvement of children in the production of the same. Indeed, this reality is devastating.
The illicit exercise takes three basic forms — video recordings in hotel rooms and private villas, live sex performances in estate halls and striptease in clubs, where the teens stage nude parades.
At the coastal town, the youth confessed to performing in private villas and cottages where they faced no risk of arrest. Here the market is lucrative as the barons in the business, mainly tourists, pay a handsome fee for the recordings, which they sell abroad in form of DVD and VCD.
In Nairobi, our team came face to face with an even more bizarre episode of a live pornographic show, otherwise known as "mchaka-mchaka" by locals.
At Kibera estate's Mashimoni area, they do it differently. Instead of playing recorded "stale" material, young people give their audience a "live treat" by engaging in sex on stage.
To be part of the crowd, one parts with Sh20. The actors and the event organisers share the spoils and depending on the size of the crowd, the girls make between Sh400 and Sh1,500 a night.
Even more worrying about live shows in the slums, where the driving factor is poverty, is that some of the acting couples engage in sex without protection. But as one "actress" told The Standard On Saturday, the philosophy here is simple — "better die ten or so years later of HIV/Aids than today of hunger".
Technology
Meanwhile, in the relatively exotic striptease joints in city centres, we uncovered a clandestine racket where underage girls are locked in a safe room away from the public arena and only released secretly on "special request" by a client.
"This is public place. You will not find those ones (underage strippers) in the main dancing hall but if you are keen we can make arrangements," said a bouncer at a popular club in Nairobi nicknamed Papa Shirandula.
At this very joint, to access the underage strippers, a client pays an extra Sh1,000, for the VIP secluded rooms, over the usual Sh250 gate charge.
Technology also comes in handy in the section as one is at liberty to record the girls' anatomy and any other exciting happening on his mobile phone. Sex is not allowed though and the fee for the recording and intimacy ranges between Sh500 and Sh2,000. With proof of age, some of the acts here would pass for what the Kenyan law stipulates as "indecent assault of a minor".
But it is not easy to catch them on the account of age. Although some of the girls privately confess they are below 18 years old, proof of the same is difficult as their paperwork indicates otherwise.
A plot has accordingly been devised to protect the underage performers and the clubs' where they operate.
With the help of River Road forgers, the girls are able to "stretch their ages", through acquisition of false identification documents.
Armed with the fake IDs, the "older" girls then proceed to special "adults only" clubs, where they indulge in sexual activities for money and enjoy the pleasure of pornographic movies at will.
Can't do much
According to African Network for the Prevention & Protection Against Child Abuse & Neglect (ANPPCAN), Regional Director, Dr Philista Onyango, child pornography is not a new phenomenon.
"The child exploitation has been around for decades. Over the years, we have received reports of street children, in particular, who have been coaxed by tourists and other people to pose nude and their pictures sold or circulated abroad for a small fee," says Onyango.
The magnitude of the problem, she observes, now only looks big because of advancement in technology, such as Internet and mobile phones.
But like Pkosing, Onyango is alarmed and frustrated by the rate at which the vice is spreading and taking new shape.
"Initially we fought it by targeting video halls where porn material was aired for a fee. Today, the stuff is everywhere on Internet in our offices, at home and even on mobile phones," observes Onyango.
Pkosing's hands are equally tied.