"I Don't Want to Report My Boyfriend"... A Complete Turnaround After Filling Emotional Needs [Sexual Exploitation, Out]

Urgent Need for Emotional Support to Change Perceptions of Sexual Exploitation
Teenagers See Perpetrators as "Helpers"
Without Healing Emotional Deprivation, Risk of Repeated Victimization Remains
"At Least One Year of Continuous Support Is Needed"

Editor's NoteChild and adolescent prostitution is defined as sexual exploitation. This is because it is difficult to regard children and adolescents, whose sexual self-determination is immature, as subjects capable of sexual consent or contractual agreement. Children and adolescents who quickly form a sense of intimacy online through social media, messengers, and anonymous platforms are now more easily drawn into sexual exploitation crimes than in the past. According to the Central Digital Sex Crime Victim Support Center of the Korea Women's Human Rights Institute, one in four people (27.8%) who received support for digital sex crime victimization last year were teenagers. Compared to 2023, the number of teenage victims who received support from the center increased by more than 600, a rise of 3.3 percentage points. Crimes of sexual exploitation against children and adolescents are clear acts of sexual abuse. This article examines whether there are ways to prevent such crimes and what concrete countermeasures are needed, based on actual cases of victimization.

"I've already experienced all the bad things in the world, so what difference does it make if one more gets added?"

This is what Lee Jooyoung (pseudonym, age 17) said when she visited the Child and Adolescent Sexual Exploitation Victim Support Center counselor in 2022. Having experienced school violence, Lee had borderline intellectual disability and struggled with interpersonal relationships. Rarely smiling, her only channel of communication was open chat rooms through mobile phone applications. Adult men she met online spoke kindly to her and sent her gifts such as online coupons. After building a sense of closeness, Lee was repeatedly subjected to sexual violence and exploitation by these men. However, she believed they were the only ones who understood her and did not recognize their actions as crimes. She considered sexual stimulation to be her best experience.

The center's support focused on addressing Lee's emotional deprivation. To help her accurately understand her situation, Lee participated in various programs where she could interact with other teenagers of similar age. She learned that non-consensual sexual acts are not acceptable in normal interpersonal relationships. She also underwent socialization training to express her emotions to others, and received psychiatric treatment. Now, more than two years later, Lee understands exactly what was wrong at the time, and has changed into someone who can smile first and ask questions.

A teenager chatting using a smartphone generated by artificial intelligence (AI). DALL-E3

"Why do adult men propose compensated dating to minors? I really think it's strange."

It took more than a year for Park Jisoo (pseudonym), a third-year high school student living in Daejeon, to say this. Park was a teenager with high anxiety and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Although she received allowance from her parents, she was tormented by the obsession that she must not be without money. She relieved her stress by flaunting her spending. She began compensated dating with men she met through chat apps, which led to sexual exploitation.

Park's mother happened to see her daughter's mobile phone and contacted the Daejeon Sexual Exploitation Victim Child and Adolescent Support Center (Acheon Center). When Park, brought in by her mother, visited the center, she still had no awareness that she was a victim of sexual exploitation. Because the perpetrator provided her with financial help and fulfilled her emotional needs, she thought of him as someone who was helping her. Even when reluctantly giving a statement at the police station, she referred to the perpetrator in extremely respectful terms, saying things like "this person came" and "this person did."

However, over more than a year of filling her emotional void, Park was able to change. She resumed psychiatric treatment along with counseling at the center. Her mother, who had a controlling parenting style, also let go of her rigidity and engaged in close communication for the sake of Park's recovery. Park gradually recovered. She came to understand why she was a victim and what the problem was. During counseling, Park commented about the perpetrator, "I think he does it because people his own age exclude him from forming relationships," sharing her own thoughts.

"It is heartbreaking when victimized teenagers ask us not to report the perpetrator to the police. Every time I see children who think of the perpetrator as a 'good person' or a 'nice person,' even considering them as romantic partners, it pains me deeply."

 

Counselors who have supported child and adolescent victims of sexual exploitation for many years report that recently, perpetrators of sexual exploitation mainly target the emotional deprivation of their victims.

Adult men who approach through grooming form friendly relationships and then inflict sexual harm on children and adolescents. Emotional deprivation has complex causes, but child and adolescent victims of sexual exploitation often lacked sufficient protection or care at home, or experienced bullying and ostracism among peers. Counselors unanimously say that only by healing the emotional deprivation accumulated from past negative experiences can victims avoid being re-exposed to sexual exploitation. While immediate financial solutions for self-reliance are necessary, this is why individualized emotional support is needed in the long term for children and adolescents who have not been protected by their families or schools.

An official at a child sexual exploitation support facility in Seoul said, "'She said, 'He speaks so kindly, and I met him through SNS,' but when I listened to the victim's story, it turned out the adult man was continuously inflicting sexual harm." The official added, "When someone approaches warmly, the victim thinks, 'This person must be okay,' and the harm is repeated."

The official continued, "The bigger problem is that after recognizing their victimization and living in the facility, some children are lured out again by people who pretend to empathize with the difficulties of communal living and comfort their loneliness. They say, 'I'll let you stay out overnight,' or 'I'll buy you a mobile phone,' and then lure the victims to their own homes, where sexual exploitation occurs again."

Chae Seonin, team leader at the Daejeon Acheon Center, also recently stated that as grooming crimes increasingly lead to sexual exploitation, the hardest part is helping child and adolescent victims understand that such acts are wrong. Chae added, "Sexual exploitation targeting children and adolescents who struggle with relationships or relieve stress through spending continues. The proportion of students exposed to sexual exploitation crimes while attending school is higher than that of out-of-school youth."

Jin Yurim, a counselor at the Ttiat Sexual Exploitation Victim Child and Adolescent Support Center under Peace Spring, said, "Perpetrators identify emotionally vulnerable teenagers through online chats and target them as victims. Even in 2022, perpetrators would search for obviously related terms to sexual exploitation to find victims, but recently, they search for words that seem unrelated to sexual exploitation, such as depression, alcohol, or cigarettes, and then contact the victims, leading to sexual exploitation crimes."

※ If you are experiencing difficulties due to digital sex crimes, domestic violence, sexual violence, prostitution or sexual exploitation, dating violence, or stalking, you can receive support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year through the Women's Emergency Hotline 1366 (☎1366). For counseling related to child and adolescent sexual exploitation victimization, one-on-one anonymous counseling is also available through the Korea Women's Human Rights Institute's youth counseling channel D4Youth (@d4youth).