Poverty is the top reason for women's prostitution

Pain is pain no matter how you look at it. The story of babies who are sold after birth to hurt the hearts of passersby and to make money for the person who carries the baby. 

FCNN reports:

"To solve the problem of buying and selling children, we must think about the situation of the affected women."

In order to prevent the buying and selling of children, the Law for the Protection of Children and Adolescents, consisting of 9 articles, was passed by the Islamic Consultative Assembly in a public session on Monday, December 25, 2002, and was approved by the Guardian Council on October 11, 2002.

According to Article 3 of this law, any purchase, sale, exploitation, or use of children for the purpose of committing illegal acts such as trafficking is prohibited and the perpetrator will be sentenced to 6 months to 1 year in prison or a fine of 10 million to 20 million rials, depending on the case, in addition to compensation for damages.

A review of this law shows that there is no deterrent to the buying and selling of children, and there are no heavy penalties awaiting indifferent parents. According to the law, the penalties for the buying and selling of children are a maximum of one year in prison or a fine of 20 million.

The causes of this crime can be considered financial issues and poverty of the parents, and things such as unemployment, addiction, illiteracy, lack of social support, etc. fuel it and increase the likelihood of this crime occurring.

According to legal experts, unfortunately, the law is not and perhaps cannot be implemented as it should be for those who commit such acts, because fathers are required by law to take care of their children and pay their financial expenses in the form of alimony.

Therefore, parents who sell their children are not only failing to fulfill their legal duty, but are also trying to make money by abusing them.

Unfortunately, due to legal loopholes, many children are sold every year, and without an identity card, no bright future awaits them, which makes legal proceedings difficult.

A UNICEF report conducted among 2,240 Iranian high school adolescents shows that 60 percent of children have been abused, 61 percent of whom have experienced physical abuse, 33 percent psychological abuse, and 6.6 percent sexual abuse. In 22 percent of cases, the abuser was a family member, 31 percent a close relative, and 16 percent a family acquaintance. Official statistics show that about 3.1 percent of children between the ages of 6 and 14 are employed and do not go to school. This figure is 0.5 percent in urban areas and 2.4 percent in rural areas.” (Sharq Sunday Newspaper, October 17, 2005 – October 9, 2005, Year 3 – Issue 596) Despite the above-mentioned fact, it can be written: There are no official statistics in Iran to accurately count the situation of these children.

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9% of women were first forced into prostitution by their husbands.

Based on a series of research conducted in a part of Tehran:
76% of prostituted women had no history of running away from home. 23% had a history of drug use before prostitution. 12% had a history of arrest and imprisonment. 7 % of them stated that they first started prostitution to obtain drugs. 9% started their first prostitution under the coercion of their spouse and 18 % under the coercion of their parents, mainly fathers. 70% of prostituted women had started this work for less than 5 years.

Reasons for prostitution
The most important factors affecting prostitution: Being responsible for supporting several people was the most important reason for women to engage in this work, followed by factors such as the father's arrest and criminal record, marital status, and the presence of prostitutes among friends. 22 percent of the women were employed, 80 percent said they had no job before prostitution, 43 percent were unemployed, and 15 percent were housewives.

Employment status of women before prostitution
The study also found that: 22 percent of women who were employed before prostitution were employed in various sectors as follows: 8 percent as office workers, 7 percent as secretaries, 4 percent as salespeople, 7 percent as hairdressers, 5 percent as laborers, and 2 percent in illegal and illegal work, mainly selling drugs. The jobs of women who were previously employed were not such that they could earn enough to live on. So corruption in Iranian offices was widespread in many dimensions, which perhaps sometimes went undetected due to excessive publicity and media restrictions.

Age status of prostituted women
Most of them started this job at the age of 20, and after 5 years of working in this job, they were 25 years old. Their first permanent marriage was between the ages of 15 and 18. 11% were permanently married, 42% were single, 39% were divorced, and 4% were widowed. In terms of education, 6% were illiterate and 14% had a diploma or higher, which is a serious warning.

Prostitutes' clients
This research on the clients of prostitutes shows that: Most of these women said that their lustful clients are between the ages of 30 and 50, and half of them are married, 25% of the clients are single, most have higher education, and 80% are employed and belong to high-income groups. Regarding the methods of attracting clients by prostitutes, the following is also true: At first, their method of attracting clients was from the street, but after a while, 42% of them attracted clients through social relationships, 22% from the street, and 25% through phone calls. Many of these clients took these women home when their husbands were not home.

The number of clients of these women during the week was 9, and most of the clients were from the north and center of the city. Regarding the infection of prostitutes with AIDS, it should also be said: 75 % of these women have no information about AIDS, and 68 % of single women and 75 % of divorced women have never been tested for AIDS.

They usually think that prostitutes are fugitives.
76 percent of these women have never run away from home, and only 12 percent of these women have had experience in prison before prostitution. At the same time, many officials and the public believe that most of them are runaways, which is not true at all, or they mainly consider these people to be addicts who are forced into prostitution due to drug use. While the connection between these two issues was only 23 percent among these women.

Poverty is the top reason for women's prostitution
This research emphasizes that “being responsible for supporting several people” during prostitution was the top reason for these women’s prostitution. Having a history of arrests of themselves or their spouses and parents, especially their fathers, forced them into prostitution. Among them, the least common reason was related to the spread of prostitution through socializing with friends who were engaged in this work. Another issue regarding the economic conditions of these women is that only 22 percent of them were employed before prostitution, and these 22 percent of those employed were in inefficient and illegal jobs that did not meet their needs.
Most prostituted women were married as children.
Most of the prostitutes in this study were first married between the ages of 15 and 18, and some even stated that they were under the age of 15, and thus, according to international law, they were married as children. But another shocking issue is that only six percent of these women are illiterate, and most of them have secondary and primary education and diplomas. Most importantly, about 14 percent of them had post-diploma and bachelor's degrees, and if we think that this statistic is from eight years ago, we can feel the depth of the tragedy more, considering the changes in society in these eight years. 11 percent of these women were permanently married, 42 percent were single, 39 percent were divorced, four percent were widowed, and a small number of them were living separately from their husbands without divorce.

In fact, it must be said that the boundary between prostitution and temporary marriage is very vague, and this makes the situation more difficult .

According to this research, the first experience of these women was on the side of the street and usually after that they entered the networks of this job. At the time of this research, 42% of these women continued their work through social networks, 22% by being on the side of the street and 25% by calling, and of course there were other ways. The place to attract customers was the main streets of the city or the homes of these men, which is of course very surprising.

It must be said that the possibility of young people being drawn to this harm and attracting prostitutes is high, and the existence of these women cannot be denied.

According to news agencies, the statistics on the age of prostitution are very different from the statistics of eight years ago. Unfortunately, 44.1 percent of women use contraceptives in their sexual relations, but even this number refrains from using such devices if they are paid more. The average age of the first sexual intercourse of these women was 16 years old. Also, in a study conducted recently on working and street children, it was found that four percent of them have sexual relations. Also, the prevalence of alcohol and drug use, including methamphetamine, among these women is at an alarming level.

The legislator wants this crime to remain unproven.
Regarding the way the law deals with the issue of "adultery", it should be said that: If we have four just witnesses who have seen adultery, it can be proven, but no sane person will do this in front of four just witnesses, or it is stated elsewhere in the law that the criminal must confess to the crime four times, in such circumstances the question arises as to which sane person would confess to the crime four times knowing that the result would be deprivation of life and execution. In such circumstances, we see that the legislator himself wants these types of crimes not to be proven at all, and in fact, crimes that deal with the moral foundations of society to remain closed, because they believe that the more these issues are said and proven, the more they will spread and disseminate in society and the weaker the moral foundations.
It should be noted that the way in which prostitutes were treated in the early days of the revolution and its aftermath also played a major role in the spread of this issue: there were many police encounters with these people, and when a person was arrested for this crime and then released, the ugliness of this act was gradually revealed to society. Now consider the conditions of society today, which are not at all comparable to those of 30 years ago; it is said that there are 500 prostitutes in Tehran, and we must ask why and how did we arrive at this figure?
Over the years, the laws related to this crime have undergone amendments, and the 1992 law also stated that this crime cannot be prosecuted unless there is a private complainant or it is obvious. For example, if a wife or husband states in court that their spouse is having an affair with another person or this crime is committed publicly and visibly on the streets of the city, it can be prosecuted. In such circumstances, if a woman complains to the court that her husband is having an affair outside of the norm, she cannot be a complainant because it is mainly stated that this man has married the woman permanently or temporarily, but the man can be a complainant, which is also one of the legal flaws that is always criticized by critics.

 In Iran, some issues are mixed together, and someone who works as a prostitute, like an addict, is sometimes a criminal and sometimes a patient. They exploit both their illness and their criminality, and there is no sincere approach to improving these people.