‘Voiceless Victims’: Children Living in the Red-Light Areas of Ibadan, Nigeria

Much research work on victims of sex work, including studies employing feminist perspectives, focuses on sex work as either being a ‘victimless crime’, or women as victims, leaving the victimization of children as direct and proximate victims relatively unexplored. The practice of commercial sex work in Nigeria is illegal; however, sex business thrives in most urban centres with considerable prevalence of red-light districts. Brothels, strip clubs and other sex-oriented businesses that constitute red-light districts are usually located in neighbourhoods where people that have no business with sex work live with their families. This present study, therefore, moves to expose the risks and vulnerabilities of children living in red-light areas. Drawing on social disorganization and learning theories, an analytical cross-sectional survey of residents of neighbourhoods where commercial sex work thrives within the city of Ibadan was conducted. Fifty-seven family men and women living in red-light areas with their children were purposively selected to provide data for the qualitative study. The rate of children’s engagement in premarital sex, consumption of illicit drugs, alcoholic intake, stealing, street fighting, and school dropout was found to be a factor of their intimacy with sex work and workers in red-light areas. The study concludes that children who grow up in red-light areas are more vulnerable to being physically, emotionally, sexually abused and exploited than children who do not live in such areas. Regulation of sex work activities and prioritizing of child protection issues were suggested.