The girl, Yamila, had been raped and strangled. A few days later, in the town of Chuy on the eastern border with Brazil, police detained a photographer who for 10 years had been taking pictures of naked girls and teenagers. The two incidents broke a wall of silence that had surrounded the growing problem of child prostitution in Uruguay and underlined the lack of official policy on the issue. Yamila, 11, who was body was found at the end of March, was only one of dozens of girls who wander Montevideo begging or offering their bodies as prostitutes.
A few days later, a minor of 17 years, also a beggar and a friend of the girl, confessed to the crime. He said that Yamila refused to have anal sex with him, which triggered his violent reaction.
Since then it has received an average of calls per month from children alleging they had been abused. According to Mariana Gonzales, a consultant at the Interamerican Institute of the Child IIN , the sexual exploitation of adolescents for commercial gain remained a little- studied issue in Uruguay.
A survey into the phenomenon of child prostitution last October revealed that only 14 percent of respondents believed the problem did not exist, while 22 percent attributed its existence to the low economic status of minors.
The congress had little impact in the Uruguayan media and failed to provoke public mobilisation or any concrete declaration or plan of action. On the other hand, among the specialists interviewed by Gonzales officials from Iname, judges, forensic scientists, journalists and politicians , there was a widespread perception that, although poverty and marginalisation operate as vehicles for this type of prostitution, they are not the only causes.
