When sex offender Richard Huckle wrote an abuse manual entitled “Paedophiles and poverty: child love guide on how to select deprived victims and avoid detection”, he boasted that “impoverished kids are definitely much easier to seduce than middle-class western kids”.

It may seem unfair to mention a notorious criminal like Huckle alongside those implicated in the current aid scandal. Yet there are common structural problems exposed by these types of offences, which have contributed to an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality.

Perpetrators may not plan to go abroad to abuse children but, when in situ, they may take advantage of the chaos of a humanitarian crisis and the fact that children are already being exploited. Huckle began abusing children on his gap year in south-east Asia and continued to do so for nine years.

Abuse of children happens in a “blindspot” for authorities – we don’t even have accurate data. A 2015 freedom of information request by Every Child Protected Against Trafficking (Ecpat) to the Foreign Office revealed that 154 British nationals were detained overseas for child sex offences. Yet such incidents are only recorded if the local police or the suspects themselves report them to the embassy.

Aid agencies 'complicit in exploitation of most vulnerable', says Mordaunt Read more

It was shocking to hear about the scandal that has enveloped Oxfam over allegations that staff in Haiti paid for sex, possibly with underage girls. But why? We know abuse takes place in a multitude of settings – our homes, care homes, places of faith, our schools, our football clubs. Why are we surprised that it happens where there is war, poverty or natural disasters?

Evidence has shown that the root causes of trafficking are exacerbated after a natural disaster. In the 1990s and 2000s, a trafficking ring was exposed in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina, with UN peacekeepers actually trafficking the victims themselves. In Haiti, where an estimated 30,000 children are living in mostly unregistered orphanages, reports of sexual abuse in camps and institutions following the 2010 earthquake were rife. Again, peacekeepers were implicated.

It is common sense to anticipate an increase in sexual violence in situations where child protection systems are weakened, children are separated from their families and there is an influx of foreigners working in aid settings. Abuse is as much about power as it is about sexual gratification. Ecpat UK has worked on countless cases involving individuals deliberately taking jobs in teaching, volunteering or setting up orphanages as a front for abuse.

The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into Oxfam and is yet to clarify whether any of the victims involved were under 18. Yet the issue of child exploitation by aid workers is not in doubt. A report by Save the Children a decade ago acknowledged that the scale of abuse was “significant” with “every agency at risk”.

The risks of child sexual exploitation are increasing

In 2016, the first comprehensive global study on children exploited in travel and tourism found that “in an increasingly interconnected world, more people are on the move and even the most remote parts of the planet are now within reach, thanks to cheaper travel and the spread of the internet. As a result, the risks of child sexual exploitation are increasing.”

Such a large and endemic problem requires full commitment from governments, businesses and charities to create accountability and transparency. There must be enhanced checks when recruiting staff, as well as regular reviews. There must be safeguarding procedures followed, no matter the context. Organisations need to promote a culture of zero tolerance of sexual violence and inappropriate behaviour. There must also be mechanisms to allow potential victims to report abuse safely.

As individual travellers or tourists we have a role to play in reporting concerns and in calling on our own governments to collect proper data and prioritise this issue.



On 19 February, a child abuser was jailed after admitting 137 charges of online sexual exploitation. Matthew Falder, 29, used the internet to blackmail people across the world into providing footage of abusive acts. An international taskforce involving the UK’s National Crime Agency alongside partners from the US and Australia worked together to identify and apprehend him.

This case, like that of Huckle, shows offenders are not constrained by borders. Last year, police in the Philippines warned of a trend of westerners paying impoverished families to facilitate online abuse of children. “Sweetie”, a virtual 10-year-old created to snare paedophiles, received approaches from 20,000 men from 71 countries (110 men from the UK).

Up to 750,000 online users are searching for child sexual content at any given moment globally. Yet the potential victims remain largely voiceless in distant locations. We must stop operating as if child abuse isn’t going to happen, and instead take preventive international action based on the sad reality that it happens everywhere.