Dios, Patria, Libertad

Dominican Republic, the second largest nation in the beautiful Caribbean.

And I'm proud to say that my family (mom's side) comes from the Dominican Republic.

*my mother is Dominican, and Puerto Rican*

I love our food, our music, and our comedy. The language and the history. But a real ugly issue is plaguing this beautiful native land. Prostitution.

First of all lets understand something. D.R is very, very, poor. More than a third of dominican population lives in poverty or are very poor. A lot of people in D.R have not finished school because of the pressure on them to work for their families to bring in extra income. Sometimes you will find poor dominican children without any shoes on digging through the trash trying to find something to sell. Sometimes poor couples, have children without being able to maintain basic needs for these children

How do we educate people about having children at such a young age without being prepared?

Some of these girls are very young. late teens or early twenties but the numbers can be staggering. There are female prostitutes of all ages around this world. Now of course with prostitution, comes all the wonderful benefits of std's,low self esteem. Often some of these girls are robbed for the VERY LITTLE money that they make. I recently read that over 90% of prostitutes suffered sexual abuse as a child. Even more disturbing that,incest played a role.

What is more sickening is that some of these children work for tourist. Children, very young children, selling their bodies,sexually..IT NEEDS TO STOP One lady sells her niece for sex. How can you do something like that? And tell me who are these men...that lay down w/these prostitutes, requesting sometimes very young children? How sick and perverted and disconnected you have to be as a human being to enjoy such an act? How do you create a condition to carry out such an act, that you enjoy it? How does a man or women justify the behavior of such a dangerous lifestyle?



What are the solutions for this epidemic in D.R? The president and government officials need to speak up about this issue. If you do research on prostitution in the Dominican Republic, im sure you will find even more disturbing facts about this problem I have read a few stories of children crying and hiding from the people they are sold to. A lot of the prostitution is sold to tourist. But not all of it.

I will write a letter to Leonel Fernández in hopes that he consideres looking into this problem. It is truely sad and the D.R is not the only place where stuff like this needs to be changed. I really truly believe that politicians should crack down on issues like these in the cities the represent. This is a very big issue in D.R and to many victims are being added to these sad statistics.