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Content warning: This article contains references to sexual abuse of minors
It’s a warm Friday night in the tropical city of Cartagena on the northern coast of Colombia, and the city’s town square is filled with tourists and beautiful young women.
Everywhere, sex is for sale.
“Cartagena has two faces. One by day and another by night,” says Wendy Paola Viveros.
With its white sand beaches, colonial architecture, and connection to the famous Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, Cartagena may be ranked among the most coveted destinations in the world by travellers.
The walled city in Cartagena, Colombia. Credit: Getty Images
Wendy was 16 when she was trafficked and sold to foreigners for sex. She was forced to work in that same town square.
“It is shocking to see how sexual exploitation is made invisible when it is so visible,” she told SBS Dateline.
Originally from a rural area, she had never stepped foot outside her town when a neighbour promised her work in one of Cartagena’s restaurants.
“A person who was very close to me gained my trust and took advantage of my needs and my vulnerability. He never told me that I would be sexually exploited,” she said.
After she arrived in the city, she says she was forced to live with a pimp who monitored her 24 hours a day. While under their control, she says she was regularly drugged and threatened, enduring extreme physical abuse.
“You’re at a disadvantage because you are a woman against those huge men, and I felt like a grain of rice. I felt tiny,” she said.
Wendy now works at a local women’s shelter in Cartagena helping other sex trafficking survivors. Credit: SBS Dateline
While sex work is legal in the country, sex work under the age of 18 is not. Yet it’s reported around 12 per cent of sex workers in the country are children.
Yefry Castro Rodriguez works with Fundacion Renacer, one of Colombia’s leading non-profit organisations fighting child sex trafficking. With his team, he’s helped recover countless children from the grip of exploitation.
“We had to hear about cases in which groups of American citizens have rented private islands in the city [of Cartagena] and requested teenagers between 13 and 14-years-old to have sexual relations with them,” he said.
“There are some cases where mothers have prostituted their daughters from the age of 10 with foreigners.”
Conditions ripe for exploitation
On the doorstep of Cartagena’s luxury beach resorts, locals in La Boquilla neighbourhood live in extreme poverty.
“We have zones that have no water, and the electricity is practically stolen. The education here is not good,” explains Shirly Faneyte Sanchez, a local community leader.
As a global exporter of oil, coal and cocaine, Colombia is the fifth largest economy in South America by gross domestic product. But it is also one of the most unequal countries in the world in terms of income and wealth distribution. Poverty rates are particularly high among rural populations, Afro-Colombians and Indigenous people.
She says this extreme inequality, worsened by tourism’s economic boom, puts children at even greater risk of being trafficked or exploited. Making matters worse, this disadvantaged community often lacks knowledge of what sexual abuse and sexual exploitation are. This means the family can be complicit or reluctant to intervene.
Shirly Faneyte Sanchez, a local community leader in La Boquilla, says foreigners take advantage of poverty and the lack of sexual abuse awareness to prey on children. Credit: SBS Dateline
“When there are things you don’t know, you open the door for abuse. You allow it because you don’t know you’re being abused.”
Sanchez says it's this unawareness that traffickers and foreign sexual abusers exploit.
In December last year, a 79-year-old Italian pensioner named Dario Lavoratori was arrested alongside a Venezuelan national on charges of child sexual abuse after taking up residence in La Boquilla.
Now awaiting trial in prison, he’s accused of sexually abusing three girls aged under 14.
A struggle for law enforcement
Cartagena’s interior secretary, Ana María González-Forero, is leading new efforts to crack down on child sexual exploitation and trafficking. Recently, members of her department have teamed up with federal police and other agencies to conduct raids on the city’s brothels.
They check if the brothels hold the correct health department paperwork. She’s using a loophole to gain access to the premises and search for underage girls who might be working there.
“At first, it was just very open. Every time we went into a [brothel], we would find a minor,” González-Forero said.
“It's been like three or four months, we haven't found a minor in any brothel. I think they're hiding girls better. I don't think they have stopped exploiting girls. I just think that they're doing it more discreetly.”
Cartagena’s interior secretary, Ana María González-Forero, is leading new efforts to crack down on child sexual exploitation. Credit: SBS Dateline
They found a labyrinth of more than 50 rooms where a number of minors and women were being held and exploited.
“We have identified at least seven different networks,” González-Forero said. “They move girls, sometimes from the other parts of the country, some from other parts of the city.”
González-Forero faces an uphill battle.
“It's really hard to tackle it because they are extremely powerful. I think they have funded police and networks within the structure. So you never know who really is on your side or not, and that makes it really hard.”
According to the US government’s for Colombia, corruption and official complicity in trafficking crimes remain significant concerns.
In December 2022, authorities in Cartagena arrested a police officer – assigned to the child protection unit – for exploiting children in sex trafficking.
Eight years of life lost
Wendy, now 35, managed to escape her pimp and trafficker only after eight years. She still lives in Cartagena where she works at a local women’s shelter helping other sex trafficking survivors.
And she has one message for sex tourists coming to Colombia.
“By buying sex, [foreigners] support pimps and traffickers. I want them to see the situation of each young woman and how they destroy her life and dreams.”
“If all that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have moved away from my family. Where there should be memories of the whole family, all reunited for Christmas, there aren't for me. We did not have that because I was not there.”
“Those are moments that I will never get back.”
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault/sexual violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit
In an emergency, call 000.
Readers seeking crisis support can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14, the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467 and Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 (for young people aged up to 25).
