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“Israeli citizen in Taganga…”, ‘Canadian citizen in Medellín…’, ‘American citizen in Cartagena…’, headlines in the media reaffirm the white privilege of the aggressors in each new case of child sexual exploitation that comes to light. Because, above all, regardless of the crimes committed, when talking about white men from the global north, they are true “citizens” and are treated with all humanity and due respect, although they continue the colonial legacy of their ancestors, which not only guarantees them the privileges they enjoy today, in economic and social terms for having been born in the “first world” to the detriment and on account of the plundering and enslavement of the territories of the south, including the territory body as the community feminist Lorena Cabnal has theorized. Bodies that today are exploited by white men from the North, either to accumulate wealth or simply because they can.
These privileges, which seem remote in relation to the colonial events of 1492, are in fact a continuation of those events in practical terms, which today give these men a blue passport to enter and leave the countries of the south, and to abuse and sexually exploit minors in total impunity, without raising the slightest suspicion in the migration police, and the police are surely very busy wasting time, dignity and one or another flight to racialized people who try to exercise the right to migrate and whose only crime is to have a passport from the global south, that skin color, those facial features or that hijab. That is why, to speak of child sexual exploitation, it is indispensable to speak also of white privilege.
What is white privilege?
White privilege does not mean that a person, just because he or she is born white, enjoys comforts and luxuries, or never has difficulties in life. Nor does white privilege depend exclusively on skin color, because some people of mixed race are read in certain contexts as white. We can understand white privilege from the Fanonian theory of “the zone of being and the zone of non-being”, which explains how colonial societies are divided by an imaginary line and at the top of the line, in the zone of being, dwell white people in full recognition of their humanity, even if they suffer other oppressions such as class and gender, and below that line dwell dehumanized people, people who cannot interpellate or negotiate in any way with power. On the other hand, Reni Lodge explains white privilege as an “absence” of everyday violence based on the idea of race, such as racial profiling by the police, fear of being stopped at airports or denied entry to a country, and so on…
White privilege and sexual exploitation
Child sexual exploitation is an alarming problem with cases occurring daily all over the world, especially in countries of the global south. However, in Colombia, two recent cases in Medellín have generated a stir due to both the actions of the authorities and the media coverage that has come to portray pedophiles as victims of exploited girls, as occurred on February 11, 2024, when “a Canadian citizen was found with a minor” at the El Poblado hotel. The police responded to the call to locate and capture an underage girl who had stolen the “citizen’s” cell phone and computer. As expected, they found her with the agility they never find pedophiles and femicides, and gave her the criminal treatment of an adult, while the “Canadian citizen” was promptly taken to the doctor because he was “disoriented” and then explained that you can not have sex with minors and allowed to go to his country with impunity. The treatment of the news focused on stating that the girl was the one who drugged him to rob him, while “the Canadian citizen” was “allegedly” related to a case of sexual abuse of a minor. As the victim was not perfect, public opinion turned to the defense of the pedophile and the criminalization of the minor.
But the case that recently grabbed the public’s attention and brought to the surface whorephobia and white privilege in Colombia occurred last March 28, when Timothy Alan Livingston, a 36-year-old American, was found at the Gotham Hotel in Medellín with two minors, ages 12 and 13, “allegedly” engaged in sexual acts. However, the police let him go for lack of evidence. What did the police have to do to prove what this man was doing? Of course, the gringo flew to Miami and the indignation escalated to such an extent that all the institutions had to say that they were going to do something about it and the hotel was definitely closed, although who knows if they will open it under another name. President Gustavo Petro referred to the case on his Twitter account, calling for Livingston’s extradition, and even FBI agents arrived in Medellín to investigate, after the guy flew to the United States and no immigration agent was able to stop him. Another case, even more rampant, is that of Stefan Andres Correa, a 42-year-old U.S. citizen, who entered Colombia 45 times to commit crimes against children, and had it not been for the recurring news and the outrage of public opinion, he would probably have never been arrested. That, being able to enter a country in the global south 45 times to sexually exploit minors with total impunity, has to do with white privilege.
Meanwhile, Federico Gutiérrez, the mayor of Medellín, a guy of the rancid right and double standards, has not stopped stigmatizing and criminalizing sex work, equating it with human trafficking and child sexual exploitation, exposing exploitation as a “crisis of values from the family” as if it were not a structural problem rooted in the historical inequalities of a colonial system that starves children. Gutierrez came up with the idea that “suspending for six months the demand and solicitation of sexual services or related activities in the public space of El Poblado Park, Lleras Park, Provenza and other surrounding areas”, was the way to combat child sexual exploitation. I wonder, how will the police profiling be? Is the objective to combat child sexual exploitation or to criminalize sex workers? Because the only thing that is clear is that the persecution will be against sex workers: adults who decide to engage in sex work because it is better paid than other jobs, whether formal or precarious.
Likewise, the mayor of Cartagena, Dumek Turbay, decreed the “Titan 24 Plan” which basically consists of placing police checkpoints at all the entrances to the wall of the Historic Center of the city, to prohibit the entry of racialized people, unless they are formal workers in the tourism sector, and to profile sex workers. Once again, I wonder what will be the filter or criteria of the police to reserve the right of admission? It is clear that no white male “citizen” is going to be banned from entering the Historic Center of Cartagena; by default, black women, read as prostitutes under police profiling, cannot freely enjoy a stroll in downtown Cartagena. Instead of searching for black girls disappeared by trafficking networks, the state machinery has decided to mobilize its full force to stigmatize, harass and exclude racialized bodies. It is not uncommon then that racist, misogynist and SWERF comments flood the social networks every time a new case comes to light.
Meanwhile, when Timothy Alan Livingston was found in the hotel with two minors aged 12 and 13 and left with impunity for his country, the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare was left in charge of the girls, and it was later learned that the girls had fled the entity. Once again, the victims were not perfect, and the public’s comments turned alarmingly to the defense of the white man accused of pedophilia. Our society once again demonstrated that its hatred of sex workers is as great as its double standards, pedophile comments flooded the publications of this news story, treating, like Livington, 12 and 13-year-old minors as if they were not
I had always thought that one of the simplest ways of explaining power and subordination relationships without people denying inequalities was to use the example of the power relationship between an adult and a minor, whether a stranger, a relative, or their parents, the latter being the most accepted subordination relationship in society. But the recognition of this vulnerability, which even the extreme right uses as an excuse to discriminate against people and restrict rights under the slogan “don’t mess with my children” seems to have no validity or meaning when it comes to impoverished and racialized children. It is clear that there are sacred children and children who are not children, who cease to be so in order to be considered “terrorists”, “guerrillas”, or “whores who like the easy life” and thus justify their exploitation or murder.
In this sense, from a classist, morronga and moralistic vision that borders on the absurd when “the victim is not perfect” and the victimizer is “a citizen” who enjoys white privilege, society massively comes to justify the unjustifiable, or remove responsibility from the aggressor to blame the victim or her mother, because of course, the care of these children is always the sole responsibility of their mothers, the fathers do not even enter into the equation and the State, even less. As if these children, in their condition of vulnerability and subalternity of minority, had the possibility of “choosing or deciding” to leave a loving and safe home, with dignified material conditions of existence and food, thanks to a healthy and just society that guarantees dignity and life, to happily go to war or be sexually exploited. Therefore, this example of power relations between adults and children ceases to work because it only makes sense when talking about a humane, white, upper-middle class childhood for whom the risk of living on the streets, going hungry and falling into a sex trafficking network or forced recruitment for war is almost nonexistent.
White privilege is also the media attention that the cases receive, the deployment of police and other institutions when the victim is or is imagined to be a white person. Therefore, it is not surprising that the national indignation is focused on a case in a city like Medellin, which in the nation’s imagination is a white city, and which has insisted on denying its black and indigenous citizens, ignoring the cases of cities like Cartagena, where black girls are kidnapped, exploited and disappeared for trafficking, as allegedly happened with Alexandrith Sarmarmiento, a black teenager who disappeared in March 2021. Despite the fierce struggle of the Black Women’s Movement of Cartagena, the institutions have been inefficient and revictimizing in Alexandrith’s case.
And if Colombian society has preferred to ignore the most obvious power relationship, that between a white male “citizen” of the northern countries, and an impoverished 12-year-old girl from the peripheries of the global south, what can we expect from the other possible power relationships such as race. Every sexual act with minors is sexual violence, it is not “sex tourism” or “child prostitution”. That is why we will not tire of repeating that ONLY ADULTS CAN DECIDE TO EXERCISE SEX WORK. Girls cannot decide to engage in sex work, or any other work, it is ALWAYS DECIDED BY SOMEONE ELSE FOR THEM, adults, a society that should have taken care of them and by action or omission has failed them, a pedophile who had the power and privileges to abuse them and with impunity has succeeded, and a state that sustains colonial inequalities by denying them dignified material conditions of existence.
Ending child sexual exploitation requires ending economic, political and social inequalities between citizens of the global north and south, between men and women, between centers and peripheries. Ending child sexual exploitation requires ending white privilege.
