Youngsters attend child sex conference

A conference on the sexual exploitation of children opens in Canada today and all sixty delegates attending it are young people who themselves have suffered exploitation.

The delegates, from a dozen countries in North and South America, will spend several days in the western city of Victoria discussing ways to help children out of the sex trade, and to stop adults buying sex with children.

The organiser, Cherry Kingsley, a Canadian, said the conference was born from the frustration she felt at the lack of results from a similar conference held in Sweden two years ago.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service