7th October 2003| Channel 4 co-production with ARTE (France)
Liviu Tipurita returns to his homeland of Romania to investigate stories he has heard that there has been a sudden rise in the trafficking of children into the sex trade. He meets an old friend, fifteen-year-old street kid Laurentiu, who tells him he’s been selling sex to foreign paedophiles since he was twelve, and that a wealthy German has bought him a passport so that he can be trafficked to the West. Laurentiu introduces Liviu to his gang of street kids, some as young as eleven, being preyed on by the paedophiles.
Liviu follows up stories of kids trafficked to Italy, and on the streets of Milan films a fourteen-year-old boy being pimped by his own father. Over weeks of investigation, several more cases of families selling their own children for sex are documented.
Back in Romania, he hears about an English paedophile/trafficker called Tom. Co-producer/director Andrew Smith infiltrates Tom’s pimping network, and films damning evidence of how underage boys are preyed upon and trafficked to wealthy paedophile clients in the West.
Reporter: Liviu Tipurita
Co-Producer: Andrew Smith
Executive Producer: David Henshaw