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Wednesday, January 26, 2000
Sumegh conducts one-man effort to assist Prague's countless teen prostitutes By Jeffrey Donovan Evzen, a Slovak-born Romany (Gypsy), is a male prostitute. Seven years have passed since his first experience as a "rent boy," with a German man more than three decades his senior. He was 12. Which makes it all the more remarkable when Evzen suddenly welcomes an eccentrically dressed man named Laszló Sumegh. "Ahoj, Laszló!" Evzen shouts as Sumegh, clad in his trademark yellow raincoat and black bandanna, approaches him. But Sumegh is not a client. He's a social worker. And for some, he's a savior. Since 1995, the 37-year-old Sumegh has spent most nights prowling Prague's heart of darkness, a bearer of "gifts" for the youths he tenderly calls "butterflies" -- Sumegh's term for the thousands of desperate teens who sell their bodies for fast cash. Part caped crusader, part Santa Claus, Sumegh's presents are real-life tickets to streetwise survival: condoms, clean syringes and pocket HIV tests. These supplies also come with a friendly chat. City of sin For Sumegh, who doesn't moralize, Prague has evolved into "the new Amsterdam." But unlike Holland, the Czech Republic has done little to acknowledge, let alone regulate, its booming sex industry. "Laszló has changed my life," says Evzen, who fled home at 14. Yet he listens only to what he wants to hear. Accepting condoms from Sumegh, he says he rarely uses them. "I don't really like them, nor do my customers." Peter Pothe, a Harvard University-trained physician and psychiatrist who helped author a groundbreaking study on sexual abuse among Czech children, says only Sumegh has been able to get close to Prague's teenage prostitutes, whom Prague police number in the thousands. "He's the only person who has tried and been able to approach these people, who are very suspicious," says Pothe, co-founder of Safe Line, a hotline he claims is swamped with calls from children across the Czech Republic complaining of sexual abuse. "Most of the people he [Sumegh] helps are kids who have run away from poor and broken families." Lonely, thankless and often dangerous, the controversial Sumegh's efforts seem Herculean in a country that all but cultivates its sex industry. Economic hard times sustain a seemingly unending crop of cheap "labor." Sexual, legal and moral permissiveness blends in seamlessly with big-spending tourists. Solitary warrior As Sumegh persists in his one-man crusade, the Czech Republic struggles to pass legislation that would regulate prostitution -- now legal under certain circumstances from age 15. Ironically, April will see the introduction of a new law on child protection that may assist in prosecuting child abusers and pedophiles. But that changes little on Sumegh's streets. "Somebody's got to do it," he sighs, referring to his rounds. Sumegh, who carries a Hungarian passport but was born in Slovakia, says he speaks with scores of teen prostitutes of both sexes on his nightly rounds. By day, several dozen drop by his tiny office near Wenceslas Square. Using his own cash, he started Projekt Sance (Project Chance), an assistance and information center he now runs under the aegis of the city of Prague. There, he brandishes a plastic container filled to the brim with used syringes. They've been exchanged for new ones he's provided. "About a third of the 'butterflies' who come by here are actually under the age of 15," he says. "Technically, I should report these cases to the police, but I don't believe repression is the solution." Pothe's 1998 study, a "representative survey" involving 1,112 people between the ages of 18 and 45, found that 26 percent of Czechs suffered from some sort of abuse as children, with 2.5 percent claiming to have been sexually abused. Only 48 percent of those sexually abused had ever revealed the abuse to anyone. "The most important fact was that only 2 percent of the cases were stopped by the social services or police," says Pothe, adding that relatives committed a third of all abuse cases on children. "That means the abuse either continued or was stopped by the kids themselves, usually by running away." State role doubted The new child protection law, drafted by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and passed in December, will, he hopes, coordinate assistance efforts. Others were skeptical, claiming the state was doing far too little to tackle the problem. The trial of a former BBC Radio 1 disc jockey, Chris Denning, and three other foreign nationals on charges of sexually abusing children in Prague has brought the city's dilemmas into the international limelight, though in the worst of ways. "Sumegh's work is admirable -- it means nothing to a lot of people but is much needed by the kids on the streets," contends Jiri Hromada, chairman of the gay rights group SOHO. "But while his project has my respect, I can't say whether it is actually successful. I think much more could be done if the state would step in and provide serious resources to do something about this problem." Jeffrey Donovan's e-mail address is jdonovan @praguepost.cz
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