ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the process of professional and governmental awareness and recognition of problems pertaining to child prostitution and their responses in confronting the resulting moral panic. It reviews available figures and statistics relating to the concerned problems in order to show the changing nature of the prostitution industry and the role of child prostitution in it. In Taiwan, child prostitution denotes an social epidemic of evolving nature. It was first a ‘girl prostitution problem’ which has been dealt with as an issue of under-age female prostitution. High school boys have been cautioned by the police for being involved in prostitution as ‘cowboys’. On June 13, 1992, another public consultation meeting was held in the Legislative Yuan by the Garden of Hope Foundation entitled ‘Consultation on the Prevention and Treatment of Girl Prostitution’. New concerns over the deteriorated child prostitution problems were raised when cases involving ‘part-time youth cowboys’ were reported by the media.
