A prolonged research experience, based on the integration of scientific observation with the collection of qualitative interviews with children and young people selling sex and key informants, turn a research on “child sexual exploitation” into a research on “minors' prostitution”. In the Dominican Republic, host country of the research, mintors who sell sex rarely broach the idea of exploitation and abuse to the client - local or foreign - who could become a “friend” or a “partner” and might help lead to the interruption and / or exit from prostitution and, with it, the possibility of economic and social redemption. Redemption-focused policies and practices should take into account the line of continuity among different kinds of relationships involving “sexual-economic exchange” - from prostitution to marriage - and the different profiles of the client, the “friend” and the partner. “Tales” and “narratives” on the exploitation should not overlook the desire of the young to break the rigid sexual morality through early experience in selling sex, often within the context of extreme poverty but also possibly due to curiosity that leads to wanting to “experience” or “play the game”. The sale of sex often overlaps and mixes with early sexual discovery and with the development of one’s sexual identity. An uninhibited and secret sexuality inside and outside of the peer group, combined with the awareness of the economic pay-off in the sex trade, encourages early experience of selling sex also to homosexual clients to affirm or reaffirm a male sexual identity.

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Minors' Prostitution; Sexual Exploitation; Sex Work