Child prostitutes escape to find refuge in cemetery

The story of two teenagers who have made their home in a graveyard would move you beyond words.


Princess Chea and her friend and companion, Joshua Williams, 17, are part of what documentaries now refer to as the lost children of Liberia.

The teenagers who have lost all their family members and have chosen the grave yards, Palm Grove Cemetery to be precise, to live as no one would dare hurt them there.

Chea 16, who lost her parents in the civil war, tells Daily Mirror of what has become of her since she became an orphan at 10.
“I’ve been sleeping here in the graveyard for five years.

“There is no other option, my parents both died after the civil war. There was nobody to protect or look after me.

"It is safe in here, in the tombs, where nobody dare come to hurt us.”

Chea who has survived by selling her body to older men on the streets of downtown Monrovia, who would pay her the measly sum £1.40 for sex, said:

“I’ve been working as a prostitute for six years now. I am not happy at all, but I have nobody to turn to.

“Every day I sleep with up to 10 older men. I have been lucky never to have got pregnant – and I am not afraid of Aids because hopefully God will protect me.

“I smoke cocaine to take away the pain while praying every single day that I can one day leave my grave and perhaps even go to school.”

Chea is one of many underage girls in Monrovia who “cut jopu”, or hustle in this shocking manner in a bid to survive.