Two members of the disgraced French football team, Franck Ribery and Karim Benzema, are being investigated for having paid sex with a 17 year old girl in April 2009. In France paying a girl under the age of 18 years for sex is considered as having sex with a minor. The girl denies being a prostitute but admits to having been paid for providing sex. Apparently Ribery invited her to Munich on his 26th birthday. Ribery's lawyer claims that she had told them that she was twenty years old. Today's teenagers look bigger and more mature than, say, twenty years ago and no one asks a prostitute for a birth certificate anyway so there might be something in Ribery's defence. Whatever be the truth of the matter it is shocking that child had taken to prostitution. If she is a minor according to French law then who was responsible for her? Why was she not protected by her parents? How could she travel unaccompanied out of the country even though there is no border restriction between France and Germany under the Schengen rules? In the developing world children are abducted or sold into prostitution by destitute parents. Western pedophiles come to Asia for sex tourism and the internet is said to be full of children being sexually assaulted. However even in the so called advanced countries children are not safe. Television commercials, the glorification of sex in the news media and the laxity of parental control are leading to a loss of childhood which is a crime against children. The joy of childhood is in its innocence. By taking the most joyful time of life away from our children we may be responsible for all the crime and violence that we face.