DRUGS, CHILD PROSTITUTES AND MISERY.

What Good King Wenceslas Would See If He Looked Out This Christmas

AS THE brittle winter daylight rapidly gives way to dusk, the
Christmas illuminations in Prague's Wenceslas Square seem to burn more
brightly.

Here is a place synonymous not only with victory over oppression but
Yuletide itself, thanks to the popular carol celebrating the good
deeds of a Bohemian saint-king. Then you notice the shadowy figures
flitting around this fairytale city's famous boulevard.

If Good King Wenceslas were to look out now across the square that
bears his name, he would see much to trouble his legendary social conscience.

A few blocks away, earlier in the day, one of the square's many lost
souls was allowed a brief public appearance. The blond, blank-faced
boy was either too shocked or too brutalised to acknowledge his
surroundings in Number Two district court. Given his past, one
suspected the latter.

He is Tomas Holecek, who is 15 and for the past two years has worked
as a male prostitute. The manacles that secured his skinny wrists were
there because last week he'd been jailed for six years for the murder
of a fellow rent boy, aged 13.

Daniel Cermak's battered and partially naked body had been found in a
school playground. He had been strangled.

Now Tomas was in court again, this time as the main prosecution
witness in the case of four foreign men accused of running a
homosexual paedophile network, which abused boys as young as ten.

One of the defendants is former Radio 1 DJ Chris Denning, charged with
sexually abusing nine boys under 15 and corrupting the morals of children.

Denning, 57, moved from Bracknell to Prague after serving the second
of two prison terms in Britain for gay paedophile and child
pornography offences.

He makes no secret of his interest in boys. His defence is that he did
not know that the children with whom he enjoyed sexual activity in
Prague were under the legal age of consent. And in court he is
strangely self-assured.

With the Republic's relatively lenient sentencing in such cases and
the fact that all but two of the 13 young witnesses called to testify
have either refused disappeared, Denning is perhaps confident that his
freedom is close.

What's more, the prosecution is having to rely on Tomas Holecek, a
rent boy and a murderer. This is a story that radiates neither
seasonal comfort nor joy.

WENCESLAS Square does not hide its dramatic recent history. The
National Museum still carries the scars of machinegun fire from the
Soviet Red Army tanks, which helped end the Prague Spring in 1968.

In front of the museum is a memorial to Jan Palach - the student who
set fire to himself on its steps in protest at the Russian
intervention. And after the collapse the Communist regime in 1989,
president Vaclav Havel and Alexander Dubcek appeared in triumph the
balcony of Number 36 to the cheers of the thousands in the square.

But democracy has brought its problems - to the square and to other
areas of central Prague. In 1989 the country recorded a total 120,768
crimes. By 1993, this annual figure had risen to 398,505.

The total had increased to a new high last year of
403,654.

The city has suffered an influx of juvenile Bulgarian pickpockets,
Romanian Romany drug dealers and organised gangs from every new
republic of the old USSR and Yugoslavia.

From the West, the sex tourists have arrived, taking advantage of this
lawlessness, a liberal visa policy, a low incidence of Aids and the
low age of consent (15 for boys and girls). They are men such as
Denning, who laughably claims to have gone to Prague to find work,
and his co-defendants.

After the Velvet Revolution which toppled Communism in 1989,
prostitution was decriminalised; democracy was not the overnight
panacea for lack of material possession, market forces came into play
and young Czechs sold their bodies for U.S. dollars.

Hundreds of teenage rent boys ply their trade in Wenceslas Square. In
the summer they gather in the square's centre. In winter they move
indoors to the square's metro station or to the downstairs bar at the
casino in the Jalta Hotel.

'The average age is 17, but there are children as young as 11,' said
Laszlo Sumegh, a social worker who tests the boys for Aids.

'They come from Prague and nearby towns. Many are from orphanages and
broken homes.

Their clients are German, Dutch, British and American and many
contacts are made on the Internet.' He said that, due to the
recession, boys charge their customers as little as 50 crowns (GBP 1)
for sex. The youngest boy he has tested HIV positive was 16.

Prague's central station, near the square, is a haven for the rent
boys and a magnet for their customers.

Under the crumbling art nouveau magnificence of the Fantova Kavarna
cafe, run by a former male prostitute, two slogans grace the walls. On
one side U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's, 'The world must be made safe
for democracy,' on the other, in Latin, 'Prague, mother of cities'.

There is a nativity scene. But beneath these slogans there is little
that is maternal, festive, or democratic. Groups of youths scrutinise
customers in the hope of conducting that internationally understood
word: 'Business'.

Among them is Marek, a small, edgy 17-year-old who looks
14.

Innocence has long deserted this boy, a Slovakian who claims to have
arrived in Prague three months ago.

'I am new and I look younger than my age so I am the most popular
prostitute,' he said, 'I have five or six customers a day and most of
them are foreigners. I go to their hotels mainly.' He sneered that
colleagues turned tricks for a cup of soup, but claimed that he had so
far earned 800,000 crowns (GBP 16,000). Of that 150,000 had been given
to him by a Briton called Robert. Marek had spent the lot in two days
in amusement arcades. This is where a lot of the teenagers' money is
spent.

THE rest largely goes on drugs, particularly pervitin - a form of
speed.

It is known as Czecho abroad because the Czech Republic is a major
manufacturer of one of its legal base constituents. Marek injects pervitin.

His pimp, a 34-year-old former rent boy called Zoli, proffers the view
that most youths like him took the drug because they had nowhere to
sleep and it allowed them to remain awake for days.

Walk around central Prague and you will find it hard to avoid drugs
and other vice. One might be surprised at what goes on inside a bar
called Taz Pub.

The property is owned by the Ministry of the Interior, whose police
officers occupy the offices above. But inside the bar drug deals
happen every minute. This is an open secret, but nothing is done.

Further down the street one of the many men loitering at the kerb
hisses to get our attention. When he succeeds he offers two grammes of
cocaine for 4,000 crowns (GBP 80).

He can also provide 'feathers' (pervitin) and tells us to 'meet
outside the Versace store in 15 minutes' so we can complete the
transaction.

Nearer the square, a street walker offers sexual favours in a nearby
'kabina' for as little as 600 crowns (GBP 12).

This is the world of Chris Denning. In his statement to court he said
that any pressure in his relationship with boys came from them. This
sits uneasily with the police allegations that his sexual encounters
in a flat near Wenceslas Square were captured on film.

Outside the court, Tomas's mother, Bedriska Jahodova, wept and
complained that her son had only confessed to the murder of Daniel
because he was afraid of those people involved in prostitution and
drugs.

But she admitted: 'He loves money and would do anything for it. He
always wanted money to buy a computer.' So what is to be done?

'After 1989 there was an extreme rise in crime in the square because
it was so central,' admitted Major Miroslav Benda of the Prague One
violent crimes department.

As a result the police have established a special bureau to combat the
problems in the square. The result, he conceded, was that the drug
dealers and pimps will be shuttled around other areas of central Prague.

But what future for the square's denizens? Denning is in jail where,
one hopes, his corruptive influence will remain for some time. Tomas
will also have this Christmas and several more behind bars; the boy is
the personification of the square's power to corrupt.

Daniel is dead. And Marek, the 'most popular' rent boy of the moment,
said he would finish working at Christmas, then go home to Bratislava.
You could see the truth in his eyes. He won't.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry