The Catholic Worker League (CWL) has denounced the exploitation of children and juveniles on TV and in the world of entertainment. In recent days the League held a meeting at Vita Nova de Famalicão (Braga) to recall its denunciation at Christmas 1986 of the use of children aged between 10 and 13 in textile production, shoe-making, farming and in the building industry, in the district of Braga, then undergoing a phase of rapid economic development. According to José Maria Costa, national director of the CWL, “the reality of the employment of child workers has now assumed a different character”, more precisely that of so-called “artistic work”, whose reality daily transpires from our television screens. “What we don’t see – said Costa – are the real situations behind these reassuring images of child actors: the interminable hours of rehearsals, the learning by heart of scripts, the automatic gestures and movements, the constant glare of spotlights and din of loudspeakers”. Above all, what we don’t realise, lamented Costa, is “the fact that their developing psychology is constantly being influenced by the rules of cruel selection and extreme competition; that they are reduced to tears by failure, subjected to continuous stress and anxiety, and deprived of proper diet; and, lastly, that they have precious little time left for any regular study at school”.
