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Maeve Quigley, Irish Mirror, 20th September 2007
He is known as one of the toughest hookers Ireland has ever had. But Shane Byrne couldn't bear to hear some of the harrowing stories of Calcutta's street children.
The 36-year-old has just returned from a week-long trip to the sprawling Indian city with charity GOAL.
And he said the children-he met during his time there made his Charity You're A Star experiences all the more worthwhile.
Shane explained: "My twins Kerry and Alex will be five in October. But in one of the city shelters for street kids, I met children who were around the same age as them.
"They all wanted to sing and dance for me, they wanted to know who I was.
There were so many kids there and they were just playing around.
"They were fantastic kids who were up for a joke and a laugh. But when I went behind the scenes and talked to the doctors and teachers who were looking after these kids I found the horror stories behind the smiles.
"Nearly all the girls over the age of four were being sexually abused and almost 100 per cent of the kids over the age of five had a drug problem. And these were the same kids who a moment before had been joking with me.
"GOAL aims to give children back their childhood and without them they would never have been able to play and joke around the way children in Ireland can. One little girl kept getting up to sing and dance. When I was talking to the doctors they told me she had a drug problem and that before she came to the shelter she and others like her would have been dragged into taxis, sexually abused and then dumped on the streets.
"This is a common practice. My twins are five in October and when you hear what some of these poor little creatures in Calcutta have gone through before they even get to that age it is harrowing.
"These kids are living in situations you never want to have to experience yourself. And I couldn't even bear the thought of my children facing something like this."
A lot of the street children are the sons and daughters of prostitutes.
Shane said: "This is why GOAL go into the red light area and tell the prostitutes there is somewhere safer for their kids to go. They are being taken in and educated by GOAL in a safe environment.
"They have toys to play with, they have a roof over their heads, they can be children again. And in the last 30 years GOAL have taken 70,000 kids off the streets of Calcutta."
Shane said that although the charity is focused on children, it doesn't just help them alone. He added: "I visited a number of GOAL projects and saw first hand what people have to get through there. It was very late at night when§n I was driving from the airport and what first stock me was that there were people everywhere. There are 15 million people crammed into a city the size of Dublin.
"So everywhere I looked, there were people just lying on the footpath, asleep, because they had nowhere else to go.
"We visited a fishing village where the average life expectancy of a man is just 40 and alcoholism and domestic violence are major problems. A lot of the children get married at the age of 12.
"GOAL is helping children there get an education and once they get this help from the charity, they can easily go into mainstream education. GOAL is showing them there is another world out there too." In Siliguri, Shane saw how GOAL is helping to keep children from the clutches of pimps and child traffickers.
He said: "Siliguri is a transport hub where children are arriving from all areas in an effort to find work and support their families. The gulf between the rich and the poor is earth-shattering. These people have nothing.
"And children are streaming in from all over to try and get work.
But child trafficking is a huge problem and the GOAL workers are now being helped by the train stewards and the bus porters to rescue the children before they fall into the clutches of the pimps and traffickers."
Shane added his visit to Calcutta had been very positive as he had seen first hand how donations made in Ireland to GOAL are changing lives thousands of miles away.
He said: "I've been a patron of the charity for four years now. But this has strengthened my commitment to GOAL as I know for a fact what they do. It has made my commitment to GOAL as I know for a fact their work makes a real difference.
"GOAL want to give the children back the childhood they never had and that is working as far as I can see. Everywhere we went I saw the good effects of the work it is doing.
"These children were looking up at me with big brown eyes, smiling and laughing. And I know that GOAL has made that difference to their lives."
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