Pressmediaofindia
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26-06-2025
BOGOTA: One afternoon, as Isabella left school for the day, someone thrust a leaflet into her hand. “Do you want to make money with your beauty?” it asked.
She says a studio looking for models seemed to be targeting teenage pupils in her area in Bogota, Colombia’s capital.
At 17, with a two-year-old son to support, she desperately needed money, so went along to find out more.
She says when she got there, it was a sexcam studio, run by a couple in a house in a run-down neighborhood; it had eight rooms decorated like bedrooms.
Studios range from small, low-budget operations to large businesses with individual rooms set up with lights, computers, webcams and an internet connection. Models perform sexual acts which are streamed to viewers around the world, who message them and make requests via intermediaries, also known as monitors.
The next day Isabella, whose real name we are not using, says she started work even though it is illegal in Colombia for studios to employ webcam models under 18.
She told media there was no written contract detailing how much she would be paid or what her rights were. “They had me streaming without teaching me anything. They said, here’s the camera, let’s go.’”
Isabella says the studio soon suggested she do a livestream from school, so as classmates around her were learning English, she quietly took out her phone and started to film herself at her desk.
She describes how viewers began to ask her to perform specific sexual acts, so she asked her teacher for permission to go to the toilet and, locked in a cubicle, did what the customers had requested.
Her teacher had no idea what was happening, “so I started doing it from other classes”, says Isabella. “I kept thinking, ‘It’s for my child. I’m doing it for him.’ That gave me the strength.”
The global sexcam industry is booming.
The number of monthly views of webcam platforms globally has more than tripled since 2017, reaching nearly 1.3 billion, in April 2025, according to analytics firm Semrush.
Colombia is now estimated to have more models than any other country, 400,000 and 12,000 sexcam studios, according to Fenalweb, an organization representing the country’s adult webcam sector.
These studios film performers and feed the content to global webcam platforms, which broadcast to millions of paying viewers around the world who make requests of models, give tips and buy them gifts.
Many of the models who work in studios do so because they lack privacy, equipment or a stable internet connection at home, often if they’re poor or young and still living with parents.
Performers told media that studios often try to attract people with the promise of making easy money in a country where a third of the population lives in poverty.
Models explained that while some studios are well run and offer performers technical and other support, abuse is rife at unscrupulous operators and Colombia’s President, Gustavo Petro, has described studio owners as “slave masters” who trick women and girls, like Isabella, into believing they can earn good money.
The four biggest webcam platforms that stream material from the studios, BongaCams, Chaturbate, LiveJasmin and StripChat, which are based in Europe and the United States, have checks that are supposed to ensure performers are 18 or older. EU and American laws prohibit the distribution of sexually explicit material involving anyone under 18. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
