skip to content

A child pauses at the Gates of Hell

001 44
A child pauses at the Gates of Hell

Fr Shay Cullen, Manila 
Philippines 
October 31, 2014


This weekend is the time to look to the saints for inspiration and help, and to pray for the living and the dead. But we don’t need to go to Church to find the saints. There are many among us bravely fighting for justice and the rights of the abused and oppressed children, the suffering and the neglected.

The cemetery is not the only place to meet the dead and the dying. They are among us, too — some dead in spirit and others almost dead in body. To them we are called to heal, save and help like the Good Samaritan did to the stranger wounded and dying but ignored and left to die by the authorities.

Francisco is just a child of about 11 or 12 years of age. It’s hard to know his exact age because he is so emaciated. He lay naked on the cold, hard dirty floor of the Reception Action Center (RAC) in the heart of Manila, just a short walk from City Hall and nearby a lavish food-laden supermarket mall. In Manila, children are “rescued” from the streets and then locked up at the RAC, a facility that is supposed to provide temporary shelter for the homeless.

Francisco’s skinny frail body was shrunken and skeletal as severe malnutrition had taken its cruel toll and had dragged him to the gates of what would have been a painful and agonizing death by slow starvation. He was naked, too, his face pressed to the pavement close to a wall. His bones like twigs were protruding from beneath his food-deprived, paper-thin skin. He looked as if he were a ‘living dead’.

His legs were drawn up to cover his naked privates, a last weak effort to cover the shame and humiliation heaped on his miserable life. But there was no privacy here for this innocent boy at the Gates of Hell, as Francisco lay in public view of the many children and apathetic employees in this jail-like city institution. Another seemingly lifeless body lay nearby also. The stark outline of his bones was as sharp as the hunger and pain that gnawed at his innards.

It was his protruding rib cage that shocked most of all. Each rib could be clearly counted. There was no discernible breathing but one could not be certain just from looking at his starved, naked body. He was close to the last stage of a painful death, it seemed.

Government employees of the RAC seemed indifferent to the suffering child of Lazarus that lay sprawled at the foot of an institutional wall.

For who could look on that emaciated, severely malnourished body for even a moment and not feel a pang of compassion and be shocked at his horrid state? Here was a human person with the dignity, value and importance of a Filipino child of God, endowed with rights and needs, but he was left to die as if he were nothing more than a bag of bones.

I have been to that center, that house of horrors where dozens of small semi-abandoned children are locked up in empty rooms without proper sanitary toilets, showers, beds and proper eating facilities. The stench of the excrement-filled toilets hung in the air when I was there. It made me nauseous. A steel drum filled with urine and excrement is carried down the stairs daily by the bigger boys. This steel drum serves as a toilet for dozens of children.

Outside, half a dozen children with advanced mental problems — as young as five or six years of age — run around naked. The mentally disturbed defecate on the open ground, endangering the others’ health with bacteria and the risk of cholera.

The children clustered around the wooden bars of the empty lock-up room on the second floor cried to be let out and begged me to help them go home to their parents. There was no therapeutic, educational or entertainment program for the children. No toys, comics, games or staff to conduct activities with them. The food was basic and monotonous. There was no playground equipment to be seen or sports and games facilities. These children are doomed to a life of ignorance without meaning and purpose.

Another child — call him Rico — is an intelligent child, in the center for weeks, but with horrific burns on his neck. He was left without medical treatment. The shrunken flesh pulled his chin and head into a twisted grotesque position. He needed urgent medical procedures and anti-burn treatment.

Just about 20 meters from the front of the center’s housing unit is another big building called the Manila Youth Rehabilitation Center. There, as many as 140 or more teenagers are jailed behind bars without beds, opportunities for exercise, education or any relief from the utter inhuman conditions. A hole in the floor and a faucet are the only options for sanitation for dozens of these teenagers in several crowded cells. The main meal is a few spoons of rice and a spoon of soupy vegetables. Medical aid is at a minimum and left to volunteer missions.

These conditions would be considered criminal neglect anywhere in the world. But at the Gates of Hell, they are normal.

A concerned visitor observed all these conditions and wrote an important letter of complaint to President Benigno Aquino. He received a reply from an official, copied to the city government declaring that, yes, the conditions described were a violation of the child protection law. And that was the end of it. Today it is still the same and perhaps even worse.

Francisco and Rico were rescued a week or so ago by social workers of a private charity and are receiving treatment at an undisclosed child-care clinic. A legal medical examination was done and it can be used in criminal proceeding against those responsible for the horrific neglect of these children and youth. May we soon hear voices raised for these voiceless, neglected children and see action to close down that awful place of the living dead.

Irish Columban Fr Shay Cullen established the Preda Foundation in Olongapo City in 1974 to promote human rights and the rights of children, especially victims of sex abuse.

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
Author picture
About the Foundation
Logo
Preda Foundation Inc.

The work of Preda Foundation is focused on alleviating the physical, emotional, psychological and sexual abuse and suffering of children and preventing abuse through community education and social media.

Share this post
Facebook
Pinterest
WhatsApp
LinkedIn
Twitter