BLANCA and Arlyn (not their real names) are just two of the nearly 500,000 Filipino children who experienced being trafficked, abused, or raped for online-paying audiences who are mostly foreigners.
As the Philippines has transformed itself into the world’s Number 1 hub for Online Sexual Abuse or Exploitation of Children (Osaec), the government has remained committed to combating this transnational crime.
“I hope the government knows that there are plenty of bad things that happened to the children,” Blanca, 11, said.
Blanca became a victim of Osaec which started way back in 2020.
Today, however, Bianca was lucky enough to have found refuge along with 60 other children at a therapeutic home for child victims of human trafficking and sexual abuse managed by People’s Recovery, Empowerment and Development Assistance (Preda) Foundation, an award-winning non-profit human rights campaign organization based in Olongapo City that started in 1974.
“I am happy now because I am already away from the abuse,” Blanca told Sunstar Philippines in an interview.
Father Shay Cullen, an 81-year-old Irish mission priest and founder of Preda Foundation, said their charity foundation is working “for rescuing, healing and empowering trafficked and abused children to help them start a new life with education and fight legal cases against abusers.”
In the therapeutic home provided by the Preda Foundation, the workers protect and heal the abused children and empower them through emotional release therapy.
“This gives them the strength and courage to bring out all the anger and pain against their abusers and then they are free and self-confident to testify in court,” Cullen said.
The Preda Foundation wins 20 convictions a year, and early in 2024, they have already won 12 convictions.
For Arlyn, 15, she appeals to the authorities to “act fast” in rescuing the abused children.
While Arly is “slowly healing” from the abuse, she also sympathizes with other child victims who continue to demand justice for their plight.
“I am thankful to Preda because they did not leave me alone despite the difficult process of my case,” Arlyn said.
Asked about why the Philippine government is having a hard time curbing Osaec, Cullen said it is “because they’re lacking in commitment and dedication.”
The missionary priest cited the lack of shelters with therapy healing and legal assistance for child victims of trafficking and sexual abuse.
There are also instances where children are sent home after their rescue and they can no longer testify in court.
“The traffickers go free and they pick up the children again,” Cullen said.
The Irish missionary priest hopes that the government will establish a new law “that will make a children’s court that will have continuous hearings and the children will be secured and helped in new therapeutic homes supported by the government.”
“To get justice in court for the victim of rape or trafficking can take two years and endless postponement and then case dismissed in many cases,” Cullen said.
Face of global appeal
Despite collective efforts from local, national, and global law enforcement agencies, the solution against Osaec remains far from sight.
For Ruby (not her real name), she was 16 when a stranger sent him a friend request online, offering her a job at an internet shop, about 600 kilometers from her residence.
“It felt like a godsend,” Ruby recalled, as the job offer came after she lost both her parents and her family faced “very limited resources” to sustain their living.
As the youngest of 10 siblings from a poor family, Ruby did not hesitate to work away from her home.
However, when Ruby arrived at the supposed computer shop, what greeted her was not a workplace, but a house with three rooms, with half-naked teenagers coming out of the rooms.
“It felt like a bomb going off in my head,” Ruby recalled in her award-winning podcast in August 2022 after she was rescued by the local authorities, with the help of the International Justice Mission (IJM), a Washington-based non-profit organization working to protect people in poverty from violence, human trafficking, and modern-day slavery.
Ruby’s traffickers were sentenced to a 15-year prison term.
Now in her 20s, Ruby lends her voice to those other young victims through her podcast, “The Fight of My Life: Finding Ruby,” which is available on Spotify, Apple, and Google.
Cassie (not her real name) was 12 when a family friend took her to the country’s capital Manila.
But for nearly five years, Cassie was repeatedly abused and raped by online viewers.
“It’s really hard. It’s like I want to die because of the pain. I need to follow him. If I don’t follow him, he’s going to hurt me, spank me, slap me in front of many people,” Cassie narrates in a YouTube video posted by IJM on November 19, 2016.
She was forced to perform sexual acts in front of a computer, while “customers” all over the world would pay to watch her.
Four years later, IJM and local police recovered Cassise.
‘Unacted online child trafficking cases’
IJM reported that in 2023 alone, the Philippines received 2,740,905 reports of suspected child sexual exploitation online from the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
However, IJM maintained that the vast majority of those cases “likely remained unacted upon, with offenders continuing to exploit vulnerable children.”
“The alarming prevalence of trafficking of children to produce child sexual abuse material demands urgent and comprehensive action,” said IJM Philippines’ director Samson Inocencio Jr. in a statement.
The organization suggested the following steps to curb Osaec:
* Strict enforcement of the law requiring tech companies to detect, block, and report child sexual exploitation materials, including live-streamed abuse.
* Issuance of clear guidance and regulation from the Anti-Money Laundering Council and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to ensure Philippine banks and money transfer businesses detect, intercept, and report transactions indicative of online sexual exploitation.
* Issuance of clear guidance from the Supreme Court for prosecutors and courts to consistently apply the probable cause and police personal knowledge principles in a way that allows law enforcement to quickly secure warrants and arrest suspected traffickers and sex offenders.
At present, IJM has supported Philippine authorities in bringing close to 1,300 victims and children-at-risk to safety and arresting close to 400 suspected perpetrators.
More than 230 traffickers have already been convicted.
In a study, IJM said key factors driving the proliferation of online child trafficking in the Philippines include cheap internet access, high levels of English-language proficiency, and financial disparity between foreign remote offenders and local traffickers.
Breakthrough findings
In April 2024, Rebelander Basilan, former Filipino journalist and now Media, Communications, and Corporate Engagements Lead for IJM, spoke to Sunstar Philippines and shared the recent findings of a study conducted by the anti-human trafficking charity Justice and Care, in collaboration with researchers from Dublin City University and De La Salle University of the Philippines.
In the study, they found that the crime “was made possible thanks to local facilitators trafficking victims on the ground and passing information on how to set up similar ‘businesses’, and that many Western-owned financial institutions and tech companies are being used to facilitate Osaec.”
Other key findings of the study include:
* The crime is widespread in both urban and rural areas.
* Mentoring takes place among traffickers as they pass on advice on how to set up, enable money transfer, and attract foreigners who pay for Osaec, where in some instances, traffickers were previously victims of this crime–creating a perpetual cycle of abuse.
* Convicted traffickers reported that the crimes were driven by economic necessity for some, as a source of “easy money” for others, and primarily by demand from customers across Europe, other Western countries, and parts of South Asia.
* Social media platforms, dating sites, and adult cybersex sites are being used to initially engage with foreign customers, adding that there is a huge disparity between the lengthy sentences received by traffickers in the Philippines (most commonly 15 years but in some instances life imprisonment) and foreign customers who are creating the demand for, and directing, these crimes and who often go unpunished.
The study, funded by Safe Online, the only global investment vehicle dedicated to keeping children safe in the digital world, is part of the joint Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund initiative and the IJM.
Ruby said to truly see an end to the online sexual abuse of children, the public must need to see “collaboration across society: from the tech industry to civil society, to the financial sector, to law enforcement.”
“When I was trapped inside that house, every day I waited to be found was a day too long,” Ruby said. (Ronald O. Reyes/SunStar Philippines)
