Fifty years ago, a young Irish missionary in the Philippines founded an organisation that defended the rights of abused and trafficked children. In spite of being denigrated, harassed and threatened with deportation this work has led to successful campaigns to reform the law and close sex bars and brothels and rescue many children from prisons and human traffickers and abusers. / By SHAY CULLEN
IT IS NOW 55 years since I landed in the stifling heat of Manila, Philippines. I was 26 years of age. I had been sent to join a community of Columban fathers running a parish in Olongapo, 80 miles north of Manila. It was known as “Sin City” and I soon found out why.
I took up the peaceful parish routine: daily Mass, hearing confessions, visiting the sick. I began to wonder, was this to be my life? I taught teenagers in the parish school. I spoke about gospel values and social justice. They taught me about the reality of broken homes, dysfunctional families, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, child abuse, sex trafficking and gang violence. Despite three Masses a day and six on Sunday, in Olongapo, vice, it seemed, had conquered virtue.
Hundreds of sex bars and brothels with city permits were licensed to supply girls (many of them minors) for the sexual gratification of the US servicemen of the Seventh Fleet at nearby Subic Bay. In the 1970s Olongapo had become fantasy land for the sex-starved, warweary marines serving in the Vietnam War. Estimates of up to three million Vietnamese were killed by United States armed forces in that war, much of it fought from nearby Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base. The US lost 58,220 young men, mostly conscripted. The angry, guilt-ridden survivors landed in Subic to party and forget.
One evening, walking home to St Columban’s College and parish house, I passed the sex bars with their flashing neon lights and blasting rock music. Dozens of American marines caroused and some were carrying small girls into brothels. Some wore T-shirts sporting an image of a mushroom nuclear detonation. “Nuke them till they glow,” they triumphantly declared. Young girls tried to lure me into the bars. Child sex traffickers stood in shady doorways. “Hi Joe, you want a kid, only 12, will do anything you want.” Having sex with a child who was 12 years old was legal so long as the child consented (the law was not changed until 2022). The city’s business was sex for sale. The Church turned a blind eye. The dollars flowed in by the millions.
When I arrived back at the ornate parish church, I was feeling angry and powerless. The contradictions were enormous and inescapable. Extreme poverty among plenty. I prayed. What kind of faith would move this mountain of evil? The Church’s silence and inaction had made a graveyard of true Christianity. As the Apostle said, “Faith without action is dead” (James 2:17). I needed faith with action, and it came soon enough.
“The last US marine ship left Olongapo in 1992 and the creation of the freeport zone began”
In 1972 President Ferdinand Marcos Sr declared martial law. It was brutally enforced by his hit squads. Some of our students who had joined protest marches were targeted and shot. Others were jailed on suspicion of illegal drug use. In 1974 I set up the People’s Recovery, Empowerment and Development Assistance (Preda) Foundation as a sanctuary to protect them and others at risk. We built a shelter overlooking Subic Bay, the Preda “New Dawn” Center.
OUR DEDICATED team got teenagers out of prison and gave them protection. We began Emotional Release therapy, and gave education and legal help. Juanito was one of many. He was rescued, had therapy and overcame drug dependency and became a caregiver in a home for disabled elderly people. Several years later, he wrote: “Many thanks for all I learned at Preda. I love this work helping others, it is my life.”
Poverty and corruption continued to grow under President Joseph Estrada and later under President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Thousands of abandoned “throwaway children” lived on the streets. They were arrested, jailed with adults, and beaten and sexually abused in their cells. The Preda team and other NGOs campaigned to stop it. We were ignored. Then a ray of light fell upon us. Independent Television (ITV) produced a documentary film, Kids Behind Bars, highlighting the plight of children in jail cells with adults. CNN showed it in the United States. I showed the film to a human rights committee hearing in the US Congress headed by Chris Smith of New Jersey, a Catholic. He and others wrote to President Arroyo. She ordered the children to be separated from adult prisoners but they were jailed instead in separate cagelike cells.
The Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006 raised the age of criminal liability from nine years old to 15 and mandated proper care homes for “children at risk and children in conflict with the law”. However, local governments continue to jail children and Preda works with judges to enable their release. At present, there are 53 boys in its care.
President Rodrigo Duterte vowed in 2016 to lower the minimum age of criminal liability from 15 years old to 12. The Preda team showed senators photos of small kids behind bars and it was decided not to make any changes. A small victory, we could say.
Child trafficking for sexual abuse is another story. It continued in Olongapo in the 1980s. In June 1983, I discovered 12 children suffering from venereal diseases hidden by the mayor in a city hospital room. The youngest was nine years of age. The mayor ordered a news blackout and made no investigation. I interviewed the children and submitted my story and photographs to WE Forum, the independent newspaper founded by Jose Burgos Jr during the years of martial law under Marcos. The story made international headlines. WE Forum was later closed down by Marcos, and Jose’s son was abducted by the military years later. His body was never found.
The children told me that US servicemen and foreign sex tourists had sexually abused them for a few dollars. One child took a T-shirt from the apartment where she had been raped to stem the bleeding; it had the laundry tag of Daniel J. Dougherty, a US Navy chief petty officer. He was put on trial in Guam for multiple child rape crimes, but only received a light punishment. The story became international news and I was declared persona non grata in Olongapo City by the mayor and others, and put on trial in the immigration court in Manila. I fought back and won my case against deportation but there were death threats and the harassment went on for years.
WHEN AUTHORITIES planned to close the Preda Foundation home, I told a journalist: “You know, it would be better to close down the US military base, end the sex trade and convert the base facilities into an economic zone and provide jobs with dignity.” The interview made national and international news. Finally, I had found a possible way to end the sexual exploitation and debt bondage of women and minors in the sex bars. The only way to freedom was to close them all down. I wrote a series in my weekly column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. I called it “Life after the Bases”. The city administration of Olongapo denied all the child abuse allegations and dismissed the suggestion to close and convert the US bases. Mr Conrad Tiu, a brave local businessman, supported me and added the brilliant idea of a freeport. The campaign began to catch on.
Finally, after 10 years of campaigning, on 16 September 1991 the Philippine Senate voted on whether to retain or reject the bases. Each senator gave a speech before declaring their vote. There was high drama. Then the count. Eleven for keeping the bases; 12 against. I turned off the radio and played Tchaikovsky’s 1812.
On 21 November 1992, the last US marine ship left Subic Bay. Every sex bar and brothel closed, all bondage debts were cancelled, and thousands of trapped women and children walked free. The conversion plan I had suggested and campaigned for was implemented. Today, the Subic Bay Freeport Zone provides 145,230 jobs with dignity and fair wages.
Despite the shocking revelations in 1983 of child sex trafficking of nine-year-old children to US sailors, in spite of our efforts there was still no law specifically forbidding child sexual abuse in the Philippines. We campaigned with congressional women with greater success. The Anti-Child Abuse Law was passed in 1992. The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Law was passed in 2003 and made even stronger with amendments in 2012.
The Preda Foundation successfully lobbied for the Anti-Child Pornography Law, passed in 2009. The age of sexual consent is now 16 years.
In 1996, the Preda Foundation opened a home for sexually trafficked and abused children. Since then, about 1,680 girls have been rescued, protected, healed and empowered. The team is almost overwhelmed with nearly 60 girls, aged from six to 18, being cared for. There are no Philippine donors and no government support; the work relies on international partners. Unless they are given protection and therapy it is not safe or easy for girls to testify with self-confidence against their human trafficker or abuser. Yet every year we see around 20 courageous girls a year testify in court and win convictions that put their abusers and traffickers in prison.
| Shay Cullen has received several human rights awards, and has been nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize. For more details of Preda’s work go to preda.org. |
