Failure to implement laws is allowing crimes and abuses against children to thrive
Sweetie, a computer generated 10-year-old Filipino child who looked very real that as many as 20,000 pedophiles worldwide tried to contact her and made sexual overtones. (Photo courtesy of Terres de Hommes)
Father Shay Cullen, Manila Philippines April 19, 2017
Hundreds of Filipino children are traumatized and abused by the fast money-making crime of cyber-sex.
This is the most obnoxious crime against helpless, vulnerable children. Filipino kids as young as 5 or 6 years old are abused over the internet.
It happens due to the failure of the Philippine government and internet service providers to implement laws.
The government’s social welfare secretary, Lorraine Badoy, recently posted a sarcastic comment on Facebook that Europeans should just watch porn and leave the country to run its business.
“Those in the EU just engage in online child pornography, because that’s what you are good at,” she wrote.
It was an ill-advised attempt to defend President Rodrigo Duterte from criticism by EU officials over the president’s deadly war on illegal drugs.
Badoy was being sarcastic and facetious in addressing the critics of the president. But many people view it as insensitive and inappropriate and trivializes the sexual abuse of children.
EU Ambassador to the Philippines Franz Jessen said the “issue of child pornography is extremely serious and a grave crime. It should be addressed in a serious and responsible manner.”
The incident has a good side. It has brought attention to the outrageous demand and supply of images of Filipino children being sexually abused.
The Philippine official is only too aware of the massive demand for live streaming of images of Filipino children being sexually abused online.
But the blame cannot be laid solely at the door of those demanding the crime be committed so they can view it but also on the child sex abusers, the suppliers, and the enablers back in the Philippines, including the pimps and cyber criminals and traffickers and the internet providers.
The government itself seems to be not enforcing the law. Telephone companies are violating the law by not having filters in place.
Duterte ought to investigate and threaten these violators. He ought to have a war against child porn and cyber-sex too.
The Philippine police are all too aware that Filipinos have hundreds if not thousands of small cyber-sex dens. They also know there are parents and relatives and neighbors exposing children, some as young as 5 years old, to pedophiles online.
It is a billion dollar global cyber-crime business.
Senior Superintendent Gilbert Sosa of the Philippine National Police said the country is “the origin, the source” of this business.
As head of the police anti-cybercrime unit, the official knows the extent of the abuse of children, but authorities admitted that abusers and the cyber-sex dens are difficult to detect.
The dens can be a shack in a slum, or a hotel room with an internet connection and a laptop and a camera. It can be closed down in minutes and the suspects can evade arrest.
Cyber pornography is being committed in 31 of the 81 provinces in the country, said Senior Superintendent Sosa.
Every time an image of an abuse child is viewed, shared, and broadcast, a child is abused again and again. It is a crime that is intolerable and must be opposed by strictly implementing the law.
We can all do our bit and protest against cyber-crime today.
Irish Father Shay Cullen, SSC, established the Preda Foundation in Olongapo City in 1974 to promote human rights and the rights of children, especially victims of sex abuse.
