The case of suspected child abuser, British national, Richard Holden, now held in the Immigration Jail in Metro Manila denied the charges and claims he is being framed up by another jealous and vindictive Briton in Dumaguete City. The case is one that must be investigated with respect for the rights of the alleged victims and the accused. The evidence ought to be gathered. The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Undersecretary Celia C. Yangco has assured me that the DSWD officials are investigating the allegations and looking for the alleged child victims. They are in discussion with the officials of the Bureau of Immigration.The roots of child and women trafficking is found in proliferation of the nation wide sex bars and resorts, the impunity enjoyed by sex tourists that is damaging children and exploiting women and destroying the moral fiber of the country and its image worldwide. We need national and international pressure on the Philippine authorities to implement the anti-trafficking law and close the sex industry down.
Sex tourists going to South East Asia and other places develop a depraved appetite for sex with children and then return to their own countries and become abusers of their children in their own country. Officials are ignoring the problem. Sexual exploitation is spreading among the Filipino communities and the legal and moral prohibitions have broken down. Even local officials today act as negotiators between child abusers and parents to arrange a financial settlement when the child has been raped or abused. The official earns a percentage of the payment. The child is left without help and the pedophile goes free to abuse other children.
Our Preda Home for Girls has 49 children in care and custody. They are helped to recover by providing a caring and supportive environment with protection. We also help them heal by encouraging them to cry out through emotional expression therapy. The deeply buried emotional pain and suffering they hide inside is opened and brought out. The emotional pain is eased and the anger is removed and psychological healing can begin.
Many children have recovered and are reintegrated to their families when it is safe for them. Some have succeeded in past years and finished college and today are Preda social workers and psychologists helping the new child victims at Preda children's home.
The Preda legal officers are filing criminal charges against the abusers but due to weak prosecution, few cases prosper and succeed. There are few convictions and abusers are still at large and a danger to the children.
Maryann was abandoned in the streets by her family and she was trafficked into the sex club at the age of 15. She was exploited and sold to foreigners who sexually abused her. But she was rescued and recovered at the Preda Home and became a high-honored student and I am happy to tell you that she is in college and is now a children's rights advocate and has just returned from a speaking engagement at an international conference on children’s rights in Canada sponsored by Unicef.
Evelyn was abused as a child before she runaway from home to escape the abuse and was trafficked abroad into prostitution in Hong Kong. She was used in making pornography and suffered violence and sexual abuse. This month, she was rescued by a colleague of Preda and was flown back to the Philippines and is slowly recovering at Preda. Thousands of young girls are trafficked like this every day. We can all do much to change this situation
May all people of good will, defenders of children, protectors of human rights, all of us, never turn a blind eye to the suffering and exploitation and injustice done to children, may we always have the courage to take a stand and speak out and defend the helpless and most vulnerable.
May we all work for justice and make this a better world for all and especially for children, that they be recognized as God¹s children worthy of love and care. Let us end the abuse and jailing of children and the trafficking and slavery of children into the sex industry.
1 comment:
Shay Cullen's anthology is somewhat correct in certain respects. It is likewise totally worng in other respects, as I will guide the reader on my reasoning on this.
Yes, the authorities should look into child abuse, including that done by Shay Cullen himself against at least one seven-year-old child, and possibly another 12-year-old child in 1994, if the two medicals he submitted for his defense of rape has any credibility. Let me explain this.
Shay Cullen submitted a medical on a child that stated without any other entries that the child had an intact hymen, dated August 18, 1994. One week later on August 26, 1994, another medical on the same child stated that the hymen was severely lascerated, had many (+) gram and few (-) gram of bacilli.
Was there a rape done on the child on August 18, 1994 after Shay Cullen had the child? After all, it was he who submitted the two medicals in his defense for the rape of another child in 1998, where the child was found with an intact hymen on January 29, 1998, with a further observation that she had abrasions (scratches) in the area, but as to the later medical he likewise submitted, the hymen was severely lascerated wth healed sharp edges more than a month later.
Important to note here is that he stated the doctors in the first medical could be forgiven because they could not see the more serious tears in the hymen (remember that they noted abrasions, which are much smaller than tears).
He further submitted a log book entry that claims the child was in Preda more than ten hours BEFORE she was picked up. How is that possible?
He escaped justice, and calls for the conviction of others who do what he did. I say let him stand up and defend himself with his own submitted evidence in court, but he will not.
Note he claims that children have a right to justice. They also have a right to privacy, as protected by Republic Act 7610, yet clearly here he sensationalizes the cases of at least two children BY NAME AND HISTORY.
Has he no shame?
Do honest Filipinos really want their countrymen dragged into the mud by this mud-slinger called Shay Cullen in writings that clearly are in his interest as a "defender of children's rights" - rights that he clearly steps on by his shameless sensationalization of their predicament rather than taking the more honest step of filing cases and reporting the results of the cases AFTER conclusion by the courts?
Speaking of the courts, it says in Republic Act 7610 that NO information on child abuse cases will be published without permission of the courts. WHERE IS HIS PERMISSION?
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