The Day I Rescued Josh

The great challenge for child care workers worldwide is to get the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child respected and implemented especially by law enforcement and jail management officers. It is the 20th anniversary of the convention that is now the basis of all child protection law for all nations, but many ignore it in practice. Twenty years ago, dedicated people were determined to enshrine the rights of the child in a United Nations Convention that would guide all nations. I was a delegate in Helsinki during the conference to finalize the NGO draft proposal of the Convention. A year later, it was passed and soon the Philippines had a new child protection law based on it and that is a great help in my apostolic work visiting jails and brothels and rescuing abused children and bringing their abusers to justice.

I visited the Philippine youth detention center (CRADLE) at Bicutan under the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology last week. I had a court order to take the custody of a minor and bring him to the "Preda New Dawn" recovery and education center. I asked if they had a copy of the Convention of the Rights of the Child and they seemed not to have heard of it.

Sad to say I found the need of much improvement. The jail is small with overcrowded cells, the youth detainees are held behind bars without much recreation, sports or sunlight. During my visit, it was only at lunch time they were allowed out of the cells to eat a light meal with a single piece of chicken (or pork), the size of golfball, a cup of rice and a small banana. The officers on duty were watching television instead of caring for the needs of the inmates. None of the youth had been convicted of a crime they were awaiting the stuck up wheels of justice to start turning.

The rescued youth, (call him Josh, not his real name), had
serious case of scabies, an infectious skin disease. I was informed that one officer was transferred after sexually abusing a female teenager detainee. The few girl detainees have no secure room and wander the open spaces in the corridors and some have been sexually molested by the male detainees in the toilets. They should be removed from that facility.

The guards and female warden gamely poised for a photograph and when they realized I was taking video, the lady warden got angry and confronted my female staff and detained us and called senior officers. When eventually we were released and left with Josh, he told us how he was beaten up by one of the guards. A report will be filed with the Commission on Human Rights.

There is an urgent need for the implementation of a more intelligent and educated non-punitive approach to assist children in conflict with the law. Giving them respect, counseling, help and skilled training while their court case is pending, is the way to restore their self-esteem, dignity and turn them from doing down the path of crime. Josh was held in that prison for one year having been accused of stealing an item worth USD$27 or about twenty Euro.

Saving abused children is another important way to implement the Convention. One day I was mistaken for a tourist while I was walking along the street in Olongapo City in the Philippines. It was then a big town that lived off the nearby US Naval Base on Subic Bay and sex bars were everywhere, pimps touted young women openly on the street. One pimp came up to me and to my horror offered me two small children about 12 years old. He told me I could do anything I liked to them. He laughed when I said I was going to call the police, and he was gone before I could do anything to get help to save the children. The child sex industry is condoned and tolerated to this day and that must change. I was determined from then on to change the terrible situation of enslaved children in the power of sex abusers. We must never condone cover-up or tolerate abuse.