When the Light Shines Again

It was a happy day for Joshua. He graduated from the Preda vocational training program and proudly held a student's driver’s license and his graduation certificate while the camera clicked to record the moment and everyone there applauded. It was his day when the light shone for him.

He had completed and passed his driving test at the Preda Home for Boys and completed a course in shielded metal arc welding. He can apply for a job as a basic welder or driver when he gets his license. He was only seven months in the Preda program and his life had dramatically changed in that time.

Joshua was once a child prisoner, locked in a small bare prison cell with graffiti on the walls, a hole in the floor for a toilet and what a dark dangerous smelly place it was. The dark dungeons of Dicken’s novels were the only comparison. 

  

He became a fighter, a rebellious child prisoner. He opposed all authority, even the cell boss-man couldn’t control him so they beat and kicked him. The world for Joshua was a mean and dangerous place where his survival was threatened every day. They fought over the small food allowance of rice and expired cans of fish. He fought off the bigger youths that tried to rape him. He kicked and gouged and defended himself.

The day came when he was saved from this hell-hole of misery. He was released from the unjust and unnecessary detention. His only so-called crime was he was homeless and broke curfew. His father died when he was ten years old and his stepfather beat him and cursed him. He ran away and took to the streets; there was no home, no acceptance just rejection. The local officials locked him in the youth detention centre where the Preda social workers found him bruised, angry and rebellious.

With the release order signed by the judge, he came to the Preda home for boys in the countryside without fences, no cells just freedom and friendship. It was not an easy transition. His old survivalist ways dominated. He bullied others and fought for dominance as he believed that was what he was supposed to do in this world. He had learned on the streets and the jail cells that no one cares, no one helps, no one loves him.

That changed day by day as he realized that he was cared for, that he was respected, no one bullied him, he joined values formation sessions, education classes and slowly he realized he had landed in a family that cared.

He was respected for the first time in his life and was free to choose to stay and to change and learn. He had emotional release therapy and screamed out his buried pain and hatred for the abuse he suffered. He joined the  sports, the outings, games and picnics. Soon, he was taking vocational training. He was transforming. He tamed himself.   

He is now a happy, intelligent matured youth together with twenty classmates who are also growing and changing at the Preda home. Most of them are also taking the vocational training course as part of their diversion program under the Philippine Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act (JJWA) or Republic Act 9344 that promotes restorative justice rather than harsh punishment. His graduation day and chance to be reintegrated to his sister’s family was when the light shone for him. It was a new day, a bright shining moment when he knew that he was truly accepted respected as a person of value and had true friends and would be helped succeed in life.  

Benjie, only 16, has completed many hours of electrical repair training and driving which will be a good chance for him to get a job when he leaves the Preda home and becomes of legal age. He has completed his Alternative Learning System (ALS) education which is a substitute for the years he missed for high school after he was arrested for taking and possessing illegal drugs. He discovered his true self, has human value and dignity at Preda home for boys. Thousands have been helped since 1974 to find recovery, peace and success in life. The light has shone for many like Benjie. His life story is a sad one as he tells it.

"My parents are separated; I was left with my grandmother in the slums when I was 10. Lola (grandmother) became old and sickly because we had no money and I begged for food. When I was 14 years old I tried to support her by selling vegetables from the open market but it was wasn’t enough for survival. We ate the rotten ones and bought pag-pag (uneaten leftovers from restaurants). Then a drug dealer recruited me, offered me cash and food and then drugs. I got hooked myself and I owed him money and worked for him. I was controlled by this gangster drug dealer, there was no way out. He threatened me and would kill Lola if I ran away and refused to deliver his dirty drugs. I was set for a life as a criminal and would likely be dead because of the war against drugs. If I was not saved by Preda and that lawyer from the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO), I would have been killed for sure." 

When Preda social workers intervened and the judge agreed to send Benjie to Preda, that was when the light shone for him. He graduated and has a bright future ahead of him. He can make his way in life and will succeed and his children will learn the values of respect and love and dignity. 

As many as 1,230 children are confined today in youth detention centers as far as we know. There could be more that we don't know. They are deprived of liberty and behind bars or in cages around the Philippines. The Preda Foundation has campaigned for the release of the children and as of today the number released is 323 children so far. There is hope and we must continue to advocate for the release of the unjustly jailed children.

The Story Behind the Photograph of Rosi

Rosi was a six-year old child detained in the police detention cell of Police Station B on Magsaysay Drive in Olongapo City some years ago. More like her will be jailed if the minimum age of criminal liability will be lowered to nine or 12 years old.

 

One evening during Holy Week, I was downtown in Olongapo City. It was filled with sex tourists. Many street children were as usual running about begging money from the foreign sex tourists and US servicemen from the nearby US Naval Base.

 

The children were vulnerable as pedophiles would prowl the streets and try and lure them away and abuse them. In 1983, I uncovered a child sex ring where dozens of street children were sexually raped and abused and infected with venereal disease. A US serviceman was accused as one of the many abusers. He was brought to trial in Guam. It was sensational news but he got only a light sentence.

 

The city had one source of employment and that was entertainment for sex tourists. Thousands of young girls, many underage, were victims of human trafficking and bound to the sex bars by debt bondage. Hundreds of sex bars lined the streets and they operated with a mayor’s permit. HIV-AIDS was spreading.

 

Preda Foundation established a home for these street children to protect and care for them with professional social workers. Today there are forty children in care in the Preda Home for Girls recovering from sexual abuse. In the Home for Boys, another 30 children are protected and safe.

 

That evening, I went to visit Police Station B on Magsaysay Drive, Olongapo City because many children were jailed there for begging for food and it was the work of Preda Foundation to get them out and bring them to a safe home. They needed protection, therapy, support, and a new start in life.

 

I went to Police Station B and walked to the desk and greeted the police officer on duty and I asked if there were any children detained. He said yes. So I went inside to the cells and heard a child crying. I went to a cell and there I was shocked to see a little six-year old child holding a soft drink can and crying her heart out. She was crying, “Mama, I want my Mama, Mama come for me.” It would break your heart if you saw her.

 

I found about eight other street children from six to 12 years old in that filthy cell. Most were sleeping on dirty stone floor. A few feet away in the opposite cell was a half-naked man so close that he could almost touch the children. Rosi was terrified of him.

 

I was shocked when I saw the children and Rosi crying, tears streamed down her face. She was made to be like a criminal behind the iron bars of the terrible, smelly empty cell. I felt very angry at this and immediately took out a camera and photographed Rosi as evidence of a crime committed against the children.

 

I immediately went to the police desk and told the police on duty they must release the children to the social workers immediately as the children were being traumatized and treated as criminals and it was a violation of children’s rights to be detained in a jail cell. They seemed surprised as if they did not know that.

 

I advised them to call the child care center to be ready to receive the children. Then after almost an hour a police pick-up with a wire cage on the back came to the police station and the children were released and put in the cage. I saw that they were brought safely to the child care center where they were given food and shelter.

 

Later I found out that Julia, the mother of Rosi, was a very poor street vendor selling peanuts to the passersby to survive and the child was with her. A corrupt local government official called a “tanod” or village guard would make all vendors pay him a fee to be allowed to sell informally on the streets. When Julia could not pay, as she earned only a little money, the “tanod”, arrested her child Rosi and locked her up in the police cell until Julia would pay to have her released. It was an extortion racket that the poor vendors suffered.

 

When Julia came looking to get Rosi out having borrowed money to pay the fee, she was told Rosi was in the child care center. So that is the story behind the photograph of Rosi holding the red soft drink can.

 

We were and are still campaigning to stop the jailing of minors as it is illegal. But the police and the city authorities were above the law. Looking for abandoned street children to be able to release them and bring them to a safe haven was my goal that night.

 

At the Preda Foundation, I and the Preda team formed a coalition of supporters in the Philippines and campaigned to end the sex tourist industry and remove the US Navy base. The conversion plan idea that we promoted was to convert the huge facilities into an economic zone with hi-tech factories to give many jobs and work with dignity to the people of Olongapo City.  After ten years, the anti-base campaign was a huge success with political action that removed the US military facilities in the Philippines. Today, the huge former base is now a thriving economic zone providing 68 thousand dignified jobs.

 

Today thousands of children are put into detention cells as local governments do not obey the juvenile justice and welfare law. They are mandated by RA 9344 to build homes for the children and provide care for them.

 

Preda Foundation has safe and beautiful homes for many of these children. We cannot help them all. There will be many more jailed children like Rosi until the local government units do their duty and respect the law and the rights of the child.

 

Criminals at Nine Years Old?

Andres is just one 10-year old child and he has lived on the streets of Metro Manila most of his life like thousands of other street children. They are abandoned, work as scavengers, market boys or girls and are vulnerable to sexual and physical abuse by adults. They are uneducated and without family or social welfare, care and protection. They are completely vulnerable to the influence of those who can give them food or money. 

Andres was a survivor. He worked as a scavenger collecting plastic bottles and other junks to sell in order to buy enough food for the day but it was never enough. He only knew he had to get food and anything he did to survive was the right thing for him to do. He didn’t get enough scraps one day and he saw a cell phone on a vendor’s tray at the market and he took it. He sold it and bought food. Andres like most children didn’t know if it was right or wrong. The moral or legal issue was not a reality for him. He was just hungry. He was arrested by the barangay tanod and charged with theft. Was he a criminal?  

There is a majority of Filipinos who say, “No he is not.” The Philippine Congress on two previous occasions said he is not. There are now voices of the police and local district officials who blame the children as young as nine years of age as notorious criminals and they say the children should be treated as criminals. They are persuading congressional representatives to amend the law and to lower the minimum age of criminal liability of the Filipino children from 15 years of age to nine years of age. They think that the child is allowed to go without any intervention to help them know right from wrong. The law directs that there be help given and intervention for children in conflict with the law. This lowering of the age of criminal liability is detrimental to children it should not be changed. 

The child shall be subjected to a community-based intervention program supervised by the local social welfare and development officer, unless the best interest of the child requires the referral of the child to a youth care facility or ‘Bahay Pag-asa’ managed by LGUs or licensed and/or accredited NGOs monitored by the DSWD. 

The law and millions of Filipinos and around the world say, “No, Andres and thousands like him are not criminals and must be helped.” They and wise legislators believe that the survival of life is the greatest human need and hunger must be satisfied. Besides the Philippine law RA 9344 is benign, compassionate and enlightened and it takes into consideration that a child, especially under the age of 15, that has little schooling, lives on the streets and is always hungry cannot be held liable for adult acts that are considered adult crime.  

The fact that police are complaining that criminal gangs are taking advantage of children because they cannot be held liable for crimes claim that the children work as drug couriers and should be treated as criminals and the law be changed so nine year olds can be arrested. The supporters of such a position should present solid research showing substantial figures of children being used in this way. But even if it were so then the child would not understand that he or she was doing something wrong. The power and influence of an adult in ascendency over the child is very strong. The child cannot act with free will and full knowledge and without that there is no crime. They have been coerced.    

The adult drug traffickers are the criminals, not the small children. The children are innocent victims of abuse by the adults. The adult suspects ought to be arrested and charged with child abuse. The testimony of the child will be sufficient to convict the adult criminal using the child. The child can be taken into care and protection and the law provides for that intervention. In a court ruling applying the RA 9344 the judge had the following to say.

“R.A. No. 10630 addresses the concerns and criticisms of the law by amending certain provisions of R.A. No. 9344. One amendment introduced by R.A. No. 10630 is the imposition of the maximum period prescribed by law for the crime committed on any person, who in the commission of a crime, makes use, takes advantage of, or profits from the use of children, including any person who abuses his/her authority over the child or who, with abuse of confidence, takes advantage of the vulnerabilities of the child and shall induce, threaten or instigate the commission of the crime.”  

That is putting the burden on law enforcers to apprehend and charge the adults who use children and instigate and teach them to participate in illegal actions. The tabloid media has constantly played up the plight of the street children who have to survive alone or in groups. They present them as animal-like criminals and sometimes demonize the children.

  

But the desperate hungry and abandoned children are trying to meet their human needs to survive in a cruel neglectful society around them. They have been neglected, abused oppressed and jailed. Some of the Bahay Pag-asa youth centers are in fact jails in most respects and  the  children are in fact being punished. They provide little or no education or assistance to give the children no chance at a better life. Soon the cells will fill-up with nine year olds and suffer physical and sexual abuse in the jails if the law is changed. 

What an added disgrace to the Philippines to criminalize the innocent children. Remembering the words of Jesus of Nazareth when asked who was the most important in the world. He placed a child before the crowd and said “The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven is the one who humbles himself and becomes like this child. Whoever welcomes one such child as this welcomes me.” (Matt.18; 3 -5)  These are somber thoughts for those who would treat the child as a criminal at nine years old. Let your opposition be known by the chairperson of the Congressional Committee on Justice Rep. Reynaldo Umali through his Twitter account https://twitter.com/reyumali