A Big Victory for Exploited Children

He was convicted after almost four and a half years of trial. He pleaded guilty to lesser charges and got off lightly with time served. He is Mr. AB, a US national convicted in an Olongapo Court recently of child trafficking and child sexual abuse. He may yet be tried in the United States on other charges for violating the extraterritorial jurisdiction law. This law targets US nationals suspected of being anyway involved in human trafficking or the sexual abuse of minors in countries outside of the USA. He ran a sex bar in Subic town named the Crow Bar, then changed to Avila’s, where minors as young as 14 years old were sexually assaulted. He admitted in a TV interview acts that are crimes against children. See The Raid on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xRCk8Ni-cs.

Undercover retired foreign police agents did surveillance work in the bars around Subic and Olongapo City and gathered evidence and discovered his sex bar operation sexually exploiting minors. Preda social workers confirmed that there were minors in the sex bar and contacted the children and prepared them to be rescued and protected in a therapeutic home for abused girls. It was a resounding success. Agents from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) from Manila conducted the rescue with Preda and government social workers. 

During the trial, his supporters and customers tried to blacken the name of the Preda Foundation for protecting the child witness and enabling her to testify. His supporter got a witness to retract her testimony for money but she thought better of it later and realized that she had been manipulated. Mr. DK committed an act that is an obstruction of justice. These men and their sex mafia supporters were soundly defeated with the conviction of Mr. AB.

They are infuriated and angry with the Preda Foundation (www.preda.org), a children’s charity for saving the children, protecting them and empowering them to testify in court that led to Mr. AB’s conviction. He had to pay a big fine and compensation. The conviction was a resounding statement that the sex bar operators, his supporters and customers are part of a criminal conspiracy to abuse children. By opposing the conviction and supporting the convicted, they approve his crime.

The foreign suspects in the Philippines, some permanent residents whose names have been given to the authorities, are under surveillance and watched and will be arrested once evidence is found against them. There are some foreign retired police still doing the surveillance.  

They target the foreigners operating sex bars and their supporters and customers. The sex mafia has launched another black propaganda attack on the Preda children’s charity and against the author of this article. They are angry and frustrated at being challenged by children’s charities for their sex crimes against minors, which some of the pedophiles and sex tourists consider it their right to do.

They hate being called to account and exposed for their crimes against Filipino children. The public can know these foreigners because they falsely accuse the charity workers and spread over the internet false allegations against those brave people who are defending the abused children.

That’s the biggest mistake they could make. Being under attack by the sex mafia is a badge of courage and bravery for the charities protecting children and fighting for their rights. The charities receive international humanitarian awards and greater support as a result. It shows just how much success has been achieved against the sex mafia.

     

It is poverty that makes so many children vulnerable to the foreign sex pedophiles. Jessica, seven years old, is one of 5.2 million suffering extreme poverty in the Philippines. Out of a dangerously large population of 103.2 million people, she was just one of the millions of unlucky children who missed out escaping the total abject poverty of yet so many poor children and adults in a country that is growing richer.

Jessica missed out and while 3.7 million Filipinos were lifted into a less extreme form of poverty yet 9.5 percent still suffer hunger and deprivation. We don’t forget 5.2 million are still living in poverty. Jessica is among them. It is this poverty that drives children on to the streets and encourages sex tourists, bar operators and their customers and defenders to roam freely with impunity and abuse these children.

She was an abused child and was in grave danger of being sold into a cybersex den. It turned out that Jessica’s mother and female partner had no love or respect for Jessica. She was repeatedly scolded and cursed and beaten. This caused psychological hurt and trauma. She was brought to the Preda Home for Girls and immediately given care and medical attention. Jessica has been saved from life on the streets and from traffickers and sex bars and has a positive life ahead. She is just one of almost seventy children in the care homes of Preda and many more are being helped in the community. Jessica is now relaxed and comfortable at the Preda children’s home and has recovered in the previous five months. She has gained weight, is healthy and playful. She has made friends in the Preda home and is part of the family. A great success on top of the victory over the traffickers.

More fun in the Philippines?

Young people work on an article about child trafficking at a Kabataan News Network workshop. © UNICEF Philippines/2009/Andy Brown

Sex tourism is a world wide reality and those who deny it are living far from reality. In the Philippines an estimated 60,000 commercially sexually exploited children are suffering abuse and lost childhoods according to a UNICEF estimate and millions more worldwide. There are stringent laws against it that are not being enforced. It is a twenty billion dollar world wide trade in humans and it involves the slavery of women and children.

Many underage girls and boys are forced into drug use in order to control them and are beaten if they disobey the pimps and traffickers. They are sold to the sex bars and tourists. This evil trade enjoys impunity because the sex and drug mafia set out to corrupt and compromise police, prosecutors, judges and politicians. There are few convictions of child abusers and traffickers. Charges of child abuse or trafficking despite strong evidence are mysteriously dropped by prosecutors or judges and the suspects go free, usually the decision says for “lack of evidence”.

Exploitative tourism has become so acceptable and above criticism that neither church nor state actively opposes it and local government gives the sex bars permits to operate calling it “foreign investments”.

I can never forget the 11 year-old child Angelica rescued by PREDA Social workers from pimps and pedophiles on the streets of Angeles City. She was sold for sex several times to foreign sex tourists who paid as little as a hundred dollars for her to the pimp she got the equivalent of two dollars. Although the PREDA Foundation brought charges against her pimp endless delays and postponements by the court caused the child additional trauma. There was no justice, no healing for her. Speedy trial for child victims is rare if ever. More privileges are given by the courts to the accused. In our twenty years experience male judges seem to trivialize child sex abuse and favor the abuser, the judge makes himself a suspect.

In another case in Olongapo City the judge removed Michelle, the child victim from the PREDA protective home and gave her back to the pimps, her own parents, who had sold her to an Australian child rapist. The case then failed and the abuser escaped back to Sydney. It’s like an act of treason.

Angelica is a deeply disturbed child and suffers from childhood neglect and sexual abuse by her uncle. The psychological wounds will never fully heal. When she was first rescued she was withdrawn, saw herself as worthless and nothing but a sex object and no longer a child. Her life was over before it had begun. Eventually with therapy, support, encouragement and the loving family of children and staff at the PREDA home for abused children she grew stronger and overcame the worst of her trauma.

So when government officials give permits to the sex bars where young girls are raped and trafficked from rural villages they are responsible for every destroyed young life. They trivialize sex with minors and young girls raise suspicions that they might indulge in it themselves. A Mayor in Zambales is on trial for such child abuse and more recently a Department of Education official in Negros has been arrested and charged with trafficking and the sexual abuse of minors. To end such corruption President Aquino must end the sex trade, it must be seen for what it is, not only sex tourism but institutionalized sexual slavery unworthy of the Philippine nation.

It is a great evil that comes from the “Do what you like” permissive attitude of city officials whereby sex tourists can abuse and exploit women and children with deference and impunity. It gives rise to bad example and Filipino families are affected. The other PREDA’s home for children is filled with victims of incest. Abused by their own fathers or a relative, many of whom get addicted to underage sex in the sex bars do it at home. Some child victims are made pregnant by their own father or a relative and it is traumatic for the child. Some child sex abuse victims are found suffering from venereal disease after being abused by their own fathers or a relative. One 4-year-old was brought to the PREDA shelter was found infected with syphilis by her father. 

He picked up the disease in the bars.

This is stark evidence that the sex industry is corrupting families and spreading child abuse in the community. Few officials seem not to care and the church leadership is silent. All who truly believe in defending human rights, protecting women and children and truly care for people and Filipino dignity will never tolerate this. It is a shameful dirty business that is destroying innocent lives we need do all we can to see it closed down and redeem the dignity of the Filipino people.