Preventing Violence Against Children And Women

 

Ever since the story of Adam and Eve, likely written by a man, some men have tended to blame women for male misfortunes, weaknesses and their tendency to violent behavior. Overwhelming research has shown that most violent acts- physical, sexual, psychological, emotional, and verbal- against women and children have to do with family relationships, including a present or past intimate relationship or the lack of a happy one. Violence in an intimate relationship comes mostly from the male partner that wants to assert his dominance and power of ascendency over his partner and children. Research has also shown that violence against women and children in a family is caused mostly by the male partner not having his desires, demands urges, and needs satisfied by his female partner to his satisfaction. That causes a power struggle, the male asserting himself over the woman and children, leading to verbal arguments, jealously, disharmony, anger, and eventually physical violence or even sexual assault.

The aggressive behavior of the man towards his female partner can have roots in the absence of positive childhood experience of loving, caring parents with strong virtues of mutual trust, caring affection, protection, honesty, openness, and faithfulness.

Without that example of good parents in childhood, a person, especially a male but also a woman, will have had a bad even an abusive childhood experience. They will not have learned how to love and care and give affection with patience and understanding to each other or their children. They will have experienced family discord, conflict, arguments, broken homes, lack of affection and love, rejection, great instability and violent language and violent acts, physical and sexual.

Indigenous children that grew up in deprived, abusive residential homes in Canada and the United States or orphanages have had similar difficulties in loving their own children. They were so deprived of the good experience and example of a loving family. It is this emotional malnutrition and personality maladjustment and immaturity that the deprived child, when an adult, suffers from. For many such partners, they are still frustrated and longing for and demanding the parental love they were deprived of as children. This need is very difficult for a partner to satisfy. The deprived partner is always unsatisfied, and this is what leads to disharmony, anger and violence against a female partner who cannot satisfy those childhood needs. The children also become the target of violence and sexual abuse.

The male has always considered himself stronger and more powerful than the female. The physical difference and will to dominate others have led to inequality in the relationship and the man is the aggressor in most cases. Relationships that begin with romantic feelings and mutual trust can quickly deteriorate to discord in time when challenges and stress increase in the relationship. Without the childhood roots of an experience of consistent parental love and affection, the adult does not know how to love another intimately in an unselfish way.

There may be a superficial relationship mainly based on a passing physical and emotional attraction that leads to an agreement by the couple to satisfy each other’s emotional and sexual needs. But the endurance and strength within a relationship to endure and overcome every challenge of life for sixty years of partnership will be lacking. That is unless the persons recognize their weakness and the need to commit themselves to acquire and absorbing important values and virtues and practicing them in their daily lives. To have a harmonious intimate relationship, what is needed is unselfish service to other people. That sharing must go beyond the partner to the community. Otherwise, it is just self-serving and lacking integrity. For a couple to have a common goal of service to others is ideal.

There are many happy families that have this higher standard of intimate friendship where each partner recognizes the importance of the values and dedicates themselves to the idea of living the values of faithfulness, honesty, trustworthiness, transparency, unselfish sacrifice and service to community and family.

However, relationships that are not built on such virtues and values but rather on selfish satisfaction of emotional and sexual desires and urges are likely to fail and collapse into breakup, conflict or violence. This violence is mostly perpetrated by men, former or present partners, or males outside of a relationship. For minor girls, it is a male peer or a gang-mate or boyfriend that commits acts of sexual violence against her.

The statistics are shocking. Thirty percent of women and children, aged 15 and older in the world (that is one in every three girls and women) have suffered intimate partner violence by a husband or non-partner violence at least once in their lives. Many have endured constant acts of violence. That is an estimated 736 million girls and women worldwide.

One in every three children has experienced sexual violence at least once in their lives. These acts have increased dramatically during the Covid lockdown. It has been established that a least 6 percent of women have reported they have suffered sexual violence by men other than their husbands or live-in partners. However, since there is a stigma attached to rape, most do not report or seek help from anybody. They endure and live with the pain and suffer trauma.

In the past 12 months 22 percent of women that live in poor countries or the “least developed” were victims of violence from partners. The world average for more developed countries is 13 percent. This is a huge disparity and poverty and lack of education play a significant role in violence against children and women.

Human trafficking is a form of violence against the person and most victims are women and girls making up 72 percent of all trafficked persons. Boys are trafficked also but out of every four children that are trafficked, three are girls and it is for sexual exploitation, the worst form of violence against children after incest.

To change the situation and to prevent more violent acts against women and children, it seems that promoting and teaching virtues and values is one important remedy. Encouraging people to accept and choose to live these values can lead people to have a lasting loving, respectful and mutually supportive relationship that will never descend to violence.

UN Women have recommended RESPECT, each letter for one value: Relationship skills strengthening; Empowerment of women; Services ensured; Poverty reduced; Enabling environments (schools, workplaces, public spaces) created; Child and adolescent abuse prevented; and Transformed attitudes, beliefs and norms.

Hope and Protection for Abused Children

The International Day of the Child is a day of celebration. A day when every happy family can rejoice that their children are healthy, happy, and secure in a loving family. We can say that the respect and rights of children have never been held so high. Never in world history have there been so many defenders and activists protecting children and promoting their welfare. Never have there been so many laws advancing their well-being, their education, their health. Nowadays, children have never been loved as much. 

After World War II, the suffering and abuse of children was so widespread people of conscience and moral principles rediscovered the teaching and respect that Jesus of Nazareth had for children. He was perhaps the first champion and defender of children.

He stood a child before a crowd of scribes, pharisees and elders who considered themselves the elites and rulers of society. He said this child is the most important of all, whoever welcomes a child, welcomes me. That identification of Jesus with a child recognized the profound dignity and higher status of a child than anyone else. It was earth-shaking, Jesus of Nazareth made a lot enemies that day.

Two new Philippine laws have passed both houses recently and will so hopefully be signed into law. One is increasing the age of consent. When it is passed, any act of abuse against a child 16 and younger will be statutory rape. The second new law is banning so-called child brides. Any arranged relationship between a child and an older man is illegal and the offender will be jailed for many years.  

Recently, child abusers found a new criminal way to abuse children. They were hired by a child rescue non-government organization called Destiny Rescue. The Preda Foundation, a child protection organization represented by its Executive Director Emmanuel Drewery, in support of two sexually abused child victims, one 13 years old, filed formal legal complaints with the Olongapo City prosecutor. The complaint alleged that several children were sexually abused by hired undercover agents of the Quezon City-based Destiny Rescue affiliated to the US charity of the same name. They raise money through donations to support the work of rescuing children from human traffickers.

All this attention to the welfare of children is new in our generation. In generations past, children had a low status in society. Even though most parents loved their children few if any laws protected them. Child abuse and labor was everywhere, sexual abuse of children was common and hardly even considered a crime. There were few champions for children. Charles Dickens and Don Bosco are among the few that wrote and acted to help children in dire circumstances.   

His teaching was ignored for the most part of two thousand years until the defenders of children’s rights won the day at the United Nations and proclaimed a comprehensive convention that enshrined the exalted rights of the child to the whole world. This writer was there in Helsinki as a delegate from the Philippines when the convention was being finalized in debates and resolutions and the final draft was written. It was passed by the General Assembly the following year 1989. This is what we must celebrate, a historical awakening and realization of the plight of abused and exploited children in the world. This awakening must continue since the danger of child abuse is getting worse with the impact of the Internet and the unethical Internet Service Providers and corrupt people abusing children.

This was not enough because there was still much child abuse and countries passed weak laws that were not implemented and failed to protect children. A further awakening as to the worst kinds of child labor in the world was needed. Finally, the human race admitted to its most terrible crimes against children in the sex industry, construction, factory and agriculture where education and dignity was taken from the children, and they were like slaves.

Another worldwide campaign brought about the convention concerning the Prohibition of and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor. This was passed in Geneva on 17 June 1999.

This writer was present in Geneva, too, to campaign for it and to see it voted and passed. There were marches and demonstrations around the world. The people were awaking, voices were speaking out demanding change, protection, and the freedom from a life of child enslavement. They called for the child’s right to be educated. More national laws were passed to stop such enslavement. Children were to be educated with dignity and protected against exploitation. These laws are being improved and updated as the extent of child abuse is constantly being uncovered as pedophiles find new insidious way to abuse children.

The agents contact traffickers and poise as sex customers and when the traffickers bring the children to them to have a sex party, the undercover agents with an undercover police man gives them marked money. When the human traffickers accept the money, they are immediately arrested and the children are rescued.  

When several rescued children were brought to the Preda Foundation by the Olongapo City social worker for care and protection, they revealed that before the rescue the Destiny Rescue agents brought them to hotels and sexually abused them while their traffickers stood outside the bedroom door.

We contacted the country head of Destiny Rescue, Alwin Laysico, and his undercover investigator leader Michael Santiago, to ask them to help identify the agents. They did not cooperate. The parent US-based Destiny Rescue also failed to reply to our requests for help.
Olongapo City NBI Chief Attorney Orlando Navallo is investigating and has assured us that the suspects will be found and identified. The prosecutor has yet to make a resolution on the complaint. The affidavits can be found here. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Hsq4t-bRFzl08KWeVWziVFifWjkAReIC?usp=sharing

Mr. Francis Bermido Jr, President of the Preda Foundation, has appealed to Destiny Rescue to cooperate and identify the suspects and bring them to justice. The child victims are determined to get justice.  Anyone can refer a child for care and recovery from trafficking or sexual abuse by contacting Preda at predainfo@preda.org. A team of professional therapists and social workers at the Preda therapeutic homes heals and empowers the child victims and helps them get justice against their abusers. On average, the Preda children win 18 convictions against their abusers and traffickers every year. It is hoped that the suspects in the abuse case will be identified soon and be brought to justice.

Pedophiles Abuse Children while Court of Appeals Sleeps

The recent decision of the Department of Education (DepEd) to dismiss for Grave Misconduct from the teaching profession Franco N. Aranas, a teacher in New Cabalan High School, Olongapo City should have been a swift decision to protect children and see justice done. However, it has taken almost three years before the decision was made to dismiss the abusive teacher who sexually abused his students. Yet this teacher, Franco N. Aranas, while found guilty for Grave Misconduct by the DepEd's Regional Director, May B. Eclar, can continue teaching in the same school until the dismissal from service is confirmed by Secretary Leonor Briones of the DepEd. We earnestly hope that Secretary Briones acts speedily to confirm the decision of the Regional Director to protect children and see justice is done. The DepEd must not harbor a child abuser among its ranks.

What is wrong with the system where it is clear justice delayed is justice denied, a system that favors the sex abusers and ignores traumatized children? It casts a dark shadow over the institutions. The teacher was accused of sexually abusing three minor students, one 14 and two 15 respectively, in the Sunshine Lodge near the Victory Liner station in Olongapo City on two separate occasions in June and August 2018. This place ought to be investigated for enabling human trafficking and child abuse, violations of law.

It appears the grooming and abuse of victims was ignored in the schools due to apathy and indifference. It is easy to report abuse. One brave teacher informed Preda Foundation by anonymously posting a tip -off on Preda Facebook. Preda social workers acted at once to help protect the victims and start formal criminal and administrative complaints against the accused. But bureaucracy and institutional go-slow attitudes that favor the accused and not the victims were operational. It has taken almost three years of constant follow-up by Preda staff and many hearings and presentations of testimony by traumatized victims to convict Aranas in the administrative case filed by Emmanuel C. Drewery, the executive director and senior social worker of the Preda Foundation, a child protection and healing organization in Olongapo City. Aranas is still on trial for the criminal cases in the Olongapo City Regional Trial Court. 

During the formal investigation of the DepEd, Aranas denied all the charges against him and presented an alibi which was said by the panel hearing the case to be faulty and did not preclude the sexual acts happening. The accused teacher also said in his defense that the act was consensual. This was denied since he was in a position of ascendency and power over his students, three minors 14 and 15 years of age.

Another case of child sexual abuse involving a teacher, Corskie San Jose, happened in the Olongapo City National High School in 2017. He sexually groomed children and was ignored for years by co-teachers and supervisors. Then, he sexually assaulted an 11-year old male student under the stairs in the school. The shocked parents of the 11-year old brought criminal and administrative cases against San Jose for child sexual abuse. Mr. Corskie San Jose also sexually assaulted in 2017 another 15-year old boy student outside the school.

After two years of hearings marked by frequent delays and postponements, the DepEd gave Corskie San Jose a six-month suspension only. He is back teaching at present. Recently, DepEd Olongapo City denied his attempt for a promotion.

The criminal cases against Corskie San Jose progressed in the Regional Trial Court and he was convicted in 2019 for the crime and sentenced to a minimum eight years in one case and a minimum of twelve years in the other. He was also ordered to pay the victims moral and exemplary damages. However, he is out on bail. He appealed to the Court of Appeals and that is still pending in the notoriously slow and seemingly inactive Court of Appeals. It is two years on appeal and not yet decided. What takes about two hours takes two years. What are they waiting for?

The notoriously slow, ponderous pace of decision making in the Court of Appeals potentially allows convicted paedophiles like Corskie San Jose to remain out of jail on bail. The court must realize that convicted pedophiles on bail can continue to abuse and possibly commit more crimes against children. We must complain to the Supreme Court the lack of action to decide these shocking heinous crimes against children pending in the Court of Appeals. It appears that the justices just don’t care and are waiting for something else.

The greatest enemy of children is the indifference and passive support by the public for pedophiles and pimps that prey on children and sexually abuse them. They give consent to child abuse by their silence, apathy and indifference. These people are accessories and enablers of crimes against children. They wrongly believe it is not their business to report or interfere but it is the urgent business of everybody.

Schools and church institutions' first reaction is to cover up the crime .The church in many dioceses keeps abuse secret and reassign abusive clerics. Concern for the victims is far from their feelings and thoughts.

The reputation of the institution comes first for the irresponsible clerics and teachers, not the protection of the child victims or the implementation of law so justice will be enforced and abuse will be challenged and punished. It was only when Mr. Francis Bermido, president of the Preda Foundation, reported the cases that there was media attention. The child abuse of students is just the tip of the iceberg, hidden beneath the waters of cold apathy.

Institutional leaders, bishops, priests, teachers, the public, judges, prosecutors and police must be challenged for having negative attitudes towards child-victims. There has to be deeper concern, respect for the children and the law, swift action to protect and bring the perpetrators to justice. Anything less is a mockery of law and human rights and the nation ceases to be a respected civilized country.

The Global Reach of Child Abuse Through the ISPs

The live streaming of child sexual abuse and the proliferation of child abuse materials and images that leads to the sexual abuse and rape of children has greatly expanded during the pandemic. Although the arrivals of international child sex tourists has fallen in the Philippines, there are still resident foreign paedophiles abusing children. The famous Internet Watch Foundation, the leading charity tracing paedophiles online and monitoring and closing down child abusing web sites, has reported that there were 8.8 million attempts by child sex abusers in the UK to access these sites during lock down since 2020 and this year.

 

The paedophiles are using their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to access abusive videos and sexual abuse images of children online, to share them and order sex acts online where children are abused to order. This is shocking and astonishing and this 8.8 million figure is from the UK alone. The traffic of child sexual abuse material through the ISPs is hundreds if not thousands of millions world-wide. The IWF is one of the few effective organisations battling the abusers and trying to reduce the number being abused. Yet they cannot stop all and millions more around the world are surely getting child abuse material through the ISPs.

 

“Anyone providing Internet Services should be doing everything they can to keep the users on their network safe and to protect them. Of course, the Internet doesn’t respect borders, so it is key that companies step up as well,” so declared Susie Hardgrave, OBE and the CEO of the Internet Watch Foundation. This very dedicated CEO is calling on ISPs companies worldwide to get involved, do their moral and legal duty in blocking the proliferation of child sexual abuse images. At present, the ISPs depend on the IWF to do the work for them and the IWF finds and shares with the ISPs the abusive websites and images they find and advise the ISPs to delete and block them. But this is primarily the duty of the ISPs themselves. The IWF can’t police the entire world, they are showing the way. How much should the ordinary subscriber be responsible for subscribing to an ISP that does not block or filter child abuse material and should they not hold their ISP to account.

 

Their own children might become victims of the child abuse material or be influenced or groomed online. Since every ISP is connected to every other ISP, there is a global responsibility for them to work together to install the blocking software. This will make it very difficult for paedophiles and child abusers to peddle, watch and share abusive material.

 

In most nations around the world, ISPs claim that they are not responsible for what their customers and the users post there. They deny that they are responsible for the offensive abusive material. Some ISPs claim that they deploy web crawler software and according to IWF, 155 ISPs have opted to deploy Microsoft DNA software. There are hundreds of thousands of ISPs around the world who do little or nothing to block child sexual abuse material that is passed through the servers of the ISPs.

 

Since the western countries recently agreed to pass laws to hold multinational corporations subject to at least 15 percent tax payments globally, why can’t they hold the ISPs to use better and more efficient Artificial Intelligence-blocking software to protect children? We must continue to expose the evil of on-line child abuse to pressure governments and corporations to take dedicated and coordinated action to pass and implement strict laws to protect children online by compelling ISPs to install blocking software.

 

The solution they say is very complicated but the truth is actually simple. Most of the ISPs have chosen not to deploy software to identify, trace and block the terrible crimes against children. They want to make more money.

 

They find refuge and protection behind Section 9 of the USA Law known as the Decency Communications Act. It says that the ISPs are not to be held responsible for what is posted or passes through their servers. They should be held responsible by right and duty to protect vulnerable children from sexual exploitation and abuse, but for them money comes first and overrides this urgent moral duty. The public must realize that this transmission of child abuse images and live streaming of abuse videos is going on and allowed by the very ISPs whom they pay fees to connect them to the Internet. Their computers and laptops are using the ISPs that are enabling the abuse. We all need to stand up and say they must protect children and compel legislators to pass such laws.

 

In the Philippines, there is no such blocking service provided by the ISPs even though since 2009 the law RA 9775 says they must do it. After a long campaign by Preda Foundation since 2009, PLDT /Smart has recently signed on to the IWF list of newly-found abusive web sites and says they have blocked ten thousand of them. That is just a drop in the ocean of millions of child abusive sites and images passing through their servers. Globe,  Converge and Dito and other Philippine ISPs have not said if they will obey the law.

 

The law is demanding that the Philippine ISPs obey the 2009 law (RA 9775) and install blocking software like Microsoft PhotoDNA and VideoDNA or other Web Crawlers to detect and block images of child sexual abuse. A revised version of RA 9775 is being prepared and to be sure we can surmise that there is fierce pressure and lobbying going behind the scenes to water down the provisions of the revised RA 9775.

 

One congressman at least has gone public suggesting the blocking provision should be scrapped altogether. How influential the ISPs are in promoting his political ambitions has yet to be revealed. However, Senator Hontiveros and other dedicated senators of principle are totally committed to overturning such attempts and will push through a stricter law increasing substantially the obligation to install the software and increase the fines on the ISPs that fail to comply. They can suspend their licence and franchise. That would be a massive service to the hundreds of thousands of abused children raped every hour around the world. It must be stopped and we must campaign to make it happen.

How to End Child Labor

 

 

It was a massive international solidarity march in 1999 along the streets of Geneva. Thousands of children and supporters from all over Europe and Asia were there to encourage and support the approval and signing by the world’s nations of the document, “Worse Forms of Child Labor Convention 1999.”

 

I was there with other NGO representatives giving voice to our deep concern for all children and especially the Filipino children that were enslaved in unjust, exploitative labor practices. A huge problem then but an abomination that is still with us today despite the passing of the convention that inspired new child protection laws in the Philippines and around the world.

 

I marched with Filipina activist Cecilia Flores-Oebanda and my friend and fellow child right’s activist Kailash Satyarthi of India who had campaigned and promoted non-violence action against child labour for many years for the children of Asia and in particular India. He was awarded in 2014 the Nobel Peace Prize along with Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan for their work “focusing attention on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain.” They promoted the rights of the child to be free from labor and to have an education.

 

At the Preda Foundation, our team had campaigned since its founding in1974 and continues to work to end all child labor especially the sexual exploitation and trafficking of children. For that work, we were honoured and recognized by the awarding of four nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and other human rights awards. These have helped to highlight the importance of standing against child exploitation which is the challenge and duty of all persons who recognize the rights of the child not to be exploited and abused and turned into commodities and dehumanized laborers especially as sex workers.

 

Twenty-two years after the convention was passed, we are still rescuing teenage girls from sex brothels and motels, sex traffickers and child sex abusers. The victim-survivors are broken and suffering as their dignity was taken from them. This is symbolized in Geneva by the huge 12 metres (39 feet) high sculpture of the “Broken Chair” in front of the Palace of Nations. It is a sculpture in wood (5.5 tons of it) by the Swiss artist Daniel Berset, made  by the carpenter Louis Genève. It is an ordinary chair with one leg broken that reminded us, as we marched under its shadow of the dark cloud of pain, of the broken lives of victims of violence. A reminder of our duty to always stand for and take action to prevent, rescue and heal the victims-survivors of exploitation and abuse.

 

 The dark cloud of deprivation, loss of education, family care and love and personal freedom and loss of dignity and self-confidence so necessary for the development of a child is taken away when the child is maltreated and abused.   The Philippine nation-wide survey of 2011 revealed that there were 2.1 million children aged five to 17 years of age in labor, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) government survey. This has surely increased today due to the economic decline during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey showed that 95 percent of them were in hazardous work, 65 percent of these children were aged 15 to 17 years old. Fifty-eight percent were working on farms, the rest divided to working in mines, on the streets, in sex work or as domestic laborers.

 

Every year  Preda Foundation rescued and saves dozens of abused children. In one of several operations four children were rescued from dehumanizing sex work aged 14 to 17 from sex hotels in Olongapo City. One of them, call her Julie, is only 15 years old. She had been groomed by “friendly” traffickers after she had suffered physical abuse and rejection by her mother and brother. She ran away from home and eventually went to stay in the house of the human traffickers who had groomed her and took her to meet male customers- local and foreign sex tourists- and they collected most of the money. One day, she was brought with several other girls to a sex hotel and there was a rescue of the victims by police and social workers and Julie and other girls were brought to the Preda Home for trafficked girl victims.

 

They were shocked at first at the abrupt arrest of their three traffickers who were taken away by the police and charged with human trafficking and put on trial. Julie and the other three children were brought to the Preda Foundation home. They were welcomed with respect and dignity and given personal needs and a nice bed and shower room and new clothes. They had never been treated with respect and their rights were explained to them and the opportunities to study, learn and have therapy to heal from all the abuse they had suffered since childhood.

 

They realized that for the first time in their lives, they were free of the abusive control of exploiting adults. They felt personal freedom and protected. They never had such freedom of choice before. They had medical treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and were cured.

 

Julie and the others with the guidance of the therapists, counsellors and social workers accepted the opportunity to study, learn and have Emotional Release Therapy. There in the padded therapy room they cried and shouted out all the hurt pains and anger of their lives since childhood. After months of therapy and a happy life in the community where they felt fully accepted, respected and part of a family of twenty children like themselves, they felt stronger, self-confident and empowered. They overcame the fear of their cruel parents and pimps and testified against them in court leading to convictions. They were free from the traffickers for the rest of their lives. Today they are stronger and learning a new livelihood so they can support themselves with a small business helped by the Preda Foundation. These are just a few of the 100,000 or so children trafficked into the sex business every year, according to Unicef. A shocking number of child laborers in the worst form of hazardous exploitation of children.

 

Working together with good people that are determined to end this child labor and with committed government officials that will implement the law, there is hope to greatly reduce the extent of the child labor and exploitation. 

Once More for the Children in Prison

 

It is astounding that developed civilized nations like Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Switzerland, South Africa, Hong Kong, Fiji and the United States have 10 years as the minimum age of criminal responsibility for children.  It’s a mark of shame. The United Nations Committee on Children’s Rights says that 16 is the ideal but 14 years of age for criminal responsibility is the minimum. Most people believe this is right. The United States has 11 years as the minimum age of criminal responsibility. It’s wrong that children as young as 10 are being tried as adults. A judge recently in Wisconsin, USA found a 10-year old girl charged with murder of a baby incompetent to be tried in a court of law.

 

The UN recommendation reflects current research in child development and neuroscience, which says that abstract reasoning skills are not fully developed in children aged 12 and 13. “State parties are encouraged to take note of recent scientific findings and to increase their minimum age accordingly, to at least 14 years of age,” the UN CRC said. 

 

It also recommended that “no child be deprived of liberty, unless there are genuine public safety or public health concerns” and that countries increase the minimum age of detention to 16. As child activist Greta Thunberg said, “Believe the science.”

 

Philippine law presently sets the minimum age of criminal responsibility at 15 years of age. However in a retrograde step, some members of the Philippine Congress and Senate want to lower the age to 12 years of age. Most sensible people oppose this move.  

 

The mentality of these congressmen and senators is that children as young as 12 have “criminal minds.” Some had wanted it to be reduced to nine years. They wrongly blame the children for the spread of dangerous drugs. They say without evidence that the children are working as couriers for drug syndicates whereas the evidence shows that many politicians are behind the drug distribution syndicates. Drugs earns money and money is power. There is even a drug war between the political dynasties, 12 mayors and seven vice mayors have been murdered in the past three years. In some cases, the drug syndicate is part of the political dynasty.

 

So this false claim against children is a smoke screen for corrupt, political criminal activity. It sensationalizes the issue, as if children are to be blamed for adult crimes and it is a narrative that conveniently captures the easily swayed feelings of the public and redirects it against the children. The politicians present themselves as knights in shining armor curbing drug distribution and protecting society.

 

The children are made the scapegoats for adult crime. The results so far is that the child prisons of local government are filled with young kids guilty of little more than stealing food in the market, sniffing glue, begging at street intersections or breaking the strict curfew hours because they can’t go home to be beaten and left hungry by violent parents.

 

Children commit in fact only 2 percent of crimes in the Philippines and they are rarely of a serious nature. Theft is the most frequent crime they commit. Their “crimes” are usually taking junks, metal scraps or plastic or cell phone to sell. They are abandoned, rejected by irresponsible guardians.

 

The runaways are surviving on the streets by their wits, sleeping in doorways or in carts and cannot find work. Every day, they need to eat at least once. It may be just one meal of “pag-pag,” the re-cooked leftover scraps of foods from the plates of the diners in restaurants.

 

They are arrested, without evidence or warrants, and jailed indefinitely and have no trial. If they are charged, it takes months or years for a hearing. They are pushed into small cells crowded together without beds in most cases and live in sub-human conditions. The most vulnerable are small boys 10 to 15 year-old. They are abused and bullied by the bigger inmates and almost never see family.

 

Some are abused and beaten by the guards, they claim. In Cebu the Operation Second Chance, a detention center with jail cells and 12-foot high walls, saw the escape of 12 teenage children a week ago. The intolerable conditions drove them to escape. Whereas, in the Preda Foundation New Dawn Home for children-at-risk and children in conflict with the law in Liloan, Cebu the children are free to choose. They can leave at any time but they choose to stay, learn, change and improve their lives for the future. They are treated with respect and dignity and live in good conditions with sports, non-formal education classes and outings.   

 

If you want to help change the lives of hundreds of these detained children, join us in our appeal to the good mayors of Metro Manila who really don’t know about these harsh conditions of life in their Bahay Pag-asa where children’s rights are being violated. The good mayors want to change their cities for the better and you can help them.

 

Gather a group of true Christians in the parish, in the neighborhood, in your club or among office mates, a student group of classmates and make a visit to the Bahay Pag-asa in your province or city. Instead of joining a fraternity, students should make or join a child rights advocacy group. The Bahay Pag-asa is usually near the city hall. Bring snacks for the kids behind bars and write to the mayor and invite him or her to visit the Bahay Pag-asa and send this article. 

 

Advise your mayor that there are national funds available for a new beautiful home for children for each highly-urbanized city and advise him or her to avail of it through the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council. Spread the word on social media. It will make your city more child-friendly and it will be a project that you, the people, the mayor and city council can be proud of. 

 

Read more on www.preda.org and visit the Preda Foundation Youtube channel.

Respect, Equality, Justice for Women and Children

It is two thousand and 19 years since the vital truth and principles of women’s and children’s rights and dignity were championed in the world. Today the struggle and campaigning for equality, rights, respect and human dignity of women goes on because the rights of women are not universally respected.

Despite laws to protect women and children, millions are still enslaved, abused, harassed, exploited and endure a lower status than men in many societies.They are quickly blamed for wrongdoing but the men are not. Many males are misogynists and consider themselves superior and entitled to dominate women.

The Story in the New Testament as told by John 8.1-11, was the inspired teacher, prophet, leader, that stood by an accused woman. He clearly objected to the humiliating revengeful threat to have the woman stoned to death, by asking who among the men accusing her, which of them had never sinned. They were ashamed of their guilt, dropped their stones, and left.  ”Where are they, woman, is there no one left to condemn you “? he asked  “No one Sir”. She answered.’ Well then, he said “I do not condemn you either…”

So respect, equality, justice and truth is what all people of good will need and deserve, especially women and children, we must strive to make that a reality.   

The Children of the Streets

Why and how are people, who do not know about human hardship and suffering, indifferent to helping the poor and brand 12 year-old children as criminals when they are just children, get elected to high offices? The reason is likely to be that they never suffered deprivation, hunger, and abandonment. They led privileged lives of entitlement and are mostly the children of rich political dynasties that seem to reign forever.  

  

They get elected because they have hundreds of millions of pesos to glad-hand voters. Politicians in the Philippines have dozens, some even hundreds of paid and unpaid people working on computers to influence the electorate. They do it through social media spreading fake news against their opponents to bolster their own images and to win elections.  What kind of a person is it who wants to brand a 12 year-old as a criminal? The answer is a politician who has no knowledge or interest in the social realities that drives children to survive alone or in gangs on the streets.

To justify passing a law reducing the age of criminal responsibility to 12 years of age and to blame the children for adult crimes, they claim the children have criminal minds. The children are living on the street and “steal” food and things, small stuff, to sell and get food. No one gives them food. They really need to eat, at least once a day, which is a human right. There is no free feeding program for street children.

Imagine yourself going without food for one or two days, no money, no job and you are just 12 years old. What would you do - beg, borrow, or steal? Hunger gives the deprived children and everyone the powerful urge and the right to survive. Taking food to survive is not a crime. It is a necessity. 

They are the unwanted throwaway children of the nation, ignored, and called “criminals”. They are beaten and driven out of their family, in the slums or in the lower middle class families by a violent father or a live-partner of their mother, who has no love for them and who abandons them. There are too many mouths to feed. Poverty is the root cause.

This reaction to brand the children as no-good, dangerous criminals deserving the full force of the law is because of the guilt, perhaps of some of the rich politicians and middle class well-off people. The politicians divert the minds and attention of the public away from their own corruption and crimes and blame the victims instead of themselves. They steal at an enormous scale, billions of pesos are taken by corrupt politicians every year. They can’t accept that they have created a most unequal society, with .0001 percent of the population owning 70 percent of the wealth. They cause millions of Filipinos to live in poverty without opportunity. 

That is why there are hundreds, if not thousands of street kids, now locked up in jails and detention centers unfit for human habitation and even dangerous for animals. Local politicians don’t care and Congress people mark them as criminals. That is why so many street children are easily lured into the clutches of human traffickers and sold to the government-approved sex bars and brothels and sold for sex to rich customers. Drug dealing is common and untouchable. Most crimes go unpunished and the real criminals never see the inside of a jail cell unlike the children. 

Most are stunted and a 15 year-old can look like a 10 year-old. The government agencies dedicated to help these children are the Department of Social Welfare and Development and its attached agency, the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council (JJWC). The JJWC report says that adults commit 98 percent of crimes and only 2 percent were done by minors and most are theft; and this according to police record in 2017.

Those who say the nation is being overwhelmed by a crime wave led by children are out of their mind, because they don’t read, think, study and learn the facts. The promoters of punishment for children say wrongly that the children are drug addicts, dealers and couriers. Yet the government statistics in 2018 show only 7 percent of the wrongful acts of children is drug use, mostly sniffing solvent. Thirty eight (38) percent of children who allegedly committed these wrongful acts were between 12 to 15 years old. 

Local Governments Units (LGU) fail to implement Republic Act 9344 to protect and help children in conflict with the law. The law says they must provide diversion and social assistance before subjecting children to formal legal proceedings and bringing them to court, as the JJWC says they should. In 2018, the JJWC officials visited all 55 operating Bahay Pag-asa facilities; by law there should be 140 such homes for children in conflict with the law. Tragically, 60 percent of LGUs do not provide homes for children in conflict with the law but lock them in jails; some even mix them with adult prisoners. 

Also, in 2016, the regional JJWC visited 319 jails/detention facilities and 474 minors were found in terrible conditions in jails. The JJWC was able to get 14 percent or 66 children released immediately to their parents.   

Yet, there are still 60 percent of local governments with no help for the children. They roam the streets or are locked in jails. They suffer bullying, hunger, loneliness and even sexual abuse inside the cells. They have no exercise, entertainment, or schooling. They are deprived of all their rights as children and now the Senate is going to approve a law that puts 12 year-old accused children in jail where they will be beaten and abused too.

We can’t let this happen and we must strive to convince the senators not to do it. It will be their lasting legacy that they allowed children to be hurt, punished, beaten, raped, and abused. Yes, Congressmen and Senators, that will be your legacy and your children and the world will remember it. 

Child Sexual Abuse in the Institutional Church

There are serious and profound changes taking place in the Catholic Church to acknowledge and prevent child sexual abuse by clerics and lay people, to prosecute the perpetrators and to heal the victims. It is the belated result of generations of historical clerical child sexual abuse and the denial and cover up of their crimes by some bishops and cardinals around the world. It has become a crisis for the church as an institution.

Pope Francis has approved recently a new law to protect child victims and prosecute any clerical suspects accused in the Vatican State. Before this, there was no such law protecting children in the Vatican. It is a model for others and is a zero-tolerance law. Every complaint of child abuse must be reported and investigated immediately.   

In the Philippines, the arrest and detention of a American Father Kenneth Hendricks ,78, in Naval, a town in Biliran province last December 5,2018 for allegedly sexually abusing dozens of boys has focused attention on the culture of silence, cover up and inaction by fellow clergy, officials and Catholic townspeople. 

The alleged crimes were first reported to the US authorities who carried out a quiet investigation and filed charges against Hendricks in Ohio where a judge issued an arrest warrant. 

The fact that no local people dared accuse the priest despite local knowledge and complaints by several alleged victims indicates the fear of retribution of going up against a priest of the Catholic church. That era of fear and impunity is coming to a close in many countries but not yet in the Philippines. 

Most cases of child sexual abuse by clergy are rarely exposed and Archbishop Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle says they are investigated internally. So no civil punishment for the abusers and no justice for the victims. Impunity reigns it seems and that will have to change.  

For some Catholics, the worldwide shame and widespread history of clerical child abuse has weakened and challenged their faith and some have even left the Church. The non-abusing clergy are deeply ashamed by the terrible crimes against children that many of them allowed to happen either by their ignorance, inaction or silence. They were afraid or ashamed to report a fellow priest and cowardly to protect the child victim. That silence is a form of consent. Now, dioceses have strict rules and regulations to report child abuse and prosecute the offender in civil courts.

Are we shocked by the serious wrongdoing by clergy, bishops and cardinals around the world? They are supposed to give good example of Christian living by a life of virtue, a love of justice and protecting children. But many of them have failed. Is our faith shaken, weakened and rendered useless? For some, the answer is yes but for others, no. Because their faith is not primarily belief in the Church as a human institution but in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and his Gospel values.

It is a time of challenge for all us Christian Catholics and especially bishops and priests to examine our faith and ask if it is faith in the person of Jesus and if we have a personal relationship with him. Do we have a strong commitment to his simple but profound teaching?

Is our faith in his moral principles, in the human dignity of every person? Do we believe and live out his values on social justice, human rights, compassion and love and especially in the innocence and protection of the child and the stranger? Does our faith express itself daily in action for justice and protection of the child and the stranger? If it doesn’t, then as St.James says, our so-called faith is dead. (Letter of James 2:26) 

The Church as founded by Jesus is a community. It is the People of God, all believers and non-believers of good-will gathered in the one faith and practice of what Jesus has taught and done and which we are called upon to imitate and follow his principled way of life.

As an institution, the Church is a human creation with a hierarchy, a chain of command, a bureaucracy, a system of law, discipline, rules and regulations and a sacramental practice from which we are told salvation flows. But faith in action is what brings us closer to Jesus Christ in daily life.

This institutional, very human Church has in many incidents betrayed Jesus and his teachings. From Chile, to Brazil, to the United States, Ireland, France, UK, Germany, Austria and elsewhere scandals of child sexual abuse and other serious failings of clergy and bishops are evident. Some have failed to listen to victims and respond immediately. They have failed to have compassion and care for child victims and get healing and justice for them.  Some priests and bishops hid the crimes, transferred priests, allowing them to abuse children again. That is a crime in itself.

Many bishops have resigned for their failure to act according to the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 18: 1-8. Jesus says a child is the most important in the Kingdom of God, not the adults. That kingdom is here on earth. Justice must be delivered for the child victim and Jesus said that a symbolic mill stone be tied around the neck of a convicted abuser and he or she be thrown into the ocean. Strong words indeed, yet Jesus underlines the innocence of children and how serious it is to abuse them. To accept and protect one is to accept him. That is why healing and justice are so important for victims of abuse.

The Care that Children Need

The vast majority of Filipinos love their children, they care for them, pamper and spoil them at times. They do everything to protect them and educate them, meet their needs and launch them on a career. There it seems to end for many. Love and care for children in general is not projected outside the extended family of the well off. It is clear the poor survive by helping each other stay alive. The dedicated few true Christians and Muslims work to help the abused and abandoned children but they are the few in a population of 107 million Filipinos. Human rights workers are suspect and risk their lives.

There are hundreds if not thousands of children in need of Good Samaritans. In the Philippines and elsewhere, there are wounded, hungry, lonely incarcerated children languishing in filthy sub-human jail cells. They are ignored, unknown and abandoned by the population in general and the church authorities and well-off politicians in particular.  

The Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council (JJWC) chaired by an undersecretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is working nonstop to try and change the attitudes, minds and hearts of local politicians and city councils to convince them to provide new dignified and proper homes for the children and not build more prison cells. But the Council is fighting an uphill battle against uncaring politicians who see youth and children in poverty and dire circumstances as pests and criminals to be punished.

These youth and children from the poverty-stricken parts of society are children at risk, abandoned and neglected and consequently become in conflict with the law. They need special protection, care and therapy and education. They are victims of physical and sexual abuse in their families or neighborhoods. The child protection law otherwise known as Republic Act 7610 supposedly protects them but the authorities mostly ignore it also.

Instead of care and protection, they are treated as criminals and jailed behind steel bars in sub-human conditions with no beds, exercise, counseling, therapy, sunlight, fresh air, education, recreation, proper food, family visits, justice or compassion. They are the throwaway children considered by government and society as useless human garbage. Some are as young as nine years old when jailed.

They are badly treated by irresponsible uncaring politicians as if they are the scum of the earth and yet they are all innocent good children. Under the law, they are not criminally liable once 15 and younger and if older it has be proven that they are responsible for wrongdoing. But due process for youth and some suspects is now more or less wanting in the Philippines.

Children are the most important in the world, we learn from Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 18: 1-8). Their tormentors and abusers must be brought to justice. Instead, the abusers are allowed to go on abusing and incarcerating innocent children. These gospel values to care for poor jailed children are generally ignored by church, by many children’s agencies and by society.

What the children deserve and need is to be freed, respected, helped, and encouraged, affirmed and supported. They are entitled to be housed in dignity, with justice, respect, given care and preparation for a productive life with education.

Instead, they are ignored by the corrupt greedy elite that live in sumptuous luxury uncaring for the suffering of the children. Witness the hardship and listen to their crying voices begging to be freed and reunited with their parents. Listen to the wailing as they lie on a cold hard concrete floor, hungry and sick and no one to help them.

Visit your local government’s so-called House of Hope or Bahay Pag-asa. There is supposed to be one in every city and province. There witness the inhumanity. It is a crime against children and humanity where their human rights are violated day and night in a continuous incarceration without end for alleged wrongs that have never been proven against them. The mayors and the governors have the duty and responsibility to provide the services and dignified care they need.

In most cases for kids behind bars, there is no official hearing, no interviews, no presumption of innocence. They get no legal aid, they suffer violation after violation of their rights. They are to be loved and not to be jailed and abused in the cells. They are not worthless animals like stray dogs picked up on the streets.

The younger ones are bullied, sexually and physically abused by the older ones and sometimes by the guards. Some small children are in cells with mentally challenged adults, which is a grave crime and against the law putting the children in grave danger. They live in fear and trembling of being sexually abused by the adults or being hurt if they complain or cry out.

Many but not all, local and national politicians and leaders consider them to be criminals. Some want to change the law so that nine-year-old hungry children will be held criminally liable and stand trial for taking a banana in the market to survive and live. This is known and witnessed by the social workers of the Preda Foundation who have appealed to the authorities to change the jails for proper homes. The children when rescued by the Preda Foundation tell us of what they suffered and endured. It is documented. To win justice, we even took a class action suit against politicians to the Ombudsman years ago to no avail.

Our home for some of these children we rescued is in the countryside and is almost full. There, they receive education freedom, therapy, sports, education, and a good happy life. This is possible for all the Filipino children in conflict with the law if only government officials will have a commitment to really help the children.