Innocence Denied

TO BE LEFT homeless and abandoned at 13 years old with a younger brother to provide for was too much for Angelina. Hungry and hopeless, begging food in a public park and nowhere to go, her spirits lifted when two women offered her a job.

Sex tourism

Angeles City, two hours north of Metro Manila, is the home of the most organised sex industry in the Philippines. Thousands of sex tourists from all over the world go there to look for cheap sex, much of it with under age minors. It has been estimated by UNICEF that 60,000 children are exploited annually in this business in the Philippines. Angelina arrived with the pimps in Angeles two years ago.
Having been told that she would be serving drinks, Angelina was put on the bar top with a dozen other young girls to dance in a bikini for customers. The Mamasan, her handler, saw that she got paid a small percentage for the drinks sold when a customer called her down to sit on his lap. It repelled Angelina, but she earned more money than she ever had in her entire life. In reality it was a pittance, but she felt she would be better able to care for her brother.
Then she was offered an increase if she would go 'bar-hopping' with a customer from overseas. She was promised that the customer wanted only to be seen with his trophy girl. She was there simply to enhance his image of himself as attractive to young women, and it would give him a sense of power and domination that he never had in his home country. In fact, many such clients have the expectation of sex, and evenings often end in local motels. For that, they normally make special deals with bar owners. Angelina was a virgin, a 'cherry girl', and a client would have to pay as much as $500.
The very night when she was to be paid for, a team of child rescuers led an elite team of federal police to raid the club. Angelina and four other children were rescued. Two foreign operators of the sex bar, an Australian and an American, and three pimps were arrested. Angelina and the girls were brought to the Preda Children's Home to start a new life and to rediscover their dignity and self esteem.

Rescuing children

The Preda Foundation was started in 1974 by Fr. Shay Cullen, an Irish priest of the Missionary Society of St. Columban. Preda stands for The People's Recovery Empowerment Development Assistance Foundation Inc. It is a charitable organisation, based in Olongapo City, and its main purpose is to promote and protect the Human Rights of the Filipino people, especially women and children. The main focus has been to assist the sexually-exploited and abused children, and provide them with an environment of acceptance and understanding in society. Preda also networks internationally to promote the rights of children.
The sex industry in the Philippines grew up around the former US Air Force base called Clarke. During the Vietnam War, the number of sex bars and clubs increased dramatically, and so did the prevalence of HIV-AIDS and many other sexually transmitted diseases. The surrounding communities were devastated as thousands of young girls were recruited into this dehumanising trade. In 1982 together with Alex Hermoso, Fr. Shay discovered and exposed a huge child sex business that was selling young children to the US military for sex. The local Filipino officials who made big money from the sex industry were angry and tried to have him deported and discredited. However, Fr. Shay won his legal cases one after another, but was continually harassed and threatened the more he exposed the evil trade in little children. When the US bases were voted out of the country in 1992, their sites were turned into economic development zones. International sex mafia moved in to the empty bars and clubs and invited sex tourists from all over the world to come and get anything they wanted. The sex mafia has tried many times to close the Preda centre, but failed.
The Preda centre has many social services that help street children and children in prison. The project provides a therapeutic home that helps heal sexually abused children and a Preda legal office pursues the offenders and brings them to justice. The Preda workers have uncovered international syndicates trafficking children, and have brought offenders to justice in Europe and North America with the help of the Interpol and national police officers. In 1999 Preda, through the International League of Action, was able to bring to justice a group of Norwegians who were trafficking children from a town in the Philippines to Oslo for sexual abuse. The youngest of these children were six and seven years old. Members of this ring are now on trial.
Preda personnel were invited on two occasions to the Philippine Senate Committee on Youth, Children and Family, to give facts and opinions towards helping with the draft of a new bill to protect children against the expanding menace of child pornography, especially over the Internet and through mobile phones. Filipino children have been forced or lured, even by parents, to engage in sexual acts before a live camera connected to the world wide Internet. Customers pay by credit card, and can order sexual acts by phone.

Roots of abuse

A root cause of the abuse of children is poverty, according to Shay.  He feels that the vast number of street children in the world - around 100 million - is the result of greed and political irresponsibility which allow an unjust global economic structure to dominate the planet and cause the greatest wealth and poverty ever known. Children are amongst the most vulnerable victims, whether as child labourers, child soldiers, or child prostitutes. Street children are the poorest of the poor, and they are the HIV-AIDS victims of the future.
For many years Shay has involved himself in initiatives which address the longer term problem of poverty. He is one of the early founders of the Fair Trade Movement in the Philippines, and was an early board member of the International Federation of Alternative Trade. Thousands of Filipinos benefit from the Preda Fair Trade organisation. The export of dried mangos is perhaps one of the biggest success stories, and this Preda product can be found in many supermarkets in the West. Thousands of farmers benefit because of this export, getting interest-free loans, advice and training on organic methods of production. They receive the best prices and the volume of sales has almost eliminated the buying cartels that dominated the lives of the poor farmers and kept prices low. Today prosperity has come to the farmers and they remain in their villages. This has reduced greatly the migration of people to the cities. In this way the alleviation of poverty prevents the prostitution of impoverished and slum dwelling children.
Shay was a delegate to the conference drafting the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Helsinki during 1989. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001 and 2003, and has won numerous other awards for his work. He continues to lobby for all countries to co-operate, and especially for developing countries to address this serious situation of child pornography and cyber-sex. The impunity of the internet server providers who host child pornography sites and enable others to access deviant materials on their servers, he says, must be held responsible when they are perfectly well aware of the content. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child - which every country except the United States has ratified - explicitly makes illegal the exploitative use of children in pornographic performances and materials.

Children first

According to Cullen, there are about two million child prostitutes in the modern world today. Many of them have been abused within their families, notes Cullen. We have to see that domestic abuse of children is one of the root causes of child prostitution, he says, and it is from the home that children become runaways and run into recruiters who offer them money, food and protection. Some children have become involved in the sex trade with their parents' approval, and use the money to help their families.
Cullen says that 90 percent of child sexual abusers are male, the type that would sexually abuse their own daughters, even their sons. They see their children as something of their own they can use anyway they want, or as something they can sell. He says that one in seven Filipino children are victims of sexual abuse. How can human beings do this? asked Cullen. We had to send a two-year-old for three hours of surgery to repair his body after he was raped. He told a conference recently that, Children are not property of their parents or the state, and have as many rights as adults have. 

BIOGRAPHY: FR. SHAY CULLEN
When Columban priest Father Shay Cullen arrived in the Philippines in 1969, he was sent to Subic Bay, where there was an American naval base. Walking along the street one day, he was stopped by a man who thought he was a sailor.
He asked me, 'Do you want a girl?' Fr Shay recalls. I told him, 'No.' Then he said, 'Ah, you want a little girl. How about this one?' And he showed me two little kids, no more than 11 years old. I was really devastated. I couldn't believe what was going on.
In response to the problem, Fr Shay set up the Preda Foundation in Olongapo City in 1974 with the specific aim of protecting children from sexual abuse. With the help of others, he began to rescue abused children and give them back happiness through therapy and education. For his efforts he has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The problem of child abuse has always been there, but it's growing now because child pornography is spreading over the Internet, Fr. Shay says. This is a worldwide problem. It's the third largest business in the world after arms dealing and drugs, and you can be sure it's going to expand.
More details of the work of Preda can be found on www.preda.org