A two-year study jointly conducted by the London-based organization Justice and Care, De La Salle University, and Dublin University has concluded that the cycle of online sexual abuse affecting minors in the country does not thrive only within families, but also among communities vulnerable to such criminal activities that supposedly promise a lucrative “cottage industry.”
The study, titled “Facilitation of Online Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children (OSAEC) in the Philippines,” noted that a “strong contagion effect” prevailed in communities with “conduits” who introduce and train potential perpetrators as well as victims about OSAEC activities.
“While… OSAEC activity has its roots in economic deprivation and poverty… new facilitators being actively inducted to OSAEC activity and mentored by friends, neighbors, or family members who were involved in the crime,” said the report.
Worse, minors exposed to such violence in their early years within their own neighborhood “grew up to engage in OSAEC activities themselves,” the study said.
Angelo Tapales, executive director of the Council for the Welfare of Children, said the Philippines remained a “hot spot” of online and offline sexual exploitation of minors, with more than 17,680 cases of child rights violations reported last year to the Women and Children Protection Center of the Philippine National Police.
The study found the most “facilitators” of online sexual abuse were female family members or a “trusted” friend or neighbor, usually 20-25 years old. Their victims were “supplied” to adult cybersex and dating websites and online chat apps whose consumers were usually foreigners. The children join “prerecorded or live camera shows,” while others were hired as “models.”
Convicted perpetrators interviewed for the report have confirmed this pattern of sexual abuse across generations.
These crimes take place in “tight lipped” communities, where it is rarely reported to the authorities, as the expected income loss and trauma caused by the arrest or imprisonment of family or close friends hinders victims from reaching out to the authorities.
The report recommended government support for non-offending family members of OSAEC survivors, as well as “kinship care,” or a form of alternative child care for minors unable to live with parents following their traumatic experiences, which could be further strengthened and institutionalized in child protection and adoption programs.
In a country where the young are victimized by the ones they are supposed to trust, government has to do better when it comes to providing the protection that is desperately needed. OSAEC thrives not only because of poverty, but also because victims who have already lost so much are unable to get help without losing even more. As long as they have nowhere else to run, they sadly have no choice but to endure the abuse and exploitation perpetrated or enabled by family and close friends.*
