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MANILA, Philippines - It was a police operation that rescued sixteen-year old Marina (not her real name) and at least a dozen other girls from a suspected “cyber sex den" in Bacoor, Cavite, a few months ago. Weighed down by mixed feelings of relief, guilt and shame, Marina bowed her head and covered her face with her long hair as she broke into tears.
She felt relieved that after a couple of months, she would no longer have to oblige herself to perform sexual acts in front of the camera for customers abroad. But she felt guilty and ashamed, blaming herself for letting it happen in exchange for a few thousands pesos that she sent to her family in the province.
“Di ko maintindihan ang nararamdaman ko (I can’t understand what I’m feeling)," she said as she narrated how she fell victim to what the police call child pornography.
Marina said she was recruited in her home province as a waitress only to find out later that there was no eatery or restaurant waiting for her. With no one to run to and no resources at hand to make a getaway, she was forced to stay and work at the sex joint.
Adding insult to injury, some media reports referred to Marina and the other girls not as "rescued victims," but as "arrested suspects."
Marina is just one of many Filipino children who are pushed into child pornography, a malady that has been exploiting girls and boys as young as five years old for some time now.
The Center for Integrative and Development Studies of the University of the Philippines (UP CIDS) says the child pornography industry in the Philippines is widespread and systematic than imagined.
For lack of local legal material to define child pornography, UP CIDS adopts the definition set by the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act of Ireland in 1997. The definition is comprehensive, clear-cut and leaves little room for misinterpretation.
The Act states that child pornography refers to any audio visual or audio representation that shows a person who is or is depicted as being a child and who is engaged in or is depicted as being engaged in explicit sexual activity, or whose dominant characteristic is the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of the genital or anal region of a child.
The Center says it is clear from this definition that images of adults who pretend to be children are considered child pornography. The definition is not also limited to a particular technology that produces the forms of child pornography.
“This is important in that technology such as the Internet, computers, and other digital technologies are playing big roles in the production and dissemination of child pornography," it says in its 2004 report commissioned by the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Out of control
With new technologies, which include mobile phones, becoming affordable and accessible, the production, storage, and dissemination of child pornographic images are faster and more efficient.
The Optical Media Board (OMB) believes that child pornography is now “out of control" in the Philippines where digital technologies have long extended its arms to the streets where pirated copies of DVDs and CDs showing pornographic images are openly sold.
The Optical Media Board, tasked to ensure the protection and promotion of intellectual property rights, reveal that the inventory of pirated DVDs and CDs it has confiscated shows that 25 to 30 percent of these are pornographic, and that up to 40 percent of these pornographic videos involve children. Most of the children are Asians and brown-skinned, and by physiological features are likely Filipinos.
Edu Manzano, OMB chairman, says the campaign against child pornography does not fall within the ambit of the OMB’s charter, but pornographic images of children are too “offensive, wicked and nauseating" to ignore, and are “indescribably worse" than that of adult pornography.
The materials don’t only depict children being in a state of undress or engaged in erotic poses. Manzano says there are images portraying sexual activities between a child and another child. There are also those with an adult and children, and there are even those with children and animals.
“Some are extreme sexual activities that even adult couples won’t normally want to engage in," Manzano says.
From the children’s facial expression, he says, a viewer can easily surmise the kind of suffering and pain they go through as they are filmed.
“I have made it my personal advocacy to actively lobby against child pornography," says Manzano who has been an active partner of religious groups and child and women advocates in the campaign versus child pornography.
Multibillion-dollar industry
Child pornography is a multibillion-dollar industry, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States. It is also considered one of the fastest growing criminal segments on the Internet where approximately one-fifth of all pornography is child pornography.
The Philippines may have been among the biggest sources of online child pornography.
It has become a “booming" industry in the country, says Chief Supt. Yolanda Tanigue, director of the Women and Children’s Concern Division of the Philippine National Police.
She says the rising levels of poverty have propelled the growth of online child pornography in the country, making it very easy for syndicates to set up a cyber-sex den and to entice poor parents to bring their kids as porn “talents."
With a capital of only 50,000 pesos (about US$1,000) and an Internet connection, any businessman can set up a cyber sex den in a small condominium. This is too effortless for an operator who can earn at least US$100,000 dollars a day.
It doesn’t take much to produce a full-length child porn film. All it takes is about 500,000 pesos (US$10,200) to do it here. Parents are already happy with the 40,000 pesos they get for their children's job.
These suspected cyber sex joints are spread out in Metro Manila, Cebu, Davao City and Angeles City in Pampanga. Most of these are run by foreigners and some by Filipinos themselves.
While credit card companies have helped Irish police crack open child porn syndicates in Ireland, the Philippine police see it as a real challenge here, claiming that they have not received the same support from Philippine Internet service providers and credit card firms.
The Credit Card Association of the Philippines (CCAP), however, argues that even if it wanted to, it cannot do anything to clamp down credit card users who avail themselves of child pornography.
Beth Legarda, CCAP executive director, claims that people who patronize and purchase pornographic materials via the Internet are not cardholders of local credit card companies.
“They are foreigners who use international credit cards. We cannot locate their connectivity in our systems."
She assures that based on records of local credit card companies, none of their cardholders are found to be either merchants or buyers of child pornography materials sourced from the Internet.
“But if there would be police investigations, we couldn’t help but require legal documents like a court order from the police before we allow them to look into the transactions of our cardholder who is being investigated. It’s an issue of privacy that we have to consider," Legarda says.She felt relieved that after a couple of months, she would no longer have to oblige herself to perform sexual acts in front of the camera for customers abroad. But she felt guilty and ashamed, blaming herself for letting it happen in exchange for a few thousands pesos that she sent to her family in the province.
“Di ko maintindihan ang nararamdaman ko (I can’t understand what I’m feeling)," she said as she narrated how she fell victim to what the police call child pornography.
Marina said she was recruited in her home province as a waitress only to find out later that there was no eatery or restaurant waiting for her. With no one to run to and no resources at hand to make a getaway, she was forced to stay and work at the sex joint.
Adding insult to injury, some media reports referred to Marina and the other girls not as "rescued victims," but as "arrested suspects."
Marina is just one of many Filipino children who are pushed into child pornography, a malady that has been exploiting girls and boys as young as five years old for some time now.
The Center for Integrative and Development Studies of the University of the Philippines (UP CIDS) says the child pornography industry in the Philippines is widespread and systematic than imagined.
For lack of local legal material to define child pornography, UP CIDS adopts the definition set by the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act of Ireland in 1997. The definition is comprehensive, clear-cut and leaves little room for misinterpretation.
The Act states that child pornography refers to any audio visual or audio representation that shows a person who is or is depicted as being a child and who is engaged in or is depicted as being engaged in explicit sexual activity, or whose dominant characteristic is the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of the genital or anal region of a child.
The Center says it is clear from this definition that images of adults who pretend to be children are considered child pornography. The definition is not also limited to a particular technology that produces the forms of child pornography.
“This is important in that technology such as the Internet, computers, and other digital technologies are playing big roles in the production and dissemination of child pornography," it says in its 2004 report commissioned by the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Out of control
With new technologies, which include mobile phones, becoming affordable and accessible, the production, storage, and dissemination of child pornographic images are faster and more efficient.
The Optical Media Board (OMB) believes that child pornography is now “out of control" in the Philippines where digital technologies have long extended its arms to the streets where pirated copies of DVDs and CDs showing pornographic images are openly sold.
The Optical Media Board, tasked to ensure the protection and promotion of intellectual property rights, reveal that the inventory of pirated DVDs and CDs it has confiscated shows that 25 to 30 percent of these are pornographic, and that up to 40 percent of these pornographic videos involve children. Most of the children are Asians and brown-skinned, and by physiological features are likely Filipinos.
Edu Manzano, OMB chairman, says the campaign against child pornography does not fall within the ambit of the OMB’s charter, but pornographic images of children are too “offensive, wicked and nauseating" to ignore, and are “indescribably worse" than that of adult pornography.
The materials don’t only depict children being in a state of undress or engaged in erotic poses. Manzano says there are images portraying sexual activities between a child and another child. There are also those with an adult and children, and there are even those with children and animals.
“Some are extreme sexual activities that even adult couples won’t normally want to engage in," Manzano says.
From the children’s facial expression, he says, a viewer can easily surmise the kind of suffering and pain they go through as they are filmed.
“I have made it my personal advocacy to actively lobby against child pornography," says Manzano who has been an active partner of religious groups and child and women advocates in the campaign versus child pornography.
Multibillion-dollar industry
Child pornography is a multibillion-dollar industry, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States. It is also considered one of the fastest growing criminal segments on the Internet where approximately one-fifth of all pornography is child pornography.
The Philippines may have been among the biggest sources of online child pornography.
It has become a “booming" industry in the country, says Chief Supt. Yolanda Tanigue, director of the Women and Children’s Concern Division of the Philippine National Police.
She says the rising levels of poverty have propelled the growth of online child pornography in the country, making it very easy for syndicates to set up a cyber-sex den and to entice poor parents to bring their kids as porn “talents."
With a capital of only 50,000 pesos (about US$1,000) and an Internet connection, any businessman can set up a cyber sex den in a small condominium. This is too effortless for an operator who can earn at least US$100,000 dollars a day.
It doesn’t take much to produce a full-length child porn film. All it takes is about 500,000 pesos (US$10,200) to do it here. Parents are already happy with the 40,000 pesos they get for their children's job.
These suspected cyber sex joints are spread out in Metro Manila, Cebu, Davao City and Angeles City in Pampanga. Most of these are run by foreigners and some by Filipinos themselves.
While credit card companies have helped Irish police crack open child porn syndicates in Ireland, the Philippine police see it as a real challenge here, claiming that they have not received the same support from Philippine Internet service providers and credit card firms.
The Credit Card Association of the Philippines (CCAP), however, argues that even if it wanted to, it cannot do anything to clamp down credit card users who avail themselves of child pornography.
Beth Legarda, CCAP executive director, claims that people who patronize and purchase pornographic materials via the Internet are not cardholders of local credit card companies.
“They are foreigners who use international credit cards. We cannot locate their connectivity in our systems."
She assures that based on records of local credit card companies, none of their cardholders are found to be either merchants or buyers of child pornography materials sourced from the Internet.
Philippines, the pearl of the Orient
