Child pornography remains prevalent in the Philippines

SOME three years after the passaage of Republic Act 9775, or the Anti-Child Pornography Law, organizations devoted to curbing and raising awareness about child pornography remain convinced that such form of sexual exploitation of children remains prevalent in the country.

Ysrael Diloy, an advocacy and training officer of Stairway Foundation Inc., a Mindoro-based research and learning center on children’s rights, noted that there are currently no reliable statistics on the prevalence of child pornography.

Diloy, however, noted, “Although there are no reliable statistics available to date to reveal the whole extent of child pornography in the country, because the issue of child pornography is under-reported, anecdotal experiences whenever Stairway Foundation conducts its online safety and anti-child pornography sessions tell us that there is a rise in cases of child pornography.”

Meanwhile, Danica Castillo, the project development staff of Akap-Bata Philippines, also a children’s rights advocacy group, said that abject poverty continues to cause children to be victimized by such form of sexual exploitation.

Castillo said, “Child pornography is a poverty-driven crime and conditions right now leave the people with few choices to survive. Because of these factors, child pornography remains prevalent even if it’s illegal.”

Conditions in the country, according to Castillo, remain ideal not only for child pornography, but also for child prostitution.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) earlier revealed that the Philippines ranks fourth among countries with the most number of prostituted children.

Citing government data, it estimated that anywhere about 60,000 to 600,000 street children are victims of prostitution.

A Unicef-commissioned study of the Psychological Trauma Program of the University of the Philippines conducted in 2005, moreover, also estimated that prostitution may be the fourth-largest source of the country’s gross national product (GNP, the total value of goods and services produced in a country in a year.

Meanwhile, according to statistics culled from different news organizations by the website familysafemedia.com, the Philippines in 2006 posted a $1-billion revenue from the production of different kinds of pornography.

Consequently, the Unicef noted, “Child pornography has become a big-time business all over the world, all at the expense of children.”

Prime destination

The Philippines, indeed, has long been considered a child pornographer’s haven.

According to the Unicef-commissioned study authored by Arnie Trinidad, child pornography in the Philippines could be traced to the 1970s when American GIs during the Vietnam War scattered to different countries in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, for rest and recreation.

The study also noted that child pornography experienced a “boom” during the 1970s

Stricter laws in the United States and Europe, however, prompted pornographers to turn toward countries with lax laws such as the Philippines, Trinidad, in his study, explained.

Trinidad, citing a previous study, revealed that pedophiles tend to collect erotic pictures or videos of children even in a non-sexual context, nude pictures of children, and then, at the extreme, pictures or videos of children that are explicitly sexual.

Producers of child pornography, the study noted, often enter the country as tourists or connive with locals for the production, taking advantage of the easy access to the Internet and technology to disseminate images or videos.

Conditions of extreme poverty, meanwhile, make the lives of child pornographers easier.

Luring children

According to Castillo, child pornographers scout their victims usually in very poor communities.

“From the reports we received, child pornography producers usually have foreigners as financers. Our country is also very lax when it comes to welcoming foreigners. Visas are not needed to enter and stay in our country up to three months which makes transactions very easy,” she also noted.

“They usually talk to the parents and pay in advance. They usually use deceptive tactics. Either they tell them that their children will work as maids or as factory workers. From there, the child is left without a choice but to go with them,” Castillo said.

She added, “Sometimes, older children, usually in high school, willingly approach the perpetrators because they are so poor they are left with no choice.”

In the cited Unicef-commissioned study, Trinidad observed that the perpetrators would sometimes expose a child to pornography to desensitize the child to sexual acts and consider sexual engagements at their age to be normal.

Diloy, meanwhile, lamented that many children subjected to such exploitation as well as parents consider pornography as the “lesser evil” compared to prostitution than “contact child sexual abuse.”

Castillo also explained, “[Children] think that child pornography is more marangal [dignified] and safer than actual prostitution. They said they are safer from STIs and STDs and that they only get to show their bodies. Their clients cannot touch or penetrate them that’s why think this approach is relatively more dignified.”

Challenges

According to Diloy, there has been marked improvement in government efforts to curb child pornography in the country.

Most of the efforts he cited were in the form of forming the necessary institutional mechanisms to run after producers or possessors of child pornography.

Diloy said, “There have been improvements generally, whether they are in government or with the non-government sector. From the government side, the establishment of an inter-agency council against child pornography, of which, we are a member, is a concrete step toward realizing a national effort in order to address the problem of child pornography thru coordination of different government and non-government agencies.”

He also cited the establishment of the Philippine National Police- Criminal Investigation and Detection Group’s AngelNet project, which serves as the law enforcement arm of the police on technology-related crimes against children, including child pornography.

Diloy said this development addresses the reporting component for such crimes.

The children’s rights advocate added that such institutional mechanisms should go hand in hand with raising awareness and breaking the culture of silence which, he said, remains to be the toughest challenge in curbing child pornography.

“Our perspective is that the biggest challenge is the general taboo surrounding the issue of child sexual abuse, exploitation and pornography. As long as people do not talk about the issue openly, are not aware, and do not make a stand against it, the culture of silence surrounding the issue would be the biggest challenge in curbing child pornography,” according to Diloy.

Diloy said, “It takes a protective community in order to report child pornography, and send a message to the producers and consumers of child porn that these communities will not tolerate crimes like these against children.”

Castillo said that addressing the root cause of child pornography would take a longest time to address.

She, however, added, “We are optimistic that through the collective action of the people, it will be addressed.” –FRANK LLOYD TIONGSON REPORTER, Manila Times