Child prostitution and family values
Child prostitution and family values
Updated 03:27am (Mla time) Nov 12, 2004
By Rina Jimenez-David
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the November 12, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
WHEN the Optical Media Board, which he chairs, first started raiding shops selling pirated VCDs and DVDs, Edu Manzano disclosed in his radio show "Pasada Sais-trenta Sabado" over dzMM, they would find many discs containing child pornography, but mainly from foreign sources.
But he was shocked to discover that in recent raids "we have found more and more evidence of child porn, so that up to 40 percent of all the materials we confiscate now consists of child pornography." Even more shocking and disheartening, he noted, is that an increasing number of these sex videos with children as subjects are made in the Philippines, with Filipino children.
Sen. Jamby Madrigal, who was also a guest in the show, gave testimony to this growing business. Joining a raid on a facility in Angeles, Pampanga, offering cybersex with child "actors," the senator said they found boys and girls, in various stages of dress and undress, prepubescents among them, in cubicles with computers and video cameras. The raiding party also found a number of "sex toys," including dildos, which the children were being asked to use by their customers who would log on for a fee.
Indeed, the Philippines is said to be fast becoming known as one of the primary sources of child pornography in the world, though many of the production houses here are owned by foreigners who use their international networks to market the sex videos.
I don't know if anyone has bothered to do empirical research, but cybersex could be the fastest-growing segment of the sex industry in this country. All around the country, I'm told, young women, sometimes accompanied by their parents, regularly drop by Internet cafes, enter curtained-off cubicles and there spend hours engaging in cybersex with customers who pay them to undress and even engage in self-pleasure all the while being caught on live streaming video.
"Sometimes, the mothers are even the ones encouraging their daughters to show more flesh," a local leader in Cebu told me. "The more daring one is, apparently, the higher the payment. And the mothers tell me they see no harm in it since their daughters are not 'touched' anyway."
Apparently, none of these mothers and daughters realize that once an image is captured, it can be stored forever and re-broadcast anywhere in the world.
* * *
NOT surprising then is the finding of a study on child prostitution that revealed that "family and close friends sometimes help to recruit children for prostitution," with the recruiters reasoning that they are simply "helping" the children.
The report, put together by the advocacy group End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (Ecpat), contained interviews with 74 former and active child prostitutes around the country who recounted how they first entered the sex industry.
According to a news report, "most recruiters initially told the children they would be getting jobs as domestic helpers, factory workers or entertainers. But they later pressured the children into prostitution, sometimes forcing them to take drugs and often denying them adequate food, sleep and leisure time." While some of the recruiters confessed to feelings of guilt, they often justified their actions by claiming that they merely wanted to help the child and the child's family keep a step ahead of starvation and abject poverty.
But, as the study found, the recruiters also stood to make considerable profit from trading in children. Commissions could range from P500 to P4,000 per child.
An interesting finding of the Ecpat study was that many of the children recruited into prostitution entered sex work willingly because of "(their) perceived obligation to support the family." The children, overwhelmingly female, were also found to have had "dysfunctional, poverty-stricken, rural families" with some of them "having been abused by parents or siblings in the past."
All of which merely underscores the assertion of women's and children's advocates that the problem of child prostitution-and its adjuncts child pornography and trafficking-cannot be addressed only through law enforcement or legislation, although these, of course, would help.
* * *
THE REALITY is that the Philippines already has one of the most comprehensive and stringent laws against child prostitution. And yet, apart from the problem of spotty implementation, the reason the number of children drawn into prostitution continues to increase despite the law is that victims are too often unwilling to pursue cases against their victimizers. And a major reason for their unwillingness is that oftentimes the recruiters, if not the pimps of the children, are their parents, who argue that they are doing it only for the family's survival.
I would think the root of the problem is not poverty, for there is no guarantee that if these parents were better off, they would be able to resist the temptation of "easy" money. Call it a clich‚, but I think the problem is one of values, particularly the "value" parents and families put on children, seeing offspring as their "property" whom they can exploit as they wish.
Still very common is the thinking that children, but especially daughters, are obliged to their parents, born with the responsibility to "pay back" their parents for the privilege of being born and raised, even if it means paying with their virtue, well-being and even their futures.
Our social institutions have the duty, I think, to drum into the heads of parents that the obligations run the other way, that raising our children into healthy adults is our obligation and privilege, and that exploiting a child, even your own, is a crime.
Updated 03:27am (Mla time) Nov 12, 2004
By Rina Jimenez-David
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the November 12, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
WHEN the Optical Media Board, which he chairs, first started raiding shops selling pirated VCDs and DVDs, Edu Manzano disclosed in his radio show "Pasada Sais-trenta Sabado" over dzMM, they would find many discs containing child pornography, but mainly from foreign sources.
But he was shocked to discover that in recent raids "we have found more and more evidence of child porn, so that up to 40 percent of all the materials we confiscate now consists of child pornography." Even more shocking and disheartening, he noted, is that an increasing number of these sex videos with children as subjects are made in the Philippines, with Filipino children.
Sen. Jamby Madrigal, who was also a guest in the show, gave testimony to this growing business. Joining a raid on a facility in Angeles, Pampanga, offering cybersex with child "actors," the senator said they found boys and girls, in various stages of dress and undress, prepubescents among them, in cubicles with computers and video cameras. The raiding party also found a number of "sex toys," including dildos, which the children were being asked to use by their customers who would log on for a fee.
Indeed, the Philippines is said to be fast becoming known as one of the primary sources of child pornography in the world, though many of the production houses here are owned by foreigners who use their international networks to market the sex videos.
I don't know if anyone has bothered to do empirical research, but cybersex could be the fastest-growing segment of the sex industry in this country. All around the country, I'm told, young women, sometimes accompanied by their parents, regularly drop by Internet cafes, enter curtained-off cubicles and there spend hours engaging in cybersex with customers who pay them to undress and even engage in self-pleasure all the while being caught on live streaming video.
"Sometimes, the mothers are even the ones encouraging their daughters to show more flesh," a local leader in Cebu told me. "The more daring one is, apparently, the higher the payment. And the mothers tell me they see no harm in it since their daughters are not 'touched' anyway."
Apparently, none of these mothers and daughters realize that once an image is captured, it can be stored forever and re-broadcast anywhere in the world.
* * *
NOT surprising then is the finding of a study on child prostitution that revealed that "family and close friends sometimes help to recruit children for prostitution," with the recruiters reasoning that they are simply "helping" the children.
The report, put together by the advocacy group End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (Ecpat), contained interviews with 74 former and active child prostitutes around the country who recounted how they first entered the sex industry.
According to a news report, "most recruiters initially told the children they would be getting jobs as domestic helpers, factory workers or entertainers. But they later pressured the children into prostitution, sometimes forcing them to take drugs and often denying them adequate food, sleep and leisure time." While some of the recruiters confessed to feelings of guilt, they often justified their actions by claiming that they merely wanted to help the child and the child's family keep a step ahead of starvation and abject poverty.
But, as the study found, the recruiters also stood to make considerable profit from trading in children. Commissions could range from P500 to P4,000 per child.
An interesting finding of the Ecpat study was that many of the children recruited into prostitution entered sex work willingly because of "(their) perceived obligation to support the family." The children, overwhelmingly female, were also found to have had "dysfunctional, poverty-stricken, rural families" with some of them "having been abused by parents or siblings in the past."
All of which merely underscores the assertion of women's and children's advocates that the problem of child prostitution-and its adjuncts child pornography and trafficking-cannot be addressed only through law enforcement or legislation, although these, of course, would help.
* * *
THE REALITY is that the Philippines already has one of the most comprehensive and stringent laws against child prostitution. And yet, apart from the problem of spotty implementation, the reason the number of children drawn into prostitution continues to increase despite the law is that victims are too often unwilling to pursue cases against their victimizers. And a major reason for their unwillingness is that oftentimes the recruiters, if not the pimps of the children, are their parents, who argue that they are doing it only for the family's survival.
I would think the root of the problem is not poverty, for there is no guarantee that if these parents were better off, they would be able to resist the temptation of "easy" money. Call it a clich‚, but I think the problem is one of values, particularly the "value" parents and families put on children, seeing offspring as their "property" whom they can exploit as they wish.
Still very common is the thinking that children, but especially daughters, are obliged to their parents, born with the responsibility to "pay back" their parents for the privilege of being born and raised, even if it means paying with their virtue, well-being and even their futures.
Our social institutions have the duty, I think, to drum into the heads of parents that the obligations run the other way, that raising our children into healthy adults is our obligation and privilege, and that exploiting a child, even your own, is a crime.
posted by Dante at 1:43 PM
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