Manila:
Bothered by persistent reports of parents forcing their own children to engage in cybersex, a Filipino lawmaker called on other countries to help the Philippines to put an end to this illegal trade.
“We need to find more ways to immediately combat cybersex because evidently, it is affecting the very core of our society, which is the family,” Senator Loren Legarda said.
Legarda made the statement two days after agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) with assistance from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the International Justice Mission, swooped down at a house in Taguig City and rescued two children from their own mother.
The matriarch had been caught in the act of prodding her children to perform lewd acts online. One of the minor-aged girls was caught in a state of undressing herself as her American client watched using an Internet cam.
Legarda said such abuse of children, let alone technology, is unacceptable in a society built on a foundation of moral values.
“Parents are supposed to teach their children good values, but why are there mothers and fathers who willingly sell their children online and make them perform lewd acts in exchange for money? Nothing, not even poverty, can justify such acts,” said Legarda.
Last year, similar home-based cybersex operations were uncovered in Central Philippines’ Cebu.
Legarda said while such operations take place in the Philippines, such illicit activities would not thrive if there is no demand from other countries. For this reason, she called on the government to intensify cooperation with foreign-based agencies such as the International Justice Mission.
“Strengthened cooperation and improved coordination of the NBI with international police groups have led to previous successful operations against cyber pornography. We must sustain these gains and ensure the proper implementation of the Expanded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act to combat this crime,” she said.
Legarda had sponsored of the Expanded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, which makes it illegal to harbouring a child for purposes of prostitution or production of pornographic materials.
“Furthermore, the crime is not plain trafficking but qualified trafficking when the offender is the parent, guardian or someone who exercises authority over the child,” she said that under the law, any individual found guilty of qualified trafficking faces the prospect of spending his or her who life in jail.
Earlier, Justice Secretary Leila M. De Lima admitted that: “No country can address the phenomenon of trafficking on its own.”
“When one jurisdiction supports and mirrors another jurisdiction’s efforts, we expand each other’s reach to reduce if not obliterate, the egregious violations of these predators,” she said in a speech last March at the 4th Association of Southeast Asian Nations Workshop on Criminal Justice Responses to Trafficking in Persons held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
De Lima has sought the help of the country’s telephone companies to help fight the proliferation of cybersex websites featuring women and minors in sex shows for a fee.
Like its bigger, more established relative in the underground trade, drugs, cybersex is a global menace that earns billions of dollars annually.
