Child defenders on trial, abusers go free
By Fr. Shay Cullen - Manila Times
The distraught weeping mother came begging for help. “My 10-month-old son has been abducted, he will be sold for adoption, please save my little Pedro,” she pleaded with me. Immediately Robert Garcia, the Preda legal officer, was on to the case and planning a rescue, just one more of dozens carried out by Preda child defenders day and night.
The hundreds of children that are reported missing every month have been trafficked into the sex industry or sold for illegal adoption, according to government social workers. They are overwhelmed to the point of despair by the sheer volume of trafficked persons in the Philippines.
The teenagers are sold as sex slaves here and abroad under the cover of employing them as domestic helpers or waitresses. When they arrive in the destination country they disappear and are prostituted. As many as 63 trafficked children given to the social welfare service in Britain are reported missing, kidnapped from the children’s homes, no doubt.
In the Philippines, children like these are sold to bars and clubs. Unicef estimates that at least 60,000 to 100,000 children are sold every year into some kind of sex slavery or exploitation in the Philippines. The Preda child defenders have saved dozens of kids, some as young as 13 years old, from pimps, traffickers and sex bars and give them a home and a future. Most recover and go on to lead productive, happy lives.
Republic Act 9208, the antitrafficking law, is violated daily. Few traffickers, pimps or sex-club operators are caught and few are ever convicted due to bureaucratic muddling, incompetence and even payoffs. Many lawyers told me they took up law to serve the poor, the oppressed and the abused but soon the lure of money ended their idealism and they went to work for rich and powerful exploiters.
We need to return to the idealism of youth. Dedicated lawyers fighting for justice for children and helping the prosecutors are urgently needed. The good prosecutors are overworked and underpaid and can’t cope with the hundreds of child-abuse cases piling up on their desks. There is a job opening for an experienced female lawyer that pays a good salary, expenses and working conditions. Applicants can apply at preda@info.com.ph and work for the betterment of mankind and abused children.
Preda has 35 cases against abusers and traffickers but in some cases it can take up to 12 months or more for a prosecutor to send the case to court or not. When the Preda child-care workers were framed up with a fabricated libel charge some months ago, the case was filed against us in record speed by the Olongapo prosecutor and an arrest warrant issued by the judge without the right of a preliminary hearing. We appealed to the Court of Appeals; there is no decision as yet.
We, the defenders of children, will go on trial this month, not the child abusers, the traffickers, the criminals. How’s that for justice? Philippine lawyers ought to do a lot more pro bono work to help victims of trafficking, child sexual abuse, exploitation and human rights violations. Most are too busy making big money as if that is where their happiness is to be found. The few good lawyers doing pro-bono are overloaded.
In the case of Pedro last week, it was the biological father who took him to a far-off village in Tarlac, north of Manila. The Preda legal officer, Robert Garcia, contacted the authorities in Tarlac and set off with them and the mother in hot pursuit. The father fled to a remote village with the child and they worried that he might kill little Pedro rather than give him up to the mother. After a day of searching, going from one village to another looking for him and the child, despite getting bogged down on muddy roads, Garcia and the police eventually found him and persuaded him to return little Pedro to his mother without violence. At least that week ended on a note of success.
The distraught weeping mother came begging for help. “My 10-month-old son has been abducted, he will be sold for adoption, please save my little Pedro,” she pleaded with me. Immediately Robert Garcia, the Preda legal officer, was on to the case and planning a rescue, just one more of dozens carried out by Preda child defenders day and night.
The hundreds of children that are reported missing every month have been trafficked into the sex industry or sold for illegal adoption, according to government social workers. They are overwhelmed to the point of despair by the sheer volume of trafficked persons in the Philippines.
The teenagers are sold as sex slaves here and abroad under the cover of employing them as domestic helpers or waitresses. When they arrive in the destination country they disappear and are prostituted. As many as 63 trafficked children given to the social welfare service in Britain are reported missing, kidnapped from the children’s homes, no doubt.
In the Philippines, children like these are sold to bars and clubs. Unicef estimates that at least 60,000 to 100,000 children are sold every year into some kind of sex slavery or exploitation in the Philippines. The Preda child defenders have saved dozens of kids, some as young as 13 years old, from pimps, traffickers and sex bars and give them a home and a future. Most recover and go on to lead productive, happy lives.
Republic Act 9208, the antitrafficking law, is violated daily. Few traffickers, pimps or sex-club operators are caught and few are ever convicted due to bureaucratic muddling, incompetence and even payoffs. Many lawyers told me they took up law to serve the poor, the oppressed and the abused but soon the lure of money ended their idealism and they went to work for rich and powerful exploiters.
We need to return to the idealism of youth. Dedicated lawyers fighting for justice for children and helping the prosecutors are urgently needed. The good prosecutors are overworked and underpaid and can’t cope with the hundreds of child-abuse cases piling up on their desks. There is a job opening for an experienced female lawyer that pays a good salary, expenses and working conditions. Applicants can apply at preda@info.com.ph and work for the betterment of mankind and abused children.
Preda has 35 cases against abusers and traffickers but in some cases it can take up to 12 months or more for a prosecutor to send the case to court or not. When the Preda child-care workers were framed up with a fabricated libel charge some months ago, the case was filed against us in record speed by the Olongapo prosecutor and an arrest warrant issued by the judge without the right of a preliminary hearing. We appealed to the Court of Appeals; there is no decision as yet.
We, the defenders of children, will go on trial this month, not the child abusers, the traffickers, the criminals. How’s that for justice? Philippine lawyers ought to do a lot more pro bono work to help victims of trafficking, child sexual abuse, exploitation and human rights violations. Most are too busy making big money as if that is where their happiness is to be found. The few good lawyers doing pro-bono are overloaded.
In the case of Pedro last week, it was the biological father who took him to a far-off village in Tarlac, north of Manila. The Preda legal officer, Robert Garcia, contacted the authorities in Tarlac and set off with them and the mother in hot pursuit. The father fled to a remote village with the child and they worried that he might kill little Pedro rather than give him up to the mother. After a day of searching, going from one village to another looking for him and the child, despite getting bogged down on muddy roads, Garcia and the police eventually found him and persuaded him to return little Pedro to his mother without violence. At least that week ended on a note of success.
posted by OlongapoCity Zambales at
6:08 PM
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