A Brave and Loving Woman

Josie Magano is one of the bravest Filipino women I ever met. One day she came asking help to rescue her teenage daughter from the clutches of a Danish sex tour operator who owned a hotel in Baloy Beach in Olongapo City. Josie was from the poorest part of Samar Island, had struggled with poverty and yet walked five miles to school everyday. She survived on a plate of rice and a few vegetables and graduated from high school. She then worked as a street vendor and went to night school finishing a junior course in restaurant management. There were no restaurants in her part of the island and hunger swept the land after the forests were cut down by rich families and floods and land slides destroyed the fragile top soil.

Josie married her high school love and had four children but life became even harder as the super greedy government officials and their big family cronies wallowed in corruption siphoning off hundreds of millions of public funds into their pockets and building sumptuous mansions and lavish second homes abroad, that’s the root of all poverty.

Good jobs were to be had in the hotels and restaurants in Olongapo and Angeles
City and so she came to Olongapo City with her 15 year old daughter named Irish. It was only a few months into the job when Alexander, 48, a Danish man seduced Irish and disappeared with her. She sent a message saying she was in love with Alexander and he was going to marry her.

We got a tip off about his secret sex den in Angeles City and set off to rescue Irish. On the way we picked up the female police officers in Angeles City we know are helpful in rescuing children and we found the house and did surveillance. His car was there. Josie was nervous and shaking with fear of what she might find behind that door. She knew too that this would likely be the end of her hope for a better life for her family, an end of dreams and job. She would be banned from every hotel and restaurant.

Unlike some other mothers who encourage their young daughters to live-in with foreigners in the hope of them marrying into money Josie was determined to save her daughter from child prostitution. She was resolute and determined to go up against this rich and powerful man to save her child whom she had carried for nine months and had given life to.

I left the team in the van parked meters away. I went to the door and knocked. He opened it and he was shocked to see us, “We came to get Irish”, I declared, “Okay if we come in”, I asked. “Yes, yes she is here”, he replied. Within minutes we had the child out the door and into the van and the police arrested the suspect. Josie filed a formal complaint of abduction and sexual molestation in the office of the Angeles City prosecutor. A powerful city councilor who is a lawyer and a member of the government women’s and children council defended the Dutchman. He got bail. Then he went and sold the hotel and took a flight out of the country. The prosecutor we learned had never even filed the charges before the court.

Josie is just one of millions of women that need all the help they can get to defend their children from people traffickers and traveling sex offenders. In the Philippines thousands of women and minors are forced into sexual servitude every year in brothels, sex clubs, and massage parlors and other fronts for prostitution. The politicians allow it to thrive by issuing licenses and permits, for a price, to the foreign bar operators. Women’s rights must be strengthened and laws protecting them and their children have to be implemented. The culture of corruption and impunity in the Philippines must end and empowered women like Josie will lead the way. Later I asked Josie why she named her child Irish, she replied, when she was born she was beautiful and smelled so sweet after I bathed her in that soap, it’s called Irish Spring. - By Fr. Shay Cullen - Preda