Filipino girls sold to Americans for sex - and marriage - for$2,000

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has alerted concerned government agencies to an exposé by an American letter writer in a Los Angeles publication that Filipino mothers were being lured to sell their young daughters to Americans for sex and consent to bringing them to the US for possible marriage in exchange for $2,000.

"We're not taking this lightly since this is a very serious matter," said Bayani Mangibin, chief of the DFA's Consular Assistance Division, referring to the letter of one Robert Belsky of Ontario, California printed in the Asian Journal Publications last Jan. 28.

In his letter, Belsky quoted a report from the US State Department that an estimated 25,000 women and children from Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Russia and Latin America, were being sold for sex and brought to the US every year.

Belsky exposed how American pedophiles get in touch with Filipino sex traders, including the mothers of young girls.

Mangibin said they have asked the Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C. and the Philippine Consulate in Los Angeles to validate the quoted State Department report.

He added that they have also coordinated with the Department of Social Welfare and Development, National Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Immigration to strictly monitor the departure of minors.

The matter, he said, has also been brought to the attention of the Philippine Center for Transnational Crimes.

The DFA, Mangibin said, will streamline its procedures for the issuance of passports to minors and be strict to those leaving for destinations with a 20-day no-visa requirement which can be transit points for trafficking Filipino girls to the US.

According to Belsky, American men make arrangements through travel agencies in the US that offer package tours to the Philippines. They check in a hotel and wait for a tour guide who will introduce them to young Filipino girls and their mothers.

Belsky wrote: "The men are taken to several places to meet many Filipino school girls. They look them over and decide whether they like the young girls for sex. They pay the mother $2,000 and she signs a consent form. The man has the right to do anything he wants with this teenage girl he has just bought."

Belsky noted that $2,000 or roughly P80,000 is "already a lot of money in the Philippines."

The consent form, he said, would allow the girls, as young as 13, to marry their customers even if underaged. "Most American men buy these children for sex and it is perfectly legal under existing laws," he wrote.

Belsky said the Americans then apply for a fiancée visa and if granted, they can bring the Filipino girls to the US. They have 90 days within which to decide whether they want to marry the girls or not.

"If (the American) wants to marry her, most states require the consent form from the parent, which he already has," he said.

In some US states like Mississippi, one can marry at the age of 15 without the consent of parents, and in Maryland, the law states that a 13-year-old girl who is pregnant can legally be married with the permission of the mother and authentication of her pregnancy by her doctor, Belsky said.

He claimed that the State Department informed him that it was perfectly legal for Filipino girls under 16 to marry as long as she has parental consent.

Belsky said there are conflicts in US laws because most states consider having sex with a girl under 16 as statutory rape while some states peg the age below 18.

"If the man decides not to marry the girl within the 90-day period, under the law, the girl will be deported to the Philippines," he wrote.

But he said most of the men only want the girls for sex, not for marriage. Thus, many of the girls, he said, become prostitutes "to pay back the men for the plane fare to the US and living expenses."

Once apprehended, the girls are turned over to the US Immigration and Naturalization Service and deported. "Very rarely are the men who bring these young girls to the US for prostitution arrested nor charges brought against them," he said.

In the US, Belsky said Rep. Chris Smith, chairman of the House international operations and human rights sub-committee, has authored a bill seeking a stop to the trafficking of girls for sex.

If signed into law, the "Freedom from Sexual Trafficking Act," embodied in Smith's House Resolution 1356, will allow the US to punish adult traffickers and provide counseling and other assistance to the victims.

"And, more importantly, it will permit the United States to cut off aid to foreign nations that do not meet basic standards for eliminating sexual trafficking...," Belsky said.

Mangibin urged victims of this sex trafficking to come forward and file complaints, assuring them of assistance from the DSWD and Department of Justice. - With Rey Arquiza