MANILA, Philippines - Successive raids by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) this year showed just how vulnerable Filipino children are to sex predators – whether inside their homes, outside their school, or in the hands of their own parents.
Most of the victims were poverty-stricken children who, according to investigators, give in to requests to perform online or in front of the sex predator for money.
The arrest of “one of the vilest men in Britain,” former British Navy chef Douglas Slade, in Pampanga last July illustrated the gravity of the problem.
According to the Daily Mail, it was the fourth time Slade was arrested in the Philippines for allegedly molesting boys. His three previous cases were dismissed, with Slade boasting that he could bribe his way out of these cases, according to the Daily Mail.
“Slade made headlines in the 1970s when he was a founder of the Paedophile Information Exchange and ran another underground group called Paedophile Action Liberation which campaigned to legalize child sex,” the report said.
“He fled Britain after being exposed as a paedophilia advocate in 1975 and being caught by a national newspaper telling fellow deviants: ‘If you want sex with children don’t bottle it up – do it,’” it added.
In the Philippines, Slade built a spacious house just outside Amsic Elementary School in Pampanga. According to agent Wally Palatao of the NBI’s cybercrime division, boys would line up outside Slade’s door every day to receive P150.
“The boys would range from first graders to high school students. He would invite them to his house, feed them and reportedly grope them. He would give them P150 to P200 before they leave,” Palatao said.
Palatao added that Slade has been doing this for some time and the children are now the ones “knocking on his door.” He has been living in that house for 10 years.
These acts were only reported to authorities after a computer technician discovered pornographic materials in his laptop. Most of the pictures, according to Palatao, showed boys in lurid poses.
Woman pimps daughter
A month after Slade’s arrest, the NBI’s anti-human trafficking division arrested a woman for making her 10-year-old daughter perform sexual acts for online clients in exchange for $30 to $200.
The mother was arrested in their house in Tipas, Taguig right after the child took her clothes off in front of a Web camera manned by NBI and US Homeland Security.
Agent Abdul Jamal Dimaporo said most of the clients were on Facebook.
In an interview with The STAR, the woman admitted to doing cyberporn shows for nearly two years. Her customers are mostly from United States, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
“I know it’s wrong but I needed to make money. I wanted my family to eat good food,” the woman said.
Her clients vary. Some of them want to see lactating women, couples or threesomes. Most of them, however, want girls.
School-based cyberporn den
It was also this year that agents of the NBI’s cybercrime division unmasked a Christian school in Muntinlupa that served as a cyberporn den at night.
Mountain Top School stopped operating after authorities discovered that the school’s computer rooms were used as a sex chat hub.
The school offered pre-school to high school education and had about 200 students. Classes in the two-story school building were held from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Once the students leave at around 5 p.m., around 50 persons would go to two rooms at the school’s ground floor to start operating the sex chat hub.
When NBI agents raided the school, they found 47 computers with pre-recorded pornographic videos, some of them featuring minors. Eight men were caught operating some of these computer units.
Principal and school owner Purisima Martinez said the rooms were leased for P20,000 a month. She claimed she seldom checked the rooms and was “not aware” it was used as a cyberporn den, but added that she was told the “chatting” would be “naughty.”