Virtual sex tourism

Last November Terre des Homme Netherlands (TdH) made headlines throughout the world when it released the results of a study it had done on child pornography.

For 10 weeks, TdH researchers went into 19 Internet chat rooms identified as being active for sexual solicitation. They identified themselves as young girls aged 10 and waited to see who would approach them.  Their report noted that: “Normally within seconds, dozens of individuals would initiate conversations with the researchers using private messages.”

By the time the research period was over, some 20,000 men, referred to as “predators,” had approached the poseurs. TdH was able to eventually identify 1,000 of these predators—254 from the United States, 110 from Britain, and 103 from India—through the men’s Skype and social media accounts. The names of these identified predators were turned over to international police.

TdH described how the predators would try to get the “girls” to turn on their webcams (cameras). The researchers would resist. When they did turn on the webcam, the researchers used a virtual image named “Sweetie,” who identified herself as being Filipino, either from Manila or Cebu.

TdH released its findings to the public together with a call on governments to take more forceful action against the predators. What was so striking, and yet did not seem to have too much impact in the Philippines, was the use of a virtual Filipino girl as decoy.

Last week the exposé again made headlines in the Philippines, this time with pledges from as high as Malacañang to crack down. The references are mainly to child pornography—an Inquirer headline used “kiddie porn”—but TdH has been using “WCST,” meaning Webcam Child Sex Tourism, which is also the title of a 113-page report it uploaded on the Internet (www.terredeshommes.org/webcam-child-sex-tourism).

History

The term “WCST” did remind me of the historical context of the problems we see today, and that will be the focus of my column today.

Older Filipino readers will remember the publicity around child sex workers, both male and female, in the 1970s and 1980s, mainly catering to foreign pedophile tourists. An entire street and small plaza in Ermita—Sta. Monica—was notorious for this sex trade, the pedophiles and the children, both boys and girls, openly flirting, even cavorting, without any fear of reprisals.

The pedophile tourists did not limit themselves to Manila. Pagsanjan in Laguna was a favorite, with parents allowing their sons of minor age to sell sexual services to foreign pedophiles. Some tourists became frequent visitors, building homes for and supporting the boys and their families.

I know about all this because I was working with a coalition that pressured the government to crack down on this trafficking. The government did respond and the problem has been reduced, but Fr. Shay Cullen of Preda, who has fought child prostitution since the 1980s, continues to report child trafficking and prostitution, and provided important information to TdH for its advocacy research.

Running parallel to child prostitution and sex tourism was child pornography, mainly involving mail-order sales of photographs and videos. The problem was widespread; TdH cited statistics that estimate 300,000 to 600,000 American minors had been victimized.

Then came the Internet, which allowed child pornography to be distributed worldwide. Countries like the Philippines, with widespread poverty, began to be drawn in, mainly providing the children to be photographed.

Again, governments cracked down, even coordinating internationally to go after the predators. Customs inspectors in the United States and Europe sometimes checked travellers’ computers for child porn materials.

The Philippines passed Republic Act No. 9975 or the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009, which seeks to protect children from “all forms of exploitation and abuse including, but not limited to: (1) the use of a child in pornographic performances and materials; and (2) the inducement or coercion of a child to engage or be involved in pornography through whatever means.”  The law is quite comprehensive, outlawing even the use of adults to be depicted as children, or the use of computer-generated images to portray children.

The global crackdown on Internet child porn did discourage pedophiles from using the Internet to buy and sell child pornography, but the trade continues. Meanwhile, advances in Internet technology have made it easier for live transmission of data, so it was inevitable that WCST would emerge, defined by TdH as “…adults offer[ing] payment or other rewards to direct and view live streaming video footage of children in another country performing sexual acts in front of a webcam.”

Outsourcing

A BBC report by Kate McGeown in 2011, titled “Girls lured into Philippine cybersex industry,” compared the new trend to outsourcing, with child porn now “contracted” out to countries like the Philippines.

The TdH report describes several types of WCST operations in the Philippines. The most publicized because of occasional police raids are dens, where trafficked children are kept almost like captives, to provide the shows. Another involves individuals, presumably older minors, who use social media and other sites to solicit pedophiles, sometimes getting them to visit the Philippines. The third involves “family-run” operations, done in homes, with parents making their own children perform. Regardless of the type of operation, the sites used are chat rooms, dating sites and pornographic webcam sites.

Do be aware that even sites that are not sex-oriented—for example, social media—attract predators who can try to befriend minors. Most social media sites require a minimum age of 13 to join, and everyone knows that in the Philippines, even that low requirement is constantly being breached. Parents should warn their children about the risks.

WCST has become a major industry of staggering proportions, with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation estimating that at any one time, some 750,000 pedophiles are on the Internet looking for prey. Yet, so far, only six predators have been convicted.

The TdH report calls for stricter laws and a more proactive approach. Rather than wait for victims to complain, police should find ways to perform sting operations.

On Thursday I will write about an often overlooked approach, which will require more time but which we need to do immediately: revisit our views of children, and reorient those views to emphasize children’s rights.

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E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph