While millions may be amused by the amateurish destabilization plot of the unlamented Rodrigo Duterte and his junior, Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, there is a far bigger problem that the government has not deemed worthy of attention. This issue is huge and the Philippines has been tagged as the hub for online sexual abuse and exploitation of children (OSAEC.)
OSAEC is supposed to be punished severely after Congress enacted Republic Act 11930, otherwise known as the Anti-Online Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children and Anti-Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Material Act (CSAEM) of 2022, which strengthens the response and protection of children to online predators. It was not strange that the law was passed barely a year after it was confirmed that OSAEC victimized more than 2 million Filipino children. The UNICEF reported that children experienced grooming and received offers of gifts or money in exchange for sexual acts. Some were threatened or blackmailed to engage in sexual acts.
Laudable as it seems, the law has to confront the fact that between zero to only 4% of the victims reported the abuses. Only a maximum of 3% of the victims knew how to report to the police and helplines. A total of 44% of children were at a loss on where to get help if they or a friend were subjected to sexual abuse or harassment online. Half of them added people as friends on social media even if they had never met face-to-face while 13% of these children eventually met their new online friends in person. With the expansion of unchecked social media and the rabid insistence of irresponsible plutocrats like Elon Musk who own them about bogus free speech, the stage has been set for wanton abuse. Only Australia has enacted a law that bans social media use by children aged 16 and younger.
The July 2021 National Study on Online Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children in the Philippines conducted by a De la Salle University (DLSU) team comprised of Dr. Maria Caridad H. Tarroja, Prof. Marie Angeles G. Lapena, Dr. Ethel C. Ong, Dr. Rai Resurreccion and Dr. Marie Divina Gracia C. Roldan in collaboration with UNICEF and inter-agency groups found out that 80% of Filipino children are vulnerable to OSAEC and in some cases, as UNICEF discovered in 2016, were facilitated by their parents, the usual recipients of money from sexual predators and pedophiles. The De la Salle team argued that high OSAEC incidence in the Philippines may be due to the following factors: English-language literacy; availability and ease of access to technology; well-established financial transaction facilities, and; absence of perceived conflict between sexual exploitation and significant social norms.
Significantly, the research team claimed, “certain cultural beliefs also contribute to OSAEC such as: a) if the children are untouched, they are not harmed; b) OSAEC provides easy money and almost everyone does it; c) children are expected to help the family financially; d) one should not interfere in the affairs of other families, and; e) technology is only for the younger generation to learn.” In short, poverty has become an excuse for OSAEC, and parents and relatives may regard children as chattel slaves in exchange for easy money, disregarding the lingering trauma and the shame that victims suffer. This argument is as bad as the cultural belief among cannibals that an unborn child is not a human being, and the fetus can be the basic ingredient for soup. This cultural mayhem is not acceptable and goes against children’s rights enshrined in international covenants.
It also noted that OSAEC has been worsened by social media plutocrats whose technology has ruined interpersonal ties and people-to-people relations, reducing everything to the speed with which they delude people into coughing up more money for the use of technology. Instead of liberating people, social media have become the god that continues to fail. Thus, the DLSU team criticizes technology for not having the guardrails to stop crimes against children from happening worldwide. Parents not conscious of this fact also contribute to the abuse by not minimizing the use of social media. Yet, eight top tech entrepreneurs in the US restricted the use of computers by their children. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, Sundar Pichai, Evan Spiegel, Jonathan Ive, Mark Zuckerberg and the late Charles Wang all limited the exposure of their children to computers, with Wang restricting them to a maximum of two hours of use daily.
For the DLSU researchers, the “free online connectivity, the widespread use of cell phones, the irresponsible use of technology, and insufficient computer literacy of children and their parents pose threats of exposure to OSAEC-related activities. Furthermore, online payment facilities offered by banks and electronic payment services by mobile phone companies are surfacing as the new mode of monetary exchange for OSAEC-related activities.” The enactment of RA 10929 is seen by key informants as contributory to soaring OSAEC as free Wi-Fi use in public places expands the opportunities for only sexual abuse and exploitation of minors. There must be checks on Wi-Fi use and technology companies themselves must start including programs to detect and stop the propagation of sexual abuse and exploitation of children on the web, including the dark web, the lawless counterpart of social media.
The DLSU study, conducted by the university’s Social Development and Research Center (SDRC) and supported by the Department of Social Welfare and Development – Inter-Agency Council Against Child Pornography (DSWD-IACACP) and UNICEF Philippines, should be taken to heart by the Philippine government, the two houses of Congress and by millions of Filipino parents who continue to be unaware about the dangers lurking on social media that may victimize their children. It should be noted, too, that the trauma suffered by OSAEC victims will continue and lead to serious mental health problems even in adulthood. Not even ambitious ex-presidents and the current vice president can be exempt from mental health maladies. Only that malignant narcissism is technically incurable.
