Philippines
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The Philippines is a popular tourist destination for paedophiles. The
country's poorest children are usually the victims. Poverty stricken
and uneducated families, who have made their home within the large
rubbish dumps of the city, are preyed upon. They are promised that if
they allow their children to go away to the work, they will be cared
for and given an education. In reality these children are taken to
become sex slaves that must work to pay their "debt" to the adults who
took them. These children end up spending their childhoods working in
brothels and secret establishments to cater for the demands of overseas
visitors who come especially looking for sex with minors. Other
children are trafficked into different Asian countries to work in the
sex trade, leaving then abused and isolated with no hope of returning
to their families.
The other shocking violation of children's rights in the Phillipines is
within the prison system. Before September 2006 there were an estimated
20,000 kids being held in adult prisons. Father Shay Cullen of PREDA
(People's Recovery Empowerment and Development Assistance Foundation),
in Olangapo City, documented and brought media attention to this
shocking system, and as a consequence children who commit crimes, big
and small, are now held in separate prisons. But some children are
still spending months sharing crowded inhumane and dangerous jail cells
without proper legal representation or hope of release.
Fr Shay Cullen and the team at PREDA are dedicated to rescuing and
rehabilitating children from the Phillipines sex industry, and the
prison system, and to persecuting foreign paedophiles and bringing
justice for abused children. FreeToBeKids has now committed to funding
a lawyer to work full time on some of the sixty cases that PREDA is
fighting - cases against foreign paedophiles, and local brothel owners,
and legal proceedings to release children from prison.
We are also planning to open the first FreeToBeKids safehouse in
the Phillipines in Devoe City in the south, in December 2007, and are
looking for major supporters for our work in this country.
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