IN A bid to combat online sexual exploitation on children, a global non-government organization is looking to equip journalists and information officers in Negros Occidental with information to intensify reporting and coverage.
A team from International Justice Mission (IJM), an organization that helps children sexually exploited online, will hold a Training-Workshop on Online Sexual Exploitation of Children for journalists and information officers at O’ Hotel in Bacolod City this Saturday, January 27.
They have been conducting workshops to improve and intensify media coverage.
The group said they believe the press plays a key role in the fight against the growing threat of cyber pornography cases involving children in the country as well as information officers in various local government units as they could significantly contribute to fostering awareness about the online sexual abuse.
In 2017, the group reported 268 victims were rescued in 76 operations.
This also resulted to the arrest of 121 suspects, 20 of whom were convicted.
IJM said that 87 percent of the victims who were rescued from cyber pornography were minors, “making this a staggering humanitarian issue and problem for the Philippine law enforcement to tackle.”
They added that 55 percent of the victims are 12 years old or younger.
In Bacolod City, three cases were reported last year wherein 10 minors and an adult were rescued from suspected cybersex dens.
Three minors were saved in the first operation on May 5 after one of them were exposed online by their mother to a customer in Australia while the second operation led to the rescue of a girl after her mother exploited her to a customer in the United States.
Two months later, six minors, including a two-year-old boy, and a female adult were rescued while a woman, who exploited her two minor children and two nieces was arrested on July 13.
Bacolod is already considered as a place of interest as it already has three cases in a short span of time, Superintendent Maria Shiela Portento, head of the Women and Children Protection Center-Operation Management Division based in Camp Crame had said in an earlier interview.
The Philippine authorities are getting information from their foreign counterparts like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Australian Federal Police, and if the reports showed the same locations, it’s already an indicator that the locality is a hotspot, she said.