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Saturday, January 28, 2006
Nightclub owner, manager face trafficking raps
Trafficking charges have been filed against the manager and owner of a strip joint and “prostitution den,” after a raid last Thursday at midnight in a hotel in downtown Cebu City.
National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agents rescued 15 women, six of whom were minors, from Cebu Celebrity Club on the 5th floor of Century Hotel on Pelaez St.
Only the manager, Sally Demoral, was taken into custody, although both she and the bar’s owner, identified as Emelia Poster, were charged with violations of Republic Act (RA) 9208 before the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor yesterday.
Demoral, a mother of three, is held without bail for the offense. If convicted, she will face life imprisonment and a fine of P2 million. Poster is still at large.
All 15 women were turned over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) yesterday afternoon.
Most of the women are from Mindanao while some are from Manila, agents said.
Demoral signed a waiver of detention during the inquest at the Office of the City Prosecutor and was given 10 days to answer the charges.
She will remain under NBI custody until the resolution of the trafficking charge.
RA 9208 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act penalizes any person who “maintains or hires a person to engage in prostitution or pornography” and offers stiff penalties.
4th operation
It defines trafficking as the recruitment, transportation, transfer or harboring, or receipt of persons with or without the victims’ consent or knowledge for exploitation, sexual or otherwise.
It targets the club owners and managers and treats the women as “exploited victims.”
This is the fourth NBI anti-trafficking operation on strip joints since December. The first two were on bars in Lapu-Lapu City.
The last one was at Club Harem in Mandaue City.
In their affidavits, agents said the operation was based on intelligence reports that the club is also a prostitution den, where the management offers the sexual services of its guest relation officers (GRO) to patrons willing to pay “bar fines.”
In carrying out the operation, two NBI agents, Florante Gaoiran and Gregorio Tumagan Jr., entered the club as customers and negotiated to take out one of the women. The rest waited in vehicles strategically parked outside.
Demoral, as floor manager, negotiated in behalf of the club and, subsequently, received the money from the agents.
Signal
Immediately after the money changed hands, the two arrested Demoral and signaled to the other agents stationed outside the club to raid the club.
“The acts of subjects in prostituting victims by recruiting, harboring and taking advantage of their vulnerability to obtain profit or material gain for herself (Demoral) and the owner (Poster) falls squarely under the offenses provided under RA 9208,” said NBI 7 Director Medardo de Lemos, a lawyer, in his letter complaint.
Before RA 9208, enacted in 2003, law enforcement agents intending to raid a club would first hire the services of a woman from that club, take her to a motel and have sex with her.
A photographer would then barge in and take photos of the coupling as it is taking place for “evidentiary purposes.”
With the act captured on film, the agents would then enter the strip joint and arrest everybody on sight.
The women would be charged with vagrancy while the woman caught in the photograph and the managers of the raided joint get charged with prostitution, a bailable offense. (KNR)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (January 28, 2006 issue)
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