Saturday, October 20, 2007 NBI rescues minor, arrests workers in bar raids
THE National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) 7 simultaneously raided two bars on Gen. Maxilom Ave., Cebu City Thursday night, rescuing a minor who had been dancing almost naked on the stage and a dozen other women.
Two teams separately entered and secured the Asean Flower KTV and the Sister’s Bar and KTV, located a few meters from each other and not even two minutes away from the Redemptorist Church and two Catholic schools.
But they were not able to arrest the bars’ operators—Narcisa Lathwood and Edita Becaldo Mandawe, respectively.
NBI Executive Officer Ernesto Macabare, a lawyer, said charges for violating Republic Act (RA) 9208 will still be filed against both women.
Lathwood, in particular, will be impleaded for qualified trafficking and will be held without bail if the complaint reaches the court. It was in her bar that a minor was found.
Two employees—Amelia Amodia-Sario and Judith Israel—will also be charged. Sario is the manager of Asean Flower while Israel worked for Sister’s Bar.
Money changed hands
Macabare said the two separately received money from agents who went undercover in the pretext of securing women for sex from both joints.
Special Investigator Florante Gaoiran, who was with the team assigned to Asean Flower, said Sario offered the minor to him, thinking he was just another client.
All the women will be turned over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) for a debriefing and processing.
The operation proceeded with the undercover elements entering the bar while the support teams waited at a given point.
The undercover team’s assignment was to find a woman who they could pay the establishment to bring out. As soon as a bar representative gets the money, they would then call the support team to secure the area and make the arrest.
Closed
The operation was over in less than an hour. The two bars were closed while the women taken to the NBI headquarters.
RA 9208 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act penalizes any person who “maintains or hires a person to engage in prostitution or pornography.”
It defines the crime as the recruitment, transportation, transfer or harboring, or receipt of persons with or without the victims’ consent or knowledge for exploitation, sexual or otherwise.
Under RA 9208, the act of transporting or receiving and employing a person for any form of exploitation is deemed punishable, with stiff penalties.
Some describe the law as having more force than Republic Act 7610 or the Anti-Child Abuse Law as it considers the act of prostituting a minor a capital offense that offers remote possibility of bail.
Victims, not felons
It is also better in its approach because it views the prostituted women as victims. The much older Revised Penal Code considers commercial sex workers as felons.
Police operations against them involve undercover agents hiring them and getting them into motels where they had have sex. Police photographers would then barge in and take photos of them in the act. The incriminating photos become evidence.
With RA 9208, the act of receiving money is already sufficient.
However, without a parallel program of how to assist women engaged in commercial sex, the law is also considered only half as effective.
Liza, real name withheld, had been “rescued” in a similar NBI operation a few months before.
She was then working for another bar. After her rescue, she was taken to the DSWD for debriefing. She was back at work a few days after, albeit with another bar.
She considers her work as “temporary,” as she has plans for better things for herself and her two children. She said she is saving money for tuition for, at the very least, a two-year college course, adding that her high-school diploma can only get her so far.
“But it’s hard to save with two kids and a family in the province needing money. So I guess I’m stuck here for the time being,” she said in Cebuano. (KNR)
