A NORWEGIAN public prosecutor’s office has announced the conviction and sentencing of two child sex offenders who directed and paid local traffickers to sexually abuse Filipino children and live stream the abuse to the foreigners in Norway. The victimized children were in Bacolod City and Bulacan Province.

One of the Norwegian offenders was sentenced to serve at least 19 years in prison, while the other was sentenced to at least 16 years in prison. Both judgments were handed down on Feb. 18, 2020.

The offenders – arrested in 2016 and 2017, respectively – were convicted of serious and aggravated sexual abuse of children between the ages of 10 months and 15 years from Romania, the Philippines and Madagascar. One of the Norwegian offenders was also convicted of human trafficking for his crimes.

The offender who received the 19-year sentence had paid a Filipino trafficker from Bacolod City for live-streamed child sexual abuse. Acting on a referral from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Philippine National Police (PNP) Women and Children Protection Center –Visayas Field Unit (WCPC-VFU) and the Bacolod City Police Office’s Women and Children Protection Desk conducted a joint operation that led to the arrest of a female online trafficker in Bacolod City on July 13, 2017. They rescued six minors and one adult. Two of the minors – then aged two and five years old – are the trafficker’s own children.

The FBI had received information from the Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service about child sex offenders who were paying for the sexual abuse of children from the Philippines to be live-streamed to them for their viewing pleasure.

The Bacolod trafficker was charged under Republic Act (RA) 9208 as amended by RA 10364 (Expanded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act), RA 7610 (Anti-Child Abuse Law) and RA 10175 (Cybercrime Prevention Act).

On March 8, 2018, the PNP WCPC and the National Bureau of Investigation – Anti-Human Trafficking Division arrested a 31-year-old male online trafficker in Bulacan Province. They also rescued two victims, aged nine and 16, and three children at risk. All of them are the trafficker’s nieces and nephews.

The trafficker had previously produced child sexual exploitation materials in exchange for money from the Norwegian offender who received the 16-year sentence.

The operation in Bulacan stemmed from a referral from the Nordic Liaison Office to the PNP-WCPC’s Anti-Trafficking in Persons Division-Internet Crimes Against Children in October 2017.

In May 2019, the Bulacan trafficker pled guilty, under a plea bargain, to an offense under the Anti-Child Pornography Act and the Anti-Child Abuse Law. He is now serving a 15-year prison sentence. (Kate Justine Paquibot & Nelson Cabreros, USJ-R sophomore students)