(First of two parts on online sexual exploitation of children)
IN THE mid-2010s, a middle-aged man in Australia was looking for something that would satisfy him sexually. He opens his digital device to look for that thing.
However, he is not opening a pornographic site on his browser. The man has reached out to a certain Vilma in the Philippines. What he is looking for are child sexual exploitation materials (CSEM).
Vilma, not her real name, was not only providing the Australian CSEM of children but also online offenders in the United States and Germany. This CSEM that Vilma provides her clients are recorded videos, pictures, and live-streamed abuse of her four children.
This is one of the many cases that the Philippine National Police (PNP) has investigated over the course of several years. Local authorities were able to look into this following the arrest of the Australian national, I. Turner, in 2016 by the Queensland Police Taskforce Argos. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) referred the case to the PNP after the arrest.
In their investigation, they found that the CSEM "involved contact abuse directed by Vilma as she communicated with the overseas customers in real-time."
"Vilma communicated with her customers around the world through popular video-enabled social media platforms and email and charged varying fees for CSEM photos and live-streamed abuse," reads the "Online Sexual Exploitation of Children in the Philippines" report by the International Justice Mission.
It was also discovered that the children have been exploited for the last five to six years.
On September 8, 2016, Vilma was arrested by the PNP and her four children, who were aged 7 to 11, were rescued.
On June 6, 2018, Vilma was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment and ordered to pay a fine of P1,000,000 as well as P100,000 in moral damages and P100,000 in exemplary damages to each of her victims.
Evidence collected after Vilma's arrest also helped Philippine law enforcement agencies here and abroad to identify other customers and traffickers.
"Investigations associated with Vilma’s case resulted in the arrest and conviction of Martin R. in Germany for associated offenses in 2018, sentenced to four years and six months imprisonment; M. Baden in Australia for related charges in 2019, sentenced to seven years and four months imprisonment; and the conviction of I. Turner in Australia, sentenced to four years and six months in prison and eligible for parole after two years," the report states.
While the sexual exploitation of children is nothing new, digital technology has enabled the perpetrators of such crime to enable it to become something more sinister.
"Technological advancements have changed the ways through which children are sexually exploited – online child sexual exploitation (Osec) continues to grow exponentially with hotlines around the world reporting a consistent and continual increase in the number of cases every year," Dr. Roberta Sinclair, Virtual Global Taskforce secretariat member, said in her foreword in the "Online Sexual Exploitation of Children in the Philippines" report.
The "Online Sexual Exploitation of Children in the Philippines" is a study conducted by the IJM, in partnership with the U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office), the Philippine Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT), and other contributing study partners.
"Technology has allowed vulnerable children to be exploited in new and unspeakable ways and given rise to possibly one of the darkest forms of human trafficking," Samson Inoncencio, Jr., IJM Philippines vice president for Osec Hub, said during a webinar on Osec on May 21, 2020.
Osec is "the production, for the purpose of online publication or transmission, of visual depictions (e.g., photos, videos, live streaming) of the sexual abuse or exploitation of a minor for a third party who is not in the physical presence of the victim, in exchange for compensation."
Osec in the Philippines
The report showed that following the rise of IP addresses in the Philippines between 2014 and 2017, there was also a rise of IP addresses that were used for child sexual exploitation (CSE).
"Based on the mark-recapture analysis, an estimated 2,723 IP addresses were used for CSE in the first four weeks of 2014. By the last four weeks of 2017, the estimated number of IP addresses used for CSE grew to 37,735," the report states. Mark-recapture estimates include IP addresses reported to U.S.-based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) plus an estimate of those not reported.
The report added that the estimated number of IP addresses used for CSE has risen to 81,723 in 2017 from around 23,333 in 2014.
From 2010 to 2017, a total of 92 Osec cases were referred to and investigated by Philippine law enforcement agencies. Fifty-nine of the total Osec cases in the Philippines were referrals from international law enforcement agencies. Of the 59, 31 were from US-based law enforcement agencies.
Between 2015 and 2017, the number of Osec cases nearly doubled every year, ending with 43 cases referred to or investigated in 2017.
“Of all cases referred to or initiated by Philippine anti-trafficking units during this time period, 77 percent (71 cases) had resulted in a rescue or arrest operation by the end of 2017," the report states.
As a result, 381 Osec victims have already been rescued. The average age of the victims was 11 years old, with ages ranging from less than one year old to 31 years old. Data also showed that Osec victims in the Philippines are dispersed throughout the country with the National Capital Region and the Central Visayas being the hotspots in the country. In Mindanao, victims were from Northern Mindanao and Davao Region.
The case of Vilma and her children reflects one of the characteristics of the Osec situation in the Philippines -- it is mainly a family-based crime.
"In a large percentage of cases, the traffickers are actually parents or close family members of the kids they are exploiting," John Cotton Richmond, US Ambassador-at-Large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons, said during the webinar on Osec.
The report by IJM showed that of the 217 victims for whom the relationship between the victim and the trafficker was known, biological parents facilitated the abuse of 41 percent of all victims (89 victims). Other relatives facilitated the abuse of another 42 percent of victims (90 victims).
Sixty-six percent of the traffickers were female with an average age of 27 years old. Though, the investigation showed that traffickers ranged from 15 to 76 years old. Also, 96 percent of the traffickers are Filipinos. The female traffickers were usually a mother or other female relative.
"The study team hypothesizes that...female traffickers in Osec cases are financially, not sexually, motivated to commit the crime. Literature also notes that Osec traffickers often rationalize their crimes by saying that they are not causing real harm to their child because the abuse primarily happens online," the study reads.
Traffickers were also mainly economically motivated. The study pointed out that the money they would receive from Osec customers is "still the equivalent of days or weeks of a Philippine minimum wage."
The study also noted that there were also foreign nationals who were traffickers in the Philippines but only a few. They were from Australia, Japan, or the United States.
Traffickers are also spread across the country and are usually in the same province as their victims. Hotspots were still in the National Capital Region and Central Visayas. In Mindanao, traffickers were concentrated in Northern Mindanao and Davao Region.
"Furthermore, many children experienced Osec victimization alongside other family members. Of the 285 victims that had been rescued, about 96 percent (275 victims) were rescued at the same time as at least one other person. Of these, 40 percent (110 victims) were siblings, and another 13 percent (36 victims) shared some other familial relationship (e.g., cousin). The relationship between victims rescued together was unknown for 39 percent of victims (106 victims)," the study states.
Another sad finding from the study also showed that without proper intervention, the abuse would last for years.
"Among the 43 victims for whom the exact length of abuse was known, the average length of abuse was two years, with length of abuse ranging from two months to four years," the study reads.
In terms of Osec customers, they were all men. According to the study, "of the 18 referrals that did have information on the customers’ age, most cases involved customers between 50-59 years of age, with the youngest customer age reported as 40 years and the oldest as 72 years."
"Osec customers are the offenders who drive demand for new sexual abuse and exploitation of children by instructing and paying in-person traffickers to exploit children. Osec customers also produce CSEM when they direct sexual abuse remotely and when they entice, solicit, or coerce minors to produce sexually explicit videos and images for their personal consumption and distribution," the study states.
Most of the Osec customers are based in the US, Sweden, and Australia. The investigation from law enforcement agencies also showed that other customers were also based in Canada, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK. Some of the customers were based in the Philippines where they purchased Osec materials while others moved back and forth between the Philippines and their country of origin.
There were also customers who were known to have traveled to the Philippines at some point in their lives and others have a known history of contact abuse of children in the Philippines.
Osec customers used platforms, like social media or personal messaging sites, email, dating websites, or adult websites, to communicate with traffickers in the Philippines.
Combined data from various international law enforcement agencies have revealed that the Philippines has become a global hotspot for Osec. The study states that the Philippines received more than eight times as many referrals as any other country identified.
Between 2010 to 2017, law enforcement agencies in the Philippines received 237 referrals on Osec cases from international law enforcement agencies. This compared to 27 in Mexico, 19 in Brazil, 18 in India, five in Thailand, four in Romania, and three in Cambodia.
"Human traffickers are exploiting children for sex online. The live streaming of abuse of kids of all ages including babies continues. Traffickers continue to profit from this abuse knowing that there is little risk of getting caught. They know that this is a high reward low-risk crime to commit," Richmond said.
Inoncencio said Osec has become prevalent in the Philippines due to a wide variety of factors.
However, Richmond said the hope is not lost. Through the coordination of the international law enforcement agencies with their counterparts in the Philippines, more and more offenders and traffickers have been caught. At the same time, the Philippines is steadily working on how it is fighting the problem. (To be continued)