A FOREIGN sex offender arrives in the Philippines nearly every other day.
This is the worrying statistic that has emerged after Bureau of Immigration (BI) Commissioner Norman Tansingco revealed Friday, Dec. 1, 2023, that more than 150 foreign registered sex offenders (RSOs) had been denied entry at Philippine airports since January.
In November alone, 13 foreign RSOs were turned away, of which 10 arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in Metro Manila, and three at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport.
This begs the question: Has the Philippines become a haven for foreign sex offenders?
“During the pandemic, there was an increase in online exploitation of women and children. When international travel resumed, the number of RSOs rose, which could show that the exploitation is being continued,” Tansingco said in a statement
Through NAIA
The NAIA intercepted 10 foreign sex offenders in November, of whom eight were Americans, one British and one German.
Tansingco said the law prohibits the entry of aliens convicted of crimes involving moral turpitude.
On Nov. 2, the BI intercepted Thomas Henry Vander Waal, 39, on his arrival aboard a China Eastern Airlines flight from Taipei, Taiwan. He had been convicted of sex offenses against minors in the US that included child pornography, sexual abuse, and molesting a child under 15 years old.
On Nov. 3, the BI turned back another American sex convict, Terry Lynn Spies, 60, on his arrival aboard an Eva Air flight from Taiwan. According to the US Department of Homeland Security, a Texas court convicted Spies in November 2012 of engaging in online solicitation of a 14-year-old for indecent purposes.
On Nov. 8, the BI denied a British national entry for being a sex offender who is wanted in Australia. David Ian John Bishop, 39, arrived at the NAIA aboard a Cathay Pacific flight from Hongkong.
Tansingco said Bishop was wanted in New South Wales, Australia where he had been charged with sexual exploitation, prostitution and crimes against children, after he invited a person, in an online chat in 2017, to join him in engaging in sex acts with minors.
Aggravated assault
On Nov. 13, the BI turned away German national Maik Bohr, 57, on his arrival aboard a Cebu Pacific flight from the United Arab Emirates, as well as American national Lewis Steven Sterling, 67, on his arrival on board an Eva Air flight from Taipei.
The bureau cited intelligence information tagging Bohr as “being involved in child exploitation and abuse materials” for his exclusion. Sterling, on the other hand, was convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a child in Texas in 1998.
20 victims
Then, on Nov. 18, it was 40-year-old Jared Allen Kasper’s turn to be denied entry on his arrival at the NAIA aboard a Philippine Airlines flight from Los Angeles, California. Three of Kasper’s female victims had accused the American of sexually abusing and exploiting them.
The complainants, who said Kasper had victimized at least 20 Filipino women, described meeting Kasper through an online dating app, receiving a promise of marriage if they slept with him, and having photos of their naked bodies forcibly taken by him.
They added that Kasper impregnated some of his victims and then abandoned them, the bureau said.
On Nov. 24, the BI intercepted American sex offender Daniel Ruic Kimball, 64, who arrived at the NAIA aboard a Japan Airlines flight from Narita. Kimball had been jailed after his conviction as a sex offender in the United States.
According to the Interpol’s national central bureau in Manila, Kimball was convicted by a Missouri court in 2006 of sexually harassing or coercing a 27-year-old woman.
On Nov. 26, the BI denied American, Michael David Steinborn, 57, entry after learning that he was registered as a sex offender after his conviction in Kissimmee, Florida in 1994 for indecent exposure. On arrival at the NAIA from San Francisco, he was promptly booked on the next available flight back to his port of origin.
On Nov. 29, two American pedophiles were stopped at the NAIA on their arrival from Taiwan.
Francisco Narvios Tecson, 55, convicted in Texas in 2010 over indecent contact with an eight-year-old girl, was intercepted after the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime alerted the BI on his planned travel to the Philippines.
Dale Lloyd Bayless, 65, was convicted in 1990 of sodomy against a nine-year-old girl in Neosho, Missouri.
Cebu airport
The BI also turned away three convicted American pedophiles who tried to enter the country through Cebu: William Calloway Shaw, 68, on Nov. 13; Neil Eugene Graves, 47, on Nov. 18; and Stuart Chase Dingman, 60, on Nov. 19.
All three men arrived on Korean Airlines flights from Incheon, Seoul.
The BI said Shaw had been convicted in Washington state in 2007 for third degree assault and communicating with a minor for immoral purposes; Graves, in Michigan of criminal sexual conduct for molesting a victim between 13 to 15 years old in 2011; and Dingman, in 1996 and 1992 for assault and battery of a child in Massachusetts.
National database
Last January, Sen. Jinggoy Ejercito Estrada proposed the establishment of a national database of sex offenders, saying some arrested and convicted sex offenders were still able to commit the same crimes against unsuspecting victims simply by relocating elsewhere.
He said this database, to be handled by the Department of Justice, should contain the names and other details of sex offenders who reside in or travel to the country.
Estrada said other countries had already enacted similar legislation after the United States passed its national sex offender registration law in 1994.