Tag Archives: PREDA

[People] Saving the Forests is Saving the Planet | by Fr. Shay Cullen

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#HumanRights #Environment

Saving the Forests is Saving the Planet
Shay Cullen
21 March 2021

The International Day of Forest is today, 21 March. Forests are of vital importance to the well-being of all creatures, the natural world, and especially humankind. They absorb most of the damaging CO2 that causes climate change. Their protection and restoration should be of the highest national priority of each nation to hold back global warming from rising above 1.5 degrees celsius and avert the catastrophe that is to come.

Forests are vital for retaining and releasing water the whole year-round, preventing draught and providing clean water and protection from landslides and soil erosion in the typhoon season. In the Philippines and other nations that have suffered deforestation, there is severe low crop yield that causes food insecurity due to massive rains and typhoons because of soil erosion. In some provinces, 50 percent of the rich topsoil has been washed away and more to come. There are no more forests to hold the water back. The Philippines, once self-sufficient in rice, now imports most of its rice.

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[People] The Empowerment of Women- by Fr. Shay Cullen

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#HumanRights #ViolenceAgainstWomen The Empowerment of Women
Shay Cullen
4 December 2020

The empowerment of women and girls is a most urgent need in today’s world where discrimination, violence and exploitation of women and girls, especially in the developing world, is tearing the heart out of society and family life causing human suffering, exclusion, sickness and death.

Education is the key to empowering women and girls and building equality in society by defeating the superior and dominant attitude of many men. Some wrongly believe they are entitled to treat women as inferior and unworthy of leadership roles in society, business and family.

At every level of social status, rich, middle class, poor, besides formal education, there has to be additional human rights training for boys and girls from the earliest age in human dignity and equality. Women have to be empowered economically by having skilled training and small business opportunities and thus take control over their lives. The economic power of women is essential for changing the inequality and the injustice in societies where women are treated unfairly and regulated to some lower status than males. Money talks and in community-based Grameen-loaning schemes, it is the women who are mostly given the loans. They are considered stronger, more reliable to pay back and wiser in using the loans and more caring of the needs of the children. Having money empowers the women and gives them status and respect in the community and in their families.

The education of boys and men in values to respect girls and women is vital. They must be taught that their own value and dignity as a human being and role in family and society is rooted in the respect for the dignity of females. The powerful machismo male, self-image that looks on females as objects of sexual gratification has to be replaced with one of respect, self-discipline and equal partnership, gender equality and complementary roles.

Without empowered, self-reliant and resilient women there is a greater danger of violence against women and children. The 2017 National Demographic and Health Survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority says that one in every four Filipino women and children age 15-49 has experienced physical, emotional or sexual violence by their abusers or husband or partner. Female victims of child sexual abuse left untreated leaves the child traumatized, to grow up in fear of rape and sexual abuse. They can get help and fight back but some may be rendered fearful and submissive to the violence of the abusive male in later life. That is why intervention, protection, healing and empowerment therapy is so important. The UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women says it is “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public and private life. Gender-based violence is any violence inflicted on women because of their sex.”

Domestic violence against women is predominantly linked to failed intimate relationships. In many cases, these are shallow and short-lived, most are based on sexual encounters and most are loveless relationships. The woman is treated, not as a loving friend and equal partner and respected mother of the children, but as an object of sexual gratification and a servant housekeeper and cook. The dominated woman is dependent on the man as the provider for her and the children. Many beaten women endure physical abuse because of fear and dependency.

The children in a family are greatly affected by the violent rages of the man against their mother. They, too, can grow up with the notion that violence is a normal part of relationships and be violent themselves. Children can suffer violent sexual assault by the mother’s partner. Sometimes the overpowered mother will allow the man to do it as a way to sexually satisfy him and calm his violent behavior against her. About 80 percent or 32 million children suffer from violence. Seven million of these children are between the ages of 10 to 18 and are sexually abused every year.Twenty percent or 1.4 million are under six years old.

Domestic violence is physical and sometimes psychological. Arguments and verbal abuse break out constantly, leading to a broken home and child abuse. One of many examples is the family of five-year old Vangie and eight-year old Maria (not real names). Their parents had severe disagreements and violence occurred. Their mother left the children with their paternal grandmother and the father. She found another partner. After only a few months, the two small girls were set upon by the biological father and he constantly sexually abused them and raped them both. They were rescued by the Preda Foundation senior staff and social worker and are recovering in the Preda home. He will stand trial. The children will testify.

Human trafficking is another form of violence against women. Young women and minors are “captured” by false promises, lured to fake employment and end up in brothels as sex slaves to powerful men. Many endure physical and psychological violence and “rough sex.” They are victims of “debt bondage” threatened by pimps and traffickers to pay their debts to them or they will be jailed.

That is the case of some of the 18 young girls, four of them minors, that were lured and pressured to join a party where they were to be sexually sold to foreign sex tourists in a hotel in Baloy Beach, Olongapo City, last November 2020. But the plan leaked, and they were all rescued by the National Bureau of Investigation and city social workers and Preda Foundation social workers. The minors are recovering at the Preda home. The adult women are being helped by the government social workers.

There has to be a major change in the culture of male abuse and violence against women and an end to the political tolerance that allows it. The rule of law must prevail, respect for the well-being of every woman and child has to be upheld and we are challenged to stand with them for their rights and dignity.

View New Life at Preda: Resilience and Hope at https://youtu.be/G0fFNmHSYic

http://www.preda.org

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[People] Just Judges Implement the Law for Abused Children -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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Just Judges Implement the Law for Abused Children
Fr. Shay Cullen

Justice has been done and seen to be done by Judge Maria Angelica T. Paras-Quiambao of the Regional Trial Court Branch 59 in Angeles City, Pampanga lasts 11 June 2020. In an 81-page decision, she found Christina Limpin Mendoza, 22, guilty beyond reasonable doubt of five counts of human trafficking for sexual exploitation by foreign pedophiles of two small children nine and 11 over a three year period.
The trafficker was sentenced to several life terms of imprisonment. This is a powerful message that child abusers and human traffickers will bear the full weight of the law. The Preda Foundation was supporting the children all the way in this significant case.

In another case, Judge Gemma Theresa B. Hilario-Logronio of the Regional Trial Court Branch12-FC in Olongapo City found Johnny Torres Medina guilty in a landmark decision dated 14 May 2020. He was found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of child sexual abuse of two 11-year old children. The sentence strictly followed the law and sentenced him to many years in jail. The decision has been praised by many and has given much-needed justice to the child victims and encouragement to the child protectors and advocates.

Judge Maria Cristina J. Mendoza-Pizzaro has also given justice to many child victims of rape and abuse. While there is a massive failure of law enforcement to protect children from traffickers and abuse, the courts are ruling strongly in favor of child victims and survivors. Last 10 June 2020 the sixth division of the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of upholding the conviction of a child rapist who was convicted on 15 November 2018 of qualified rape of a seven-year-old child. The original judgment and conviction was made by Judge Maria Cristina J.Mendoza-Pizzaro who has a long significant history of a no-nonsense application of the law with many just convictions of child sexual rapists and traffickers. They will never abuse or rape children again.

The Preda home for children protected the child victims for years and supported the legal action to the conclusion. In 2019, the Preda child protection foundation helped children win twenty convictions including cases against foreigners. In 2018, the Preda children won 18 convictions against their abusers and rapists and traffickers and many every year previously. This is a strong meaningful intervention in the fight for justice for children.

Preda Foundation has successfully assisted international police agencies with their enquires. In 2019, the convicted notorious pedophile, Douglas Slade, was jailed for 24 years in Bristol, the UK with the help of the Preda Foundation. The civil case brought against him in the London High Court by Preda for compensation for his five Filipino victims was successful. Huge awards were won but the lawyer was only able to collect from Slade a small amount.

Convictions send a strong message to pedophiles that they could spend most of their lives in the harsh, unforgiving conditions of jails where they will be unable to rape or abuse more children.

The most vulnerable is society are the children and teenagers that are at great risk of sexual abuse in their own home and in the street and trafficked into brothels or sold as sex slaves to pedophiles.

Angelica, an eight-year-old child (not her real name) was admitted to the Preda home for girls recently. She was sexually tied up by her biological father and sexually assaulted and beaten repeatedly on the head leaving cuts and bruises. The father had abducted her from her mother and he hid away in a remote place where he repeatedly sexually abused her. Her brother Peter, 11, (not his real name) saw the abuse. He too was tied, assaulted, and beaten by the father and is traumatized.

Angelica and Peter got free and ran away and were found by authorities who brought them to the Preda homes for abused traumatized children- the only place that can provide adequate therapy, healing, and legal assistance to them. Angelica is severely traumatized and is receiving affirmation, care, therapy, and counseling. She is just one of the thousands of children sexually assaulted and abused.

In Cabugao, Ilocos Sur, a 15-year old girl, and her18-year old cousin were going home late after a party and were picked up by two police who sexually assaulted them. The 15-year-old escaped and went to the police in another town to report the crime and file a complaint and asked for protection that was denied. While on her way home, a death squad appeared. Two men riding on a motorcycle shot her repeatedly. She was raped and then murdered for filing a complaint against the police. It is outrageous and is the new low level where the value of life had sunk into oblivion in our society.

The world has become a permissive society that turns a blind eye to the extensive abuse in the home and in brothels and through on-line child sexual abuse. The Internet Server Providers (ISPs) violate the law by not installing AI-operated blocking software to filter out child pornography and online abuse and identify the child abusers. Their violation of the law RA 9775 brands them as enablers of child abuse online and child pornography. Let their board members answer to the law and history for that.

Many children are exploited in the sex industry that thrives in sex bars operating with mayor’s permits and police protection. The local government’s approval and support of the sex industry are destroying Filipino family values. It attracts local men and foreigners and destroys families, causes broken homes, abandoned children, and victims of child abuse. It is a corrupting influence and thrives, with sex bars reopening despite the dangers of HIV-AIDS and Coronavirus spreading into the community from the personal person-to-person contact in sexual encounters.

There is a great culture of silence that is condoning the sexual violence and abuse of children. Even the churches and denominations are, with a few exceptions, silent and complicit.

There has to be wide community repentance and conversion of the silent, inactive, do-nothing, say-nothing, think-nothing, feel-nothing clergy and civic leaders that live for their personal ambition and comfort blissfully living fake lives for pleasure in total contradiction of the compassion, justice and truth taught by Jesus of Nazareth and his gospel values.

http://www.preda.org

 

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[People] History is Made as Social Issues Challenge Politics -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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History is Made as Social Issues Challenge Politics
Fr.Shay Cullen

Something has happened that is really changing the world besides the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is changing our lifestyles, our economy, and medical practices. But a greater social movement is underway as seen in numerous demonstrations by many thousands of protesters around the world. It is a protest against the dominating force of the small elite of ruling oligarchies that dominate a country’s economy and political system that oppresses and kills its citizens with impunity.

It is not the politicians who are now setting the agenda but the masses of protesting people as in the United States who have a democratic space to do so. Although the rulers try to squash, limit, and eradicate people power by force and erase that democratic right and space in some places, it breaks out anew elsewhere. In Hong Kong, we witness the freedom to protest eradicated as the Chinese draconian National Security Law, rushed through by the Communist Party, is implemented as an anti-terrorism law to crush free speech and give life-sentences to protestors.

This is the end of Hong Kong as it has been since British rule when there were greater freedom and democratic space until now. The One Country, Two Systems arrangement has been shattered. Taiwan is taking note for sure. Despite lifting almost a billon Chinese people from dire poverty through a capitalist-communism system and becoming almost the number one world economic power in only fifty years, the Chinese historical opportunity to be a truly great nation in world history is long gone, too. China’s amazing economic achievement is a tainted and diminished reality in world history by violations of human and political rights and island grabbing in the South China Sea. The Communist Party has, instead of winning glory, earned the ire of nations and less respect and prestige. Today while one social movement in Hong Kong is squashed, other social movements in the United States and other countries are gathering pace and becoming changers of history.

The “Black Lives Matter” movement is challenging police brutality and indiscriminate killing of African- Americans. They are demanding the equality and respect that is owed and rightfully belongs to all people and especially to people of color. Even there, the ruling elite of the right led by Donald Trump is trying to squash the democratic space for many years. In Washington, Trump used tear gas, flash bombs, and police force to disperse peaceful demonstrators in front of the White House, clearing a way for him to walk to a church and hold up a Bible for a photo opportunity. In Ferguson, Mississippi on 13 August 2014, police shot dead Michael Brown and there was an uprising by African-Americans. Their demonstration released a flood of anger and repressed feelings at the police oppression and deprivation of social justice. The police, predominantly white, were militarized and national guards with armored cars turned their machine guns on the people in a show of intimidation and force. The blatant public killing of unarmed African-American man George Floyd, 46, in Minneapolis, Minnesota last 25 May 2020 showed that racist oppression and repressed anger were still there. Three police officers came to arrest George Floyd for allegedly passing a counterfeit 20-dollar bill. One of the police, Derek Chauvin, cruelly pressed his knee into the neck of George Floyd while he cried, “I can’t breathe” for almost nine minutes. The murder was captured on cell phone video and the victim died soon after. The video went viral and ignited again a repeat of the Ferguson uprising but this time it spread to almost 100 cities across the United States denouncing institutionalized racism and police brutality. The “Black Lives Matter” protest is still ongoing and has spread around the world as oppressed and exploited indigenous people and people of color join the global protest and demand social justice and human rights.

President Donald Trump has been heavily criticized for twitting a video in support of a white supremacist shouting “White power!” from a golf cart. The movement, consisting of black and white protesters, can be summed up as a mass protest against that one phase, “white power.” It is now international, native Americans, African- Americans, indigenous people and people of color in Canada, Brazil, France, the UK, and many other countries are marching.

There is an outrage and a mighty force of people power rising up to challenge the status quo and the oppressive dominant attitudes of the white supremacist and the hatred and racism expressed on social media such as Facebook. Facebook is now challenged by the business community that is withholding advertising from Facebook until it changes its support for hate speech. It is doing so.

What we have to understand is that racism is not just a few white supremacist people lording it over the African-American or brown or Asian people and considering them as inferior. It is a “political and social power” issue. South Africa was ruled by white supremacist leaders for a century until Nelson Mandela came to lead a national protest. The US Congress and Senate are a majority of white politicians.

The American white supremacist ruling elites were shocked and deeply angered by the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American to be president of the United States. Then, in retaliation it seemed, they got Trump elected. Trump, a white supremacist, and racist himself did everything to destroy the Obama legacy and achievements and criminalize the protesters today.

The Movement began more than 300 years ago when Africans were enslaved and shipped to the Americas. At its very worse, racism is the mentality of powerful people in a nation that consider the poor, those of different skin color and the indigenous peoples to be almost sub-human and that killing them is a public service as some police and military around the world do like in the United States, France, Syria, Brazil and elsewhere. The police killers in the United States and military who kill with impunity have no empathy, compassion, and respect for others. They have animal-like “killer instinct.” They act on emotion, not reason. So it is they that are less fully human than their victims.

Removing statues that glorify the racists and slavers, banning the confederate flag, changing the name on racist skin bleaching creams, boycotting Facebook, bringing in new laws on policing are just symbols of change. While social justice, equality, and respect for all people has to be an immediate goal, long term change to eradicate racism has to be in the hearts and minds of the people. It starts in the classroom, where education is the key, and a next-generation needs to know, practice, and live by the values of community equality and mutual respect, true social and civil justice, and love of neighbor.

http://www.preda.org
shaycullen@gmail.com

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[People] US and China Spar over the Philippines -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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US and China Spar over the Philippines
Fr. Shay Cullen
27 June 2019

The fishermen of Masinloc and Sta. Cruz, Zambales had fished the Scarborough Shoal for generations. In the past several years, the Filipino fishing boats have been harassed and prevented from fishing near the fish-rich shoal by the incursion of Chinese fishing and militia boats.

In June 2019, a Chinese militia ship sank a Filipino boat in the West Philippine Sea in an act of aggression that left the Philippines looking weak and powerless. The Chinese Navy has boldly sailed its aircraft carrier and escort ships through the Philippine Sibutu Passage without prior permission, violating Philippine sovereignty. China is claiming exclusively almost all of the territory of the South China Sea that includes the West Philippine Sea within a nine-point -dash line that it has drawn around the edge of the South China Sea.

The Scarborough shoal, the Spratlys and Pag-asa groups of islands and other islands are well within the Philippines 12-nautical mile territorial sea and the 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone. In the face of Chinese claims, this right has been upheld by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. In a historic decision, the court declared “there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the ‘nine-dash line.” “Having found that none of the features claimed by China was capable of generating an exclusive economic zone, the Tribunal found that it could — without delimiting a boundary — declare that certain sea areas are within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines because those areas are not overlapped by any possible entitlement of China,”

China does not recognize the international arbitration decision and did not attend the hearings. Instead, it continued to build up its military power in several Islands claimed by the Philippines, installing long-range surface to air missiles and building structures and aircraft runways. In a belated response, the Philippines has begun in 2020 to build up infrastructure in Pagasa Island, one of its biggest inhabited islands in the Spratly Islands.

Despite Chinese objections, after two years of delay, it has built a landing ramp and a wharf for small ships to dock and land equipment to pave the existing 1.2-kilometer dirt runway. Pagasa Island is just twenty-six kilometers northeast of the Subi Reef which is now a large Chinese military installation(one of several) on a man-made island and armed to the teeth but is within Philippines territorial waters.

The Chinese send their warships through the Philippines ‘ territorial waters as if they own them. In 2018, 35 Chinese naval ships traversed Philippine territorial waters without prior permission which is a violation of Philippine sovereignty. The Philippine defense department said that in 2018 as many as 434 Chinese ships traversed Philippines waters without prior notice and in 2019 the number was 389 ships. For sure, the source of this information is from the US Navy which keeps a close watch on all ship movements in the region.

The US has sent its warships passed the islands claimed by the Chinese to establish that they are in international waters and they have the “Freedom of Navigation.” They are challenging the naval might of the Chinese navy that cannot thwart them without starting World War III.

The Chinese taunting of the Philippines and probing of the US response is a very serious problem for the Philippines. They are caught in the middle of a global power struggle. The Chinese claim the area by “power of possession.” It is adverse and illegal possession by international law, which they ignore. The Philippines is powerless to stop them and the US will not intervene. It is as if China is annexing Philippine territory. The Chinese will benefit by drilling for oil and mining minerals in the ocean’s depths and the Philippines will lose their rightful natural resources. So it is not just the hundreds of tons of fish that the Chinese are taking every day from Philippine waters but soon they will be exploiting the rest of the Philippine natural resources. In 2016, the Philippine government put aside these concerns and entered into a new relationship of friendship with China and took out huge loans from the Chinese government, creating a debt-bondage relationship.

The only check on the powerful Chinese Navy is the United States. It was the ruler of the waves in the Asian region for decades and is still a force to be reckoned with. The United States lost access to its huge military bases in the Philippines in 1992. This was due to the Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption, diplomatic blunders, and a strong social and human rights campaign by NGOs. Started and led by Preda Foundation, they campaigned successfully to convert the bases to Filipino civilian use because of the sexual exploitation of women and children in the huge military-driven sex industry.

On May 27, 1999, the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) came into force. This allows the US access to Philippine airfields and navy ships to dock in Philippine ports. There are three presently at Subic Bay. However, on 11 February 2020, the Philippine government suddenly announced the termination of the VFA causing consternation in Washington because of the denial of a US visa to a political ally of President Rodrigo Duterte. The termination was due to take effect on 11 August 2020. The Chinese were delighted, always seeking ways to lure allies away from the US and weaken the US military presence in the Asian-Pacific region. However, Filipinos with millions of relatives in the United States and thousands planning to join them much prefer the pact with the US than a deal with the Chinese Liberation Army.

So on 3 June 2020, Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin announced that the Philippine government would extend the VFA at least until the end of the year. This may be to counter the dominating Chinese presence or a negotiating tactic to wring more concessions from the United States. Only time will tell.

http://www.preda.org

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[People] When the Light Shines Again -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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When the Light Shines Again
Fr. Shay Cullen
19 June 2020

It was a happy day for Joshua. He graduated from the Preda vocational training program and proudly held a student’s driver’s license and his graduation certificate while the camera clicked to record the moment and everyone there applauded. It was his day when the light shone for him.

He had completed and passed his driving test at the Preda Home for Boys and completed a course in shielded metal arc welding. He can apply for a job as a basic welder or driver when he gets his license. He was only seven months in the Preda program and his life had dramatically changed at that time.

Joshua was once a child prisoner, locked in a small bare prison cell with graffiti on the walls, a hole in the floor for a toilet, and what a dark dangerous smelly place it was. The dark dungeons of Dicken’s novels were the only comparison.

He became a fighter, a rebellious child prisoner. He opposed all authority, even the cell boss-man couldn’t control him so they beat and kicked him. The world for Joshua was a mean and dangerous place where his survival was threatened every day. They fought over the small food allowance of rice and expired cans of fish. He fought off the bigger youths that tried to rape him. He kicked and gouged and defended himself.

The day came when he was saved from this hell-hole of misery. He was released from the unjust and unnecessary detention. His only so-called crime was he was homeless and broke curfew. His father died when he was ten years old and his stepfather beat him and cursed him. He ran away and took to the streets; there was no home, no acceptance just rejection. The local officials locked him in the youth detention center where the Preda social workers found him bruised, angry, and rebellious.

With the release order signed by the judge, he came to the Preda home for boys in the countryside without fences, no cells just freedom and friendship. It was not an easy transition. His old survivalist ways dominated. He bullied others and fought for dominance as he believed that was what he was supposed to do in this world. He had learned on the streets and the jail cells that no one cares, no one helps, no one loves him.

That changed day by day as he realized that he was cared for, that he was respected, no one bullied him, he joined values formation sessions, education classes and slowly he realized he had landed in a family that cared.

He was respected for the first time in his life and was free to choose to stay and to change and learn. He had emotional release therapy and screamed out his buried pain and hatred for the abuse he suffered. He joined the sports, outings, games, and picnics. Soon, he was taking vocational training. He was transforming. He tamed himself.

He is now a happy, intelligent mature youth together with twenty classmates who are also growing and changing at the Preda home. Most of them are also taking the vocational training course as part of their diversion program under the Philippine Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act (JJWA) or Republic Act 9344 that promotes restorative justice rather than harsh punishment. His graduation day and chance to be reintegrated into his sister’s family were when the light shone for him. It was a new day, a bright shining moment when he knew that he was truly accepted respected as a person of value and had true friends and would be helped to succeed in life.

Benjie, only 16, has completed many hours of electrical repair training and driving which will be a good chance for him to get a job when he leaves the Preda home and becomes of legal age. He has completed his Alternative Learning System (ALS) education which is a substitute for the years he missed for high school after he was arrested for making and possessing illegal drugs. He discovered his true self, has human value and dignity at Preda home for boys. Thousands have been helped since 1974 to find recovery, peace, and success in life. The light has shone for many like Benjie. His life story is a sad one as he tells it.

“My parents are separated; I was left with my grandmother in the slums when I was 10. Lola (grandmother) became old and sickly because we had no money and I begged for food. When I was 14 years old I tried to support her by selling vegetables from the open market but it was wasn’t enough for survival. We ate the rotten ones and bought pag-pag (uneaten leftovers from restaurants). Then a drug dealer recruited me, offered me cash and food, and then drugs. I got hooked myself and I owed him money and worked for him. I was controlled by this gangster drug dealer, there was no way out. He threatened me and would kill Lola if I ran away and refused to deliver his dirty drugs. I was set for a life as a criminal and would likely be dead because of the war against drugs. If I was not saved by Preda and that lawyer from the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO), I would have been killed for sure.”

When Preda social workers intervened and the judge agreed to send Benjie to Preda, that was when the light shone for him. He graduated and has a bright future ahead of him. He can make his way in life and will succeed and his children will learn the values of respect and love and dignity.

As many as 1,230 children are confined today in youth detention centers as far as we know. There could be more that we don’t know. They are deprived of liberty and behind bars or in cages around the Philippines. The Preda Foundation has campaigned for the release of the children and as of today the number released is 323 children so far. There is hope and we must continue to advocate for the release of the unjustly jailed children.

shaycullen@gmail.com
http://www.preda.org

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[People] Are PLDT and Globe Enabling the Transmission of Online Sexual Exploitation of Children? -Fr. Shay Cullen

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Are PLDT and Globe Enabling the Transmission of Online Sexual Exploitation of Children?
Fr. Shay Cullen
11 June 2020

The Internet Server Providers (ISP’s) such as PLDT and Globe in the Philippines and thousands around the world must be challenged and held accountable for allegedly failing to block effectively, with the latest AI-enabled software, the transmission of child pornography and the heinous crime of online sexual exploitation of children live-streamed to paying pedophiles around the world. Child abuse and pornography is an international crime and needs a local and international response. Globe is planning to expand into Europe, but we will campaign against it if there is no change.

The Philippines has been named as the world hot spot for child pornography and online sexual exploitation of children. Only a few weeks ago 13 children more were rescued from cyber-crime dens in Biliran. Home for under investigation clerical sexual abuse, where a US priest, Kenneth Pius Hendricks and others sexually abused children for decades.

The ISP’s must be held accountable for failing to obey and fully respect the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009 otherwise known as the Republic Act 9775 by installing up-to-date effective blocking software in their servers. This is the only effective answer to the rampant widespread child pornography “pandemic” sweeping the Philippines and the world.

Globe informed me that after eleven years of failing to comply with the law they installed in 2017 DNS software to block websites that they know or contain child porn and said they depend on the Department of Justice to inform them of such websites. This is most likely a category based and very simple and cheap software. It is most likely to be very ineffective since there are daily streams of child porn passing through Globe servers and those of PLDT. The illegal and horrific images of little children being sexually abused live on the internet is capable of reaching the computers, tablets, and smartphones of Filipinos and pedophiles abroad as detected by law international enforcement.

As Globe tells me there is a new child porn website to quickly replace the old. That’s because they have outdated ineffective cheap DNS software. What they should have, and they know it is Real-time; Artificial Intelligence (AI) based software. This continues to crawl the worldwide internet for signals and sites promoting child porn and live streaming. It detects instantly and continues to update in real-time by machine learning using Artificial Intelligence (AI). No human employees needed, it is strong, and lives forever once installed as a High-Tech expert from Zyalin Software Company informed me since they design such effective software.

Pldt/Smart responds and informs me that to meet their requirements under the RA 9775, 2009 law where they are required to install software to block child pornography but have not done so for eleven years, said they are proposing a solution to Government to act, not them. “We have been suggesting that the government consider the use of a technology solution developed by Microsoft for this purpose”. Also, they said in a letter to me: “For example, at this point, it is not possible for ISPs to selectively block bad content being live-streamed via global internet platforms. If Philippine ISPs attempt to do this, the entire global internet platform will be blocked”. This is totally wrong as companies with powerful AI blocking software can do it.

PLDT/Smart and Globe can stop the horrible sex crimes against children and prevent them from happening. They must obey the law and install the latest effective blocking filters. However, why do they not have the latest most effective child porn blocking software? Because it will slow down their Network, that’s why. Because customers will have to wait a few seconds longer to connect and might switch to a rival ISP. Really it is about greed and money not about children being raped and abused over the ISPs servers. Perhaps, they have some sweetheart deal with the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to ignore the law and pay a small fine for not complying.

If President Rodrigo Duterte is the strong-minded, iron-fisted champion of law and order and child protection, to save the nation he will act bravely and decisively order the ISP’s like PLDT/Smart and Globe to obey RA 9775 the Anti-Child Pornography Law of 2009. I believe that he is already planning to do this.

Republic Act 9557, under Section 9, says: “The duties of Internet Server Providers (ISP) to monitor the content passing through their servers notify the police of illegal content and provide the authorities the particulars of users who gained or attempted to gain access to an Internet address which contains any form of child pornography. All ISP’s shall install available technology, program, or software to ensure access to or transmittal of any form of child pornography will be blocked or filtered.”

The Cyber-crime Prevention Act of 2012 otherwise known as the Republic Act 10175 also bans cybersex and child pornography, among other things. President Rodrigo Duterte can increase his huge popularity, now at 72 percent, if he will recommend a swift amendment to the law that will increase the penalty to the ISP’s for non-compliance to ten million pesos a day until they fully comply with the law and install the most effective efficient child porn AI-based blocking software. The fines paid can be for the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to help child victims. The law can back-fine the ISP’s for violating the law for 11 years, at a million a day.

As you read this, thousands of young Filipinos are exposed to viewing, damaging, disturbing, and psychologically hurtful content passed through the ISP servers on the Internet. These are illegal graphic images on home-made videos of young children- girls and boys- being sexually raped and abused. Your child could be viewing these terrible videos and pictures without your knowledge. You can be sure they won’t tell you and you will never know but might notice disturbing changes in their personality and character.

You might think it is due to drugs but now think- child pornography. Their teenage peers download them and share them through the Internet-enabled by the ISP’s. Some teenagers also make child pornography videos of their own sexual abuse of young girls and boys and share them with classmates or gang-mates or upload them on YouTube. They extort sexual favors and money from underage victims by threatening to post the videos. A young uncle of two small children abused them and uploaded the child sexual abuse on Youtube possibly through Globe or PLDT or their subsidiary. He is now charged with child abuse and cybersex abuse of children. Hundreds of children are sexually abused daily and The ISP’s go free, for now.

This online sexual exploitation of children through the ISPs must change. Globe and PLDT/Smart must obey the RA 9775 law. Every day, more children are sexually abused and damaged and it could be your child. It is time to act and hold the ISPs accountable for eleven years of disobeying the law and allowing thousands of acts of abuse over their servers.

shaycullen@gmail.com

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[People] What is the Meaning of Life? -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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3 April 2020

What a challenging world we live in. Half the people on the planet are cowering inside their homes and shelters. Many are in fear of Coronavirus, too nervous to go out. The poor are hungry, millions are unemployed, the economy is in free fall and people are worried and asking when it will all end. That no one knows. The challenge is for us to embrace the power of goodness, to build up our strength, to be resilient, compassionate, just, caring, sharing and helping each other and strangers.

The threat to shoot to kill the protesting hungry people in Tondo, Manila is totally unjust and would be seen as a crime against humanity. Their need is for food and help to live, not bullets and death. There has been more than 200 billion pesos (US $4 billion) set aside for the alleviation of hunger. It must be shared.

Children and adults are locked in overcrowded sub-human prisons around the world all in danger of mass death from the virus. In the Philippines, hundreds of children 13 years and older suffer abuse and torture in jails. They must be released. Many adult prisoners should be released, too, before the guards have to carry out thousands of infected corpses including some of their own.

Brave doctors and health workers are risking their lives every hour to help save others. Many doctors and nurses have died. They have limited protective garb and know the danger yet they courageously worked on, heroes all for the sake of humanity.

Many died because the government health systems around the world are unprepared. Some leaders are too dumb, ignorant or corrupt to see and understand the danger and prepare a stockpile of protective gear. The simple truth is that this virus cannot be easily stopped, there is no cure and it kills.

There are too few available life-saving respirators and doctors have to make the agonizing heart-breaking decisions whom to save. Will it be the 85-year old or the 23-year old younger patient? One older Catholic priest in Italy willingly gave his respirator to a younger person and the priest died. It was a heroic act of self-sacrifice, may his spirt it live on.

This is a virus that is a monster from hell and all the ingenuity and science of humankind is almost defeated. Everyone must stay as isolated as possible to defeat Coronavirus. Although it is not a living organism but a protein, it needs a human host to replicate itself.

The experts tell us that the virus needs to attach itself to our cells and use the RNA there to pass information about itself to the new round of viruses that are being cloned and multiplying in the human body. The virus is evolving as if it were alive, and likely causes the infected person to cough or sneeze so it can transfer itself to another person. It is clever for a non-living, non-thinking protein. It seems to be similar but smarter than some non-thinking billionaire politicians whom we hope will not replicate themselves.

There is no known reason or purpose why it exists. Why does anything or anybody exist in the first place? Is there any purpose to it or life itself or none at all? Some say there is no purpose, we just are. Yet we and all life exist on a tiny speck of a planet in a vast universe among millions of galaxies. The universe, scientists tell us, came into existence from a big bang, an explosion of energy apparently from nothing but at that infinitesimal millionth of a second all material matter came into existence. That’s some amazing true story. And we came from that. The universe of which we are an intimate part of (although insignificant) is vast, endless, existing for no known reason. Does there have to be a reason at all and can something come from nothing is the question.

What is human reason anyway, did it evolve as the ability of the human species to be self-ware, to think and to then know that we exist? As the philosopher Rene Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” But what if we don’t think, don’t converse with ourselves, what then is the purpose of existing?

In a less philosophical frame of mind, we may recall Coronavirus came from some people eating wild animals, like bats, and other exotic wild creatures in a market in Wuhan. Well, the Chinese government has to stop all that illegal trade in animal parts that is destroying the animal kingdom and human lives. Some authorities there are accused of trafficking in human body parts, too. They execute prisoners without just trials to harvest their body parts for medical operations.

Coronavirus is a non-living protein yet a seemingly almighty invisible force that has brought every nation to its knees, making millions sick and causing death. Is there no positive virus or protein that can lift up the human species and improve its value of life with strong moral values and principles?

Some believe that there is a spiritual power that can motivate people to choose the good, live a moral life, love truth, honesty and justice and to care for strangers in need and treat them as friends. It is the gift of belief in a supreme intelligent being that is the ultimate cause of the the universe and the big bang and humans. To be in close union with this Supreme Being, the universal force of goodness and love is happiness. That gives purpose of all life, especially human life.

In these days of great challenge and dramatic life changing events, we can survive the Coronavirus and be happier if that universal force of goodness and love is with us and we are with the force. That will be enough for anyone of us to self-sacrifice and give our respirator to someone younger than us.

http://www.preda.org

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[People] The Good and Bad Side-Effects of Coronavirus -by Fr.Shay Cullen

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The good side-effects we can see during this medical crisis brought about by the coronavirus is the love, concern, and care shown by the dedicated caregivers, nurses and medical workers. It is phenomenal. The goodness and love of millions of humans have come shining through. There are neighborhood help movements growing online. In Canada, an online network is helping the elderly, neighbors are helping neighbors. In Italy, people are singing from balconies to cheer up those in quarantine. People are changing to a healthy diet also.

Preda Fair Trade Dried Mango fruit with loads of Vitamin C and no chemicals are selling fast in the UK and Ireland. People are changing to a healthy diet to strengthen their immune system to fight off and prevent the flu and hopefully coronavirus.

The Preda dried mangos are available online for the order if you can’t leave home. Go to the http://www.forestfeast.com online and ask a friend to do it. If you can go shopping in Tescos, Dunnes or Waitrose, you will find the Preda Dried Mangos there under the Forest Feast brand. Buy lots. All earnings from sales go to support the abused children rescued by Preda Foundation and protect them from the Coronavirus. You are doing good for all.

But the greatest good is the dedication of caregivers and medical workers. Eighty-year-old Elizabeth would not survive the coronavirus if not for Margi, her devoted caregiver. Every day, Margi Gonzalez risks getting infected on her rounds visiting her many patients in the community center. She treats any sores, takes blood pressure and temperature and sees that they are comfortable, fed, and taking her medicine on time. Elizabeth and others are being monitored for the coronavirus after one member of the community tested positive. Thousands of caregivers like Margi are slowing the spread of the deadly contagious infection. She was a migrant from the Philippines to Britain.

There are many good people like Margi on the front line. Many are former migrants or refugees, who fled poverty, oppression, fear, and suffering for a new, better life. Now the rich, developed nations benefit from their skills and service. That is a positive result of a sad history of human rights violations and injustice. Margi was marked as a protest leader and fled the death squads employed by a mining firm to quell the protest against the mining corporation taking over their farmland.

That is the paradox, the poor flee as migrants or refugees the hardship caused by the greedy multinational corporations supported by their governments. They exploit the natural resources of poor nations in cahoots with the local corrupt ruling families. These three are the corrupt players behind every conflict. They drive the poor to become migrants and refugees. They, in turn, become the caregivers of the nation that exploited and harmed them.

Another positive outcome of the disastrous impact of the coronavirus is the lock-down and restricted international travel. The end to cheap flights and the grounding of thousands of planes, strict screening, setting up roadblocks, demanding IDs, all have a positive effect. This helps to curb the human trafficking of young girls and boys into Western countries from Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is the modern slave trade that has hopefully been slowed.

In an overnight decree, governments banned any and all travel of most people, including the travel of sex offenders, pedophiles and sex tourists and pedophiles on child rape holidays. That is another kind of epidemic. There is no specific law against it. There should be. As the multinationals rape the land of its minerals, the rich pedophiles come and rape the children. Preda Foundation is fighting this and rescuing the child victims for healing. Preda Fair Trade helps us in this fight as serious as coronavirus. You can help, too.

The young girls and boys are lured into servitude with false promises of well-paid jobs by mafia-like networks. The victims are held in debt bondage and forced to work in the Philippines or rich countries for little or no pay. They are slaves, threatened with beatings and harm to their families in their home countries if they don’t cooperate and become slaves or sex workers. Preda Foundation rescues and heals many.

Thousands of Descendents of Irish migrants are in the medical profession around the world now fighting coronavirus. From 1845 to 1849, starving Irish migrants fled from British colonial exploitation of Ireland and the famine that they caused and allowed. British politicians and families had taken Irish land by force and became rich. The Irish were impoverished. They fled as refugees and migrants to America.

The United States was then a land of freedom, hope and opportunity for the oppressed and the poor. Thousands of Irish fought and died in the civil war against slavery. Now, under Trump, it is a closed fortress ruled by an anti-migrant white supremacist clique incapable of responding strongly and correctly to the coronavirus pandemic and allowing it to spread.

We all are challenged to fight the coronavirus by avoiding all contamination by self-quarantine, hand washing, keeping social distance, and getting tested when protocols require. We must respect, honor and support those who are risking all to help us win.

http://www.preda.org
20 March 2020

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[People] The Challenge to Protect Children in 2019 -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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The Challenge to Protect Children in 2019
by Fr. Shay Cullen

The world in 2019 has to wake up to the prevalence of child sexual abuse and everyone has to act more decisively about it. Parents, politicians and citizens must be aware that this is a horrendous crime and all must do much more to prevent it and rescue and cure the child victims and bring the perpetrators to justice, convict and jail them.

Sexual abuse of young girls and boys is being revealed as commonplace. This is the dark dirty secret of depraved men and some women. They prey on children to get sexual satisfaction for their twisted often-brutal sexual desires. But the complacency of society and strong liberal trends in human relationships among adults should not give any opening for the tolerance or trivializations of sexual molestation, acts of abuse or rape of anyone.

Child sexual abuse is not the act of a few depraved men, called monsters, hiding in alleyways. This profile of a child abuser is wrong. The abuser or rapist (mostly men) is an outwardly, friendly, apparently kind, smiling, generous but manipulative person and is a secretly dangerous predator. No one profession seems to be beyond the acts of sexual abuse of children and young girls.

Even biological fathers, brothers, cousins, grandfathers, live-in partners, family friends, boyfriends, a cardinal, bishops, priests, doctors, professors, teachers, laborers, sports coaches, swimming instructors and even presidents themselves abuse children. The Philippine president admitted recently that he too fell into temptation when he was a teenager and sexually abused a maid when she was sleeping, causing outrage, and the revelation is denied as true by the government press office.

People in general treat these acts of abuse with too light an attitude of tolerance and resignation perhaps but the value of human dignity is greatly diminished everywhere by every single act of abuse. This leads to the degradation of society and the descent of the human race into a child-abusing species. Humanity itself is tarnished and degraded.

No other species is known to abuse their own offspring other than our cousins- the chimpanzees- and this is rare of them. They know no better and do not have reason. They cannot exercise thinking and do not have a moral sense of right and wrong, good and bad, true and false. Nor do they have free will to choose good or bad. They follow their instincts.

But we humans do have reason and free will to choose to do good or bad and that’s what makes us human. Indifference, apathy, inaction, leaving it to others and doing nothing ourselves is an intolerable silence. That can be looking the other way when we know of a child having been abused because we are afraid to speak out and afraid to challenge both the abuser and the system that allows it. Child abuse happens with great frequency from bullying, physical and verbal abuse to sexual abuse and child rape. In many cases the authorities and society ignore it. Even parents ignore the abuse of their own children at times when it is in their interests to do so.

An 11-year old child, Shane, is a victim of abuse and her traumatic experience began when her stepfather began to hurt her physically and threaten her with a knife. He began to sexually molest her while her mother looked on. Her mother said, “Daddy is just being affectionate to you.” Shane resisted at first but was overpowered and forced to suffer the pain and fear.

She ran to the streets to escape. Whenever she was brought back to the house by relatives or the authorities to be abused again, no one asked her why she was unhappy at home. Had they done so, she may have revealed the sexual abuse she endured. Preda Foundation social workers heard about the case and rescued the child and she is recovering at the Preda Home in Subic, Zambales. Do we have a model to exemplify the terrible hurt and suffering endured by the child victims? The institutional Church has recognized only two child victims with sainthood, martyrdom, and beatification as child victims who resisted attempted rape and were murdered.

Saint Maria Goretti (October 16, 1890 – July 6, 1902) was a poor 11-year-old girl living with her family in the house of Giovanni Serenelli. Her father died when she was nine years old. The son of Serenelli, Alessandro, sexually assaulted her one day when all the family were in the fields working at the harvest. He threatened her with a knife but she resisted and he stabbed her repeatedly. She died soon after in the hospital. Forty-eight years later, in1950, she was made a saint. She had fought her would be rapist and died for it.

Anna Kalesarova was a 16-year old girl in Slovakia. In 1944, she was in her home when a Russian soldier from the occupying army entered the house and sexually assaulted her. She resisted the attempted rape and the soldier shot her in the head. On 1 September 2018, Pope Francis declared her a “Martyr” and “Blessed.” These young girls are not the only ones to resist being sexually assaulted and raped. There are many brave and courageous children today fighting back against their rapists. Some are killed by their would-be rapists and some survive.

So we can say that all the children who resist being raped are emulating Maria and Anna and can share in their sainthood and martyrdom as declared by the Church. They are equally virtuous and courageous. They too can be considered children worthy of sainthood as Jesus himself said they are the most important in the world. To accept them is to accept Him (Matt.18:1- 8). To abuse them is to abuse Him. Child abuse is a despicable crime. There has to be continuous protests at every incident, a clamor for justice and a complete end to tolerance and indifference.

http://www.preda.org
Read the book on child abuse, Ricky and Julie, at Amazon http://amzn.com/B07DXKX4SV

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[People] Convictions Bring Justice for Abused Children -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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Convictions Bring Justice for Abused Children
Fr. Shay Cullen

Hundreds of children are sexually abused daily in the Philippines and millions are abused around the world. Strict justice is needed and an unrelenting crackdown on child abusers is what is needed to protect children from sexual abuse.

More Filipino child abusers are being convicted than ever before. Judges are delivering justice. US nationals accused based on credible evidence of child sexual abuse in the Philippines or those who returned to the US are “persons of interest” or are even under surveillance by the dedicated investigators of the U.S. Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit at the US Embassy in Manila and their counterparts in the US.

They have successfully investigated many cases and gathered sound credible evidence against US nationals that will stand up in a US court of law. US citizen Arthur Benjamin finally pleaded guilty to crimes of child abuse and after more than four years in a harsh Philippine jail, he was deported to the US and placed on trial in California. This was done under US extraterritorial jurisdiction law. He died a few months ago. His interview about his sexual exploits with underage girls was captured on camera by ABC TV New York. You can watch The Raid at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xRCk8Ni-cs

The latest arrest is that of an American Catholic priest, Kenneth Hendricks. He was arrested December 5 in Naval, Biliran, Southeastern Philippines. Father Hendricks, 78, has been accused of abusing children during his 40 years in the Philippines. He is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt but is being extradited to the US to stand trial. US Homeland Security agents arrested Hendricks. A warrant for Hendricks’s arrest was issued November 11 by the U.S. District Court of Ohio. Hendricks faces federal charges for engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign country, a US crime.

US Federal law provides “extraterritorial jurisdiction” over certain sex offenses against children by US nationals. Extraterritorial jurisdiction is the legal authority of the United States to prosecute criminal conduct that took place outside its borders. Section 2423(c) of Title 18, United States Code, and Sections1596, 3261, and 3271 provide for extraterritorial jurisdiction in sex trafficking and child exploitation offenses.

Preda Foundation has been successful in bringing Filipino nationals to trial in the Philippines for child abuse. In 2018, Preda pursued justice for several child victims. They sought refuge and help at the Preda Home for Girls. There, they were helped overcome the trauma, grew in self-confidence, were educated, protected and empowered to file charges. Many bravely and courageously testified after months of Emotional Release Therapy in the home for abused children. They succeeded in testifying and fighting for their rights and won 16 convictions. Of their abusers, 15 were sentenced to life in prison. One got four years for acts of lasciviousness. The Preda home is headed by Marlyn Capio-Richter, a registered social worker and paralegal officer of the Preda Foundation’s Victoria Home for Girls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0yuV0XEz98 .

As early as 2006, Preda took a court case against a German national who abused children in the Philippines. The judge invited the victims and witnesses to Germany where the case was to be heard. They testified and won the case and the child sex abuser was convicted and jailed.

More recently here in the Philippines, five boys who are victims of a British pedophile Douglas Slade testified by video link to a High Court judge sitting in London and told how they were sexually abused by him. He defended himself from a Bristol jail where he is serving a 24-year sentence after being convicted for historical sex abuse committed against UK youths.

This December 2018, the five Filipino boys abused by Slade won their civil case demanding compensation and will hopefully receive a large payment. It’s the first time in history that Filipinos took and won such a case in the UK. It is significant that the British judicial system pursued justice equally for children abused in the UK and in a foreign country. These arrests, trials, convictions and victories will encourage other victims to come forward and tell their stories and be believed. The pro bono lawyers from Hugh James Law Office in the UK, Allen Collins and Samuel Barker, did a magnificent job in preparing the case and senior solicitor Mr. Levinson presented the case in court. Now, they have the task of discovering where Slade has hidden his money.

Slade falsely claimed to the court that he had been set up by Fr. Shay Cullen and Preda. This is the ruling of HH Judge Mark Gargan:

“I reject the defendant’s suggestion of impropriety on the part of Fr. Cullen, Ms Capio Richter or PREDA generally. In my judgment, PREDA created a receptive environment in which vulnerable victims might work through their problems and therefore be able to explain more fully the nature of the abuse that they had undergone.

I found Fr Cullen to be an impressive witness. I am wholly satisfied that he was honest and doing his best to assist the court with what he knew about the relevant events. Fr. Cullen was able to explain why he had a longstanding interest in the defendant’s conduct and I wholly reject any suggestion that Fr. Cullen was engaged in some form of witch-hunt against the defendant or that he would be prepared to manufacture or manipulate evidence. In any event, it is significant that his involvement and that of Ms Capio-Richter came about only after the complaints had been lodged with the police.”

So justice has been done and we hope there will be many more convictions and this will make the world a safer place for children.

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[People] Those Fighting and Dying for Filipino Freedoms -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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Those Fighting and Dying for Filipino Freedoms
by Fr. Shay Cullen

What is independence but the freedom from the domination and control of others? Freedom is firstly an inner, non-material spiritual value. The desire for it is a natural right and when achieved, it is a joyful experience. The freedom to practice our religious beliefs and to be freed from chains and bondage, the freedom of expression and to live in dignity free from poverty and fear are the greatest values of being human. They are universal human rights.

Working for freedom and independence from all kinds of oppression, whether it be poverty, human right violations, discrimination, racism, sex slavery and exploitation, land grabbing or unjust imprisonment, is driven by spiritual motivation not by political ambition or goals. It is a commitment to stand up for the moral and gospel values of human dignity and freedom.

The great Gandhi, a man of deep spirituality and conviction protested against British oppression and domination of India’s people. He campaigned and demanded freedom and independence. He was named the Father of the Nation. He was a rights campaigner, not a politician, yet his demand for freedom and human rights was wrongly branded as political interference, subversion and political meddling by the British authorities and he was vilified and jailed. He led a non-violent moral movement that won freedom and independence for the millions of oppressed Indians.

In the Philippines the Filipino secular Catholic priests Mariano Gomez, José Burgos and Jacinto Zamora were garroted to death in Bagumbayan (now called Luneta Park) by the Spanish authorities after a mock trial with false witness. They were falsely accused of subversion on February 17, 1872 on fake charges of political subversion arising from the 1872 Cavite mutiny. In fact, they were human rights activists in a racial struggle against Spanish-born clerics but accused of political interference, a handy way to get rid of human rights advocates.

In Negros in the 1980s, the famous Catholic missionaries Fathers Brian Gore from Australia and Father Niall O’Brian from Ireland, diocesan Filipino priest Father Vicente Dangan and six lay church workers were unjustly accused and jailed by the Marcos regime, vilified with false charges as being political subversives who were wrongly accused of killing a mayor. The communist rebels admitted that they had done it but the priests and church lay workers were unjustly blamed to silence them from speaking out against social injustice. After many months, they were eventually freed. Nowadays, assassins have killed and are killing advocates of freedom and independence, human rights activists, media practitioners and priests and pastors to mention just a few.

In Mindanao, for more than 32 years, Father Fausto Tentorio was dedicated to helping the poor indigenous Lumad people in their struggle against mining interests that were grabbing their land and destroying their environment. He was murdered. His fellow missionaries Father Tullio Favali and Father Salvatore Carzedda were also murdered in North Cotabato and Zamboanga Cit respectively. They gave their lives for the freedom of the oppressed people. Their work for the poor was not political, it was humanitarian and done for justice and human dignity.

Father Marcelito Paez, 72, dedicated to human rights and justice for prisoners was shot and killed by assassins riding in tandem on a motorcycle in the town of Jaen, Nueva Ecija after visiting a jail to help win freedom for a political prisoner December 4, 2017. Father Mark Anthony Yuaga Ventura, a Catholic priest, was shot and killed after saying Mass in the northern Philippine town of Gattaran in Cagayan province on April 29, 2018. He was known to be active in supporting the indigenous people struggling for their rights against land-grabbers. Leading political authorities have vilified his life of service with baseless sordid allegations.

Sister Patricia Fox is to be deported for taking a stand for the rights of the indigenous people and supporting the rights of the poor and the oppressed. Her courageous spiritual commitment was branded as political interference when in fact she was living out her gospel values and spiritual mission to love and free the struggling Filipino. Deportation is the only thanks the government is giving her after 27 years of dedicated work.

Archbishop Óscar Romero was appointed archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador in February 1977. From being a very conservative bishop, he saw the oppression when his best friend, a priest and human rights advocate, was brutally murdered by the government secret police. From then on, the archbishop changed and campaigned for human rights and justice for the poor through radio, articles and sermons and defended the political prisoners who were being executed. He spoke out against violence and torture by the dictatorial regime in San Salvador. Many other bishops in El Salvador said he was too political and claimed that he was supporting the communists.

On many occasions, he said he was following the teaching of Jesus Christ who was executed for taking a stand with the poor and criticizing the injustice of the authorities. Then on March 24, 1980, he was assassinated while he celebrated the Mass. When Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became Pope Francis, he recognized the true commitment and heroic commitment of Oscar Romero and he beatified him in May 2015. Then last March 2018, Pope Francis announced that Archbishop Romero would be made a saint of the Church on Oct. 14 in Rome.

The international synod of bishops in 1971 declared, “Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation.”

Working for children’s rights, the dignity of the poor and lifting up the wretched of the earth, the deprived and impoverished who are trampled by the rich, the refugees in their own land, feeding the hungry, speaking truth to power and defending the abused and exploited, helping orphans and widows, is the mission of Jesus of Nazareth. It is not political, it is showing mercy, compassion, understanding and giving life and freedom to Filipinos today.

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[People] The Bright and the Dark Internet -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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The Bright and the Dark Internet
by Fr. Shay Cullen

We all love being connected to the internet and it is a wonderful technology for communicating, providing information and entertainment and keeping people connected. Commerce and business is totally dependent on it what with e-mail, conferencing, communication, document transmission in which it is essential and has saved countless number of trees with the reduction in the use of paper.

Today, it brings us live streaming of news, movies, songs and shows. Hollywood and the cinemas will soon be left behind. Traditional mainstream news channels and radio are competing with web-based 24-hours independently produced news streams coming over the internet.

Then there is the misuse of the internet to spread fake news and targeted slanted messages influence voters and hijack the democratic process. The use of apps on Facebook to gather personal data and its questionable use by Cambridge Analytica to interfere in the political process and influence the outcome of elections is under investigation. Abuse of data is widespread.

The good and useful technology of the Internet is used for crime, robbery, exploitation and abuse. Cybercrime is a fast growing industry and billions have been lost through hacking of bank accounts, blackmail, and fraud. Jenny and her four teenage friends living in a rural village not far from a big city were offered jobs in hotels and restaurants but they ended up having debts to their trafficker and soon were forced to perform sex acts before a live internet-connected camera for paying customers. They were instructed to shave off all body hair and to look even younger than their real ages of 14 and 15 years. They were victims of live-streaming child pornography. They changed and came to hate themselves and had a very low self-esteem. They despaired of ever paying their debts and escaping to go home and back to school.

They were mercifully rescued in a police operation and were brought to the Preda Foundation Home for Girls where they recovered and regained trust and dignity and overcame the trauma. But thousands of minors don’t get saved and their life is a misery of exploitation and abuse. Local and foreign customers who view them online travel to meet and sexually assault them. International sex tourism is fueled and promoted by child pornography and cyber-sex shows.

The worst form of internet abuse must be the exploiter grooming youth and children on chat forums posing as a new boyfriend or girlfriend. The exploiters persuade the victims to expose themselves and perform a sex act on live camera and they record it. They then blackmail the youth by threatening to post the images on the internet and send them to their parents or friends. It has led to many suicides, how many we don’t know, but the rate of youth suicides has increased dramatically in recent years. Teenagers have to be protected, educated and warned of this kind of crime that targets them.

In a study by the World Health Organization (WHO), it said that “in the 90 countries (areas) studied, suicide was the fourth leading cause of death among young males and the third for young females. Of the 132,423 deaths of young people in the 90 countries, suicide accounted for 9.1 percent.”

According to the WHO suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15-29 year olds globally. These are shocking statistics and the abuse of the internet for crime maybe the cause of the increase in suicides. These criminals cut short the lives of thousands of young people.

Another terrible crime perpetrated over the internet is child pornography. This has grown hugely and is one serious contributing cause of the growing number of children being sexually assaulted. It is a serious crime in itself in almost every country. In the Philippines under the anti-child pornography law, the making and/or distribution of child pornography carries up to twenty years in prison. The possession of illegal images by individuals on their computers or mobile phones carries a heavy penalty and a huge fine. Weak implementation of the law is a problem and child pornography is common.

The anti-child pornography law known as Republic Act 9775 imposes these penalties. The law was first proposed and lobbied to Senator Jamby Madrigal by this column writer and became law in 2009. It is a unique law since it orders that the big corporations that make internet connections possible through their computers (the Internet Server Providers or ISPs) supervised by the National Telecommunications Commission install software that identifies, blocks and filters out child pornography.

Section 9 of the law states that “all ISPs shall install available technology, program or software to ensure that access to or transmittal of any form of child pornography will be blocked or filtered. An ISP who shall knowingly, willfully and intentionally violate this provision shall be subject to the penalty provided under Section 15(k) of this Act. The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) shall promulgate within ninety (90) days from the effectivity of this Act the necessary rules and regulations for the implementation of this provision which shall include, among others, the installation of filtering software that will block access to or transmission of any form of the child pornography.”

However it seems that this law is not being respected and implemented. Child pornography and cyber sex crimes in the Philippines are rampant, widespread and growing. Thousands of children are being sexually abused and photographed and their images are sold locally and abroad. This is the worst crime of all and the powerful allow it with impunity. We need to stand against it and work to protect children and bring the abusers and enablers to justice.

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[People] US Military Bases Disguised as Philippine Bases are Here Again -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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US Military Bases Disguised as Philippine Bases are Here Again
by Fr. Shay Cullen
20 April 2018

Last 17 April 2018, the first US-built military facility was begun with a groundbreaking ceremony by Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and the US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim. This is being done under an agreement signed in 2014 known as the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).The first US-funded building is at Basa Airforce Base in Pampanga.

The EDCA that allows these facilities inside Philippine military bases was made by President Benigno Aquino III and is not a treaty approved by the Philippine Senate as demanded by the constitution but is an executive agreement. Several legal authorities question the legality of that executive agreement when the approval of foreign bases is the sole prerogative of the Philippine Senate. That may be likely the reason that its implementation has been held in abeyance until this week.

Why President Rodrigo Duterte, a staunch critic of the United States and close friend of their adversary China, has allowed the implementation of this agreement made by the previous president has yet to be seen. The ultimate and real purpose of the new US bases within Philippine bases remains unclear. The primer explaining the EDCA distributed at the time of the signing of the agreement goes to great lengths to stress that the facilities are to enhance the ability of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to defend the county from external threats. They are to “promote between the Philippines and its defense treaty ally the United States the following:

• Interoperability
• Capacity-building towards AFP modernization
• Strengthening AFP for external defense
• Maritime security
• Maritime domain awareness
• Humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR)

However, the recently announced agreement between President Duterte and President Xi of China to cooperate and develop the natural resources of the West Philippine Sea claimed by China precludes any US intervention. Even if China has constructed military facilities on several reefs and islands including airstrips, no US assistance has been called for. The UN Arbitration on the Law of the Sea has ruled in favor of the Philippines to the disputed territory.

The stated purpose of the EDCA is in part to ensure “maritime security and maritime domain awareness.” So that has been rendered moot. Again, another stated objective is the “strengthening (of the) AFP for external defense.” Is the Armed Forces of the Philippines facing any external threat, a possible invasion or attack, occupation perhaps? No, there is none. So the implementation of the bases agreement under EDCA must have another purpose, which President Dutere in his wisdom, has allowed but about which he has remained silent.

The facilities are to enhance training and capacity-building of the AFP, the primer states. But these annual training exercises have continued for the past 25 years without the presence of US Bases. Why so many US bases within bases? Most AFP camps will have US troops and war material stored there.

The only single reason for these facilities is to support humanitarian aid in times of disasters. That alone is insufficient to justify massive expenditure on so many facilities when the Philippine Red Cross has stated that supposedly it has expanded its capability to deal with disasters. It is tasked with that duty and claims it can do it without foreign aid in most cases. There are few natural disasters of such magnitude that foreign US aid is required.

The only threat that the Philippines is facing is internal: the New People’s Army (NPA), the threat from ISIS and the recent occupation of Marawi by a rebel group. The need for prepositioned war material and US assistance was seen in the subsequent battle and destruction by aerial bombardment with the alleged help of US advisors and surveillance planes. Their involvement is as yet unconfirmed. These would be the only use of prepositioned US troops and war material, ammunition and supplies. Such material could also be available to support other US war action in Southeast Asia or Afghanistan.

There is no confirmed number of US troops that will be assigned to these US bases within Philippine bases. It is stated they are assigned there but will be on rotation. How long will they stay is unknown.

So twenty-five years after the US bases were closed down and the facilities were converted to civilian commercial use and Clark and Subic Naval Base became boom cities boasting hundreds of factories, hotels and malls, the bases are back. They are hiding behind a fig leaf claiming that they are not US bases but within Philippine military bases. It’s just a charade. The US troops stationed there will be likely out and about looking for recreational entertainment with sex and will join the already thriving mob of sex tourists that are abusing our young women and children with impunity.

The fact that the sex industry with its sex bars and clubs that are fronts for prostitution of women and children is licensed and given mayor’s permits shows local government complicity. The US bases to be reestablished are complicit, not only in violating the spirit of the constitution but violating our women and children that are victims of human trafficking- yet again.
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[People] The Resurrection of Jessica -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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The Resurrection of Jessica
by Fr. Shay Cullen
29 March 2018

Jessica was a lost child wandering the streets of a Philippine city, picked up by a human trafficker and brought to different places where she was sold as a commodity to foreign sex tourists to be abused. She didn’t know what was happening to her at 14-years of age. She was raped, exploited and robbed of her virginity. She became angry at the world and felt she was nothing and had nothing. She felt she has no future, no present and no past life. All was hopeless and when rescued and placed in government shelters, she escaped several times and rebelled as an aggressive and angry young, uneducated teenager filled with hatred and pain.

In desperation, the social workers brought her to the Preda girls home, an open home where there are no guards, fences or high walls. The children are free to leave but almost all choose to stay and try a life in a happy community. So Jessica stayed by her free choice because she was given that free human choice with respect, affirmation, dignity and the importance and rights that are her due. She found hope, encouragement and support.

Then she volunteered for Emotional Expression Therapy and there in the cushioned room, she cried and shouted out all the pain, hurt, frustration and hatred she carried deep within her since early childhood and when she was cruelly raped and abused.

Then, after weeks she began to change in self-awareness and self-knowledge and grew self-confident and found within herself the courage to file charges against her abusers and find justice. She was by then a strong and empowered young lady. It was suffering, death to the past life and the beginning of new life. It was a kind of resurrection for Jessica, a coming to life from a dark, pain-filled existence to a bright, hope-filled future with exciting new possibilities of friendship and education and a life of fulfillment.

So it is with hope that change is possible and that change can be in individual lives like that of Jessica and so with thousands of lives in society. From the darkness of social evil, injustice and all the pain and suffering, hope brings change and makes healing possible. The cruel dictator can be thrown down from his thrown of arrogance and the trampled upon can recover and stand up to live again.

That is the message of the Gospel story of the man from Nazareth that was so rejected by the leaders, the elders and the mob that he, a good person of absolute integrity, was falsely accused, framed up, charged, and made to suffer the death penalty. He spoke about truth, justice, human dignity and the rights of all and especially of children and women. He preached equality and sharing and he denounced hypocrisy, exploitation and oppression and he called for change and injustice to end. Yet having lived a good life caring for others, healing and supporting the weak and the poor and the needy, forgiving those who needed forgiveness, he was judged and condemned as a criminal and nailed to an instrument of cruel barbaric death.

But after such apparent total failure of his work, the scattering of his followers, the collapse of his mission, then what appeared to all to be an end of change in the world, hope lived on. He was alive and lived on in the thoughts, imaginations, feelings and in the belief of his followers. His powerful intoxicating words promising a happier life if we loved each other instead of killing, maiming and hurting each other was possible. A life of equality and dignity for all was still possible like snowdrops emerging in the depth of winter.

Jessica shared in that same hope and experienced that new life because she came to believe in herself because others inspired by the values of the Man from Nazareth gave her courage, support, care, friendship and comfort in her darkest hours.
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[People] The Profile of a Dictator -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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The Profile of a Dictator
by Fr. Shay Cullen
15 March 2018

History is full of tyrants and dictators. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao Ze Dong are among the worst in past history but today dictatorship is increasingly on the rise. True democracy is in retreat as elected officials turn to dictatorship as a way to stay in power and rule with an iron fist and declare they will save their nation from evil and make the nation great. Putin, Erdoğan, Omar Al-Bashir, Kim Jong II are just a few of many that come to mind.

Dictators love to conduct wars, to issue threats, to present themselves as the strong person they are not, to imprison their critics, to change the constitution, to rule with authoritarian decrees, manipulate rubber stamp parliaments or congresses. They plot to remain in power indefinitely, to enrich themselves, to grow corrupt and vindictive, to insult their perceived enemies, to brand critics as terrorists and to rule with fear and oppressive decrees.

Tyrants and dictators assign blame to others for their failures and for social problems they persecute and kill their imagined enemies. They can be misogynists and even traitors. Others change laws to eliminate rivals and curb the independent power of the judiciary.

They love power and abuse it to dominate and control others and preserve their ill-gotten wealth, protect their entitlements, privileges, and deviant pleasures. They use bribery, vote-buying and the sharing of ill-gotten wealth to buy support and consolidate political power for their family dynasty and cronies. They use the police and military to oppress and intimidate their opponents, dissidents and protestors. They cast a mantel of fear and threat that covers the population like the darkness of night and brings on the dawn of silence and paralysis of dissent. Such are the cruel tactics of a tyrant dictator.\

In Poland and Hungary, we see some of these authoritarian tendencies as they pass laws to cripple the judiciary so the politicians will be immune from investigation. We have the powerful Chinese leader Xi Jinping getting the constitution changed so he can remain in office indefinitely. Human rights violations are common practice.

Bashar al-Assad, president of Syria, is branded a war criminal for bombing with Russian help and killing and torturing thousands of his own people to stay in power. The worst dictator of our time.

President Donald Trump is a dictator in the making. He is campaigning for a second term when he has already destroyed his credibility and is facing sex abuse charges by many women and possible treason or impeachment for allowing foreign powers like Russia to subvert the election process and help get him elected. He says he approves torture and has appointed a new head of the CIA who is notorious for supporting horrific torture of suspects in the past.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is now a dictator who gave himself additional power through an alleged rigged referendum, bringing journalists and critics to court on trumped up charges and jailing them. He allegedly tortures opponents branding them terrorists. He wages war in Northern Syria.

Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir has an international arrest warrant out for him issued by the International Criminal Court to be arrested anywhere to face charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia is a “strong-man” dictator twelve years in power and going again for another six years having taken over control of all media, silenced his opponents, barred them from elections and allegedly killed journalists. He is accused of murdering former spies in the UK with Russian military-made nerve poison and radioactive substance. He wages war by proxy in the Ukraine and annexed The Crimea.

The Maldives, the so-called Indian Ocean island paradise so popular with Japanese and western tourists, is ruled by a dictator president Abdulla Yameen who has declared his deposed former president a terrorist, arrested two court justices and is mired in corruption allegations.

The list goes on and we see the suffering of the victims wherever the tyrant takes more and more power. Human suffering, poverty, deprivation and social and personal injustice mire the land, plague the cities and infect the population of a dictatorship. Economic disruption, inequality and a cloud of great sadness and pain descend to cover all in misery like soot from a polluting chimney. Such is the dire outcome of dictatorship. The dictators have their supporters and hanger-ons who seek rewards and a share of the ill-gotten wealth, petty power and privilege.

The answer to dictatorships is to spread true awareness and enlightenment among the people. Provide social and political education with the truth and organize people’s cooperatives and opposition parties when possible. Peaceful and legitimate people power movements can change corrupt regimes without bloodshed or massacres. Working daily for justice and human rights, supporting the dignity of the people in every dire circumstance are steps towards freedom from dictatorship. Above all, courage and commitment to the truth and justice is what brings peace and liberty.

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[People] A Victory for Children’s Rights -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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A Victory for Children’s Rights
by Fr. Shay Cullen
9 March 2018

After a French court acquitted a 30-year old man of child rape after he had sexual relations with an 11-year old, the public was outraged and rightly so. The judge ruled that unless it could be proven that he had used force or intimidation, it was not rape but sexual assault of a child and he could be sentenced to a much lesser penalty. Then in another similar case, a 28-year-old man who had sexually abused another 11-year-old child was allowed to face the lesser charge of sexual assault and not rape. The public was again outraged and the decision of the court was reversed and he will face charges of rape- a small victory to celebrate on International Women’s Day.

The public outcry and the many similar cases in past years have pushed the French legislators to increase the age of consent to 15. So any sexual act with a minor 15 years of age and lower will be considered rape. That is bad news for the pedophiles and child rapists. The French legislators will also enact strict laws to protect children and women from sexual harassment.

In most jurisdictions the age of consent is between 14 and 17 years of age. In the Philippines, The “minimum age of sexual consent” is not clearly established. The Revised Penal Code imposes maximum penalties for sexual offenses when the victim is under 12 years of age but imposes lower penalties for sexual offenses against minors over twelve (12) years of age. Thus, the Philippines has one of the lowest minimum age
established in determining statutory sexual abuses committed against children.

In past years, child sexual offenders got their way with children. Child sexual abuse was even more common and never talked about, reported, or penalized. Men were more abusive, dominant, and powerful. Women and children were greatly exploited and abused at will and no recourse in those days and even in many places up to the present. But there has been an awakening to the criminal nature of child sexual abuse and the harassment of women. What was once tolerated or ignored is now a cause of protest, outrage and action to stop it and strict laws in most countries bring the perpetrators to justice.

Until recently, institutional child sex abuse was common, ignored and covered up as ‘dirty old men having fun.’ Apathy and indifference to the idea of childhood was common and children were seen as the property of their parents and not having rights. But the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child came into force on 2 September 1990 and it made children’s rights paramount and new national laws to protect them were enacted worldwide. The convention declared a child to be anyone below 18 years of age.

There are associations trying to legalize sex with children. The North American Man-Boy Lovers Association is one of them (NAMBLA). It is perhaps only in America where it is legal to promote the practice of child abuse but not to engage in it. Now the best picture of the Oscar Awards is the Shape of Water that tells of a young woman having sex with a water beast. It is described as a romance. What kind of sexual misbehavior will be next admired, promoted in movies, and even made legal? At least, we ought to stop adults having sex with little children whatever about the unfortunate beasts.

But the rights and dignity of children is now recognized and the acts of abuse are dealt with as heinous crimes as they should be. Raising the age of consent is a step forward. The human race is making progress however slowly and much more has yet to be done to reverse its deeply entrenched moral corruption.

The age of sexual consent for very young children was and still is a excuse for legal pedophilia. Old men “marring young girls” some as young as eleven years old is a depravity covered by tradition or cultural practice in some countries.

How convenient for the pedophiles. The good news is that the prevalence of child marriage has fallen greatly in Asia in the past ten years, a recent report says. Unicef reports that 25 million child marriages were prevented in the last ten years worldwide. As many as 12 million girls are married worldwide every year. In India alone 1.5 million girls are married before the age of 18 and from a high of 47 percent of girls given in child marriage ten years ago, today it is down to 27 percent, a big decline. This is due to more education for girls who now want to have a life of their own and due to the public awareness that early marriage of children leads to health problems, a broken culture ,a loss of childhood and a weaker economy.

The days of ignorance and indifference are over. Protecting children by saving them from abusers and human traffickers by campaigning for justice and healing for victims is what we must do.

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[People] Jailing the Child Abusers -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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Jailing the Child Abusers
by Fr. Shay Cullen
16 February 2018

When put on trial in Pasay City, Metro Manila, child sex abusers can expect a conviction and a sentence of harsh life in prison without parole from Judge Tingaraan Guiling of Pasay City if the evidence warrants it. This week on 12 February, a just decision based on the evidence was promulgated against Roque Galve for the aggravated sexual assault and rape of a minor, call her Rose. The judge is commended for doing justice for the abused child and many more like her.

Galve is the live-in partner of the mother of Rose and he took advantage of the child being mentally challenged. Her mother did not protect the child and sided with the abuser. He sexually assaulted Rose by inserting his fingers into the child. The psychologist testified that Rose was capable of telling exactly what had happened to her and she did. Her younger sister saw the abuse happening and testified also. Medical evidence supported the child’s testimony and a neighbor who heard the child cry out looked into the room and saw the abuse happen. He also testified.

Galve was found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of raping the child and was convicted under the Child Protection Law otherwise known as Republic Act 7610 and the Anti-Rape Law otherwise known as Republic Act 8353 and ordered to pay 75,000 pesos as civil indemnity, 75,000 pesos as moral damages and 50,000 pesos as exemplary damages. That’s what awaits the child rapists and their supporters and enablers when justice catches up with them. We will continue to see that it does.

Rose is safe and protected at the Preda children’s home forty minutes drive from here in the Preda main office in Olongapo City and is recovering and growing in self-confidence and is much stronger than ever before. She had her Emotional Expression Therapy and cried out all the emotional pain she’s suffering. She shouted at her abuser and unburdened herself of the stress and hurt that weighed her down. She is now happy, playing and learning every day. A success story for sure.

This is just one of thousands of cases that are pending in the courts and many perpetrators go unpunished because they hide away when there is an arrest warrant against them.

The record of the Philippine National Police in finding and arresting them is dismal. However, sometimes the suspects come back to the scene of their crime and with a tip off, Preda social workers can show the arrest warrant and bring the police to where they are and have them arrested. Then the trial can proceed.

We win only about four or five convictions a year although we have about 35 cases against child sexual abusers pending in the courts. The Philippine constitution allows for them to have due process of law but they can be tried in absencia if they have been arraigned and then fail to appear to answer the charges in court.

However, most of the accused suspects in child abuse cases flee before the arraignment. They must be caught and brought to court and held accountable. Seeking justice is an important part of healing for the victims and survivors of sexual abuse.

There are hundreds of thousands of survivors who have never been able to speak out about being raped and abused although these days the #MeToo movement is giving a platform for women of all ages to speak out about their terrible experience of being abused or sexually harassed. Children too must be encouraged to speak out without fear or intimidation.

In the Philippines, bringing a criminal charge is not very difficult or expensive. The public prosecutor will fight the case for the abused children and the good dedicated prosecutors will get convictions.

A German national, Konrad Weber, was put on trial in Gingoog City and with a committed prosecutor and a just judge that could not be bribed, Weber was found guilty of child abuse. He sexually abused several small boys. He received a sentence of life in prison. He is now on trial again for other acts of sexual abuse of other small boys. He allegedly abused them in Butuan City some years ago.

Preda Foundation has helped and supported the boys who are all from very poor families. They too told their stories to social workers and justice was done. Young people need encouragement and support to tell their stories of abuse. When everyone has the ability and courage to speak out and report abuse and support victims then this scourge of woman and child abuse will be greatly diminished.

It is known that one child in every four children suffer sexual abuse worldwide. This is a shocking statistics, a reality that we cannot forget or ignore. We must be aware that child sexual abuse is a common practice that cannot be ignored by apathy and indifference. Caring adults ought to be sensitive and aware that a disturbed child may have a story of abuse to tell and they should listen with sympathy and understanding.

Fighting for justice for children and with children is just part of our work besides helping rescue abused children from human traffickers and abusers and bringing them to justice. In the meantime the child is protected and safe in the Preda home for girls. Children everywhere need you to be their helper and defender.

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[People] A Big Victory for Exploited Children -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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A Big Victory for Exploited Children
by Fr. Shay Cullen
25 January 2018

He was convicted after almost four and a half years of trial. He pleaded guilty to lesser charges and got off lightly with time served. He is Mr. AB, a US national convicted in an Olongapo Court recently of child trafficking and child sexual abuse. He may yet be tried in the United States on other charges for violating the extraterritorial jurisdiction law. This law targets US nationals suspected of being anyway involved in human trafficking or the sexual abuse of minors in countries outside of the USA. He ran a sex bar in Subic town named the Crow Bar, then changed to Avila’s, where minors as young as 14 years old were sexually assaulted. He admitted in a TV interview acts that are crimes against children. See The Raid on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xRCk8Ni-cs.

Undercover retired foreign police agents did surveillance work in the bars around Subic and Olongapo City and gathered evidence and discovered his sex bar operation sexually exploiting minors. Preda social workers confirmed that there were minors in the sex bar and contacted the children and prepared them to be rescued and protected in a therapeutic home for abused girls. It was a resounding success. Agents from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) from Manila conducted the rescue with Preda and government social workers.

During the trial, his supporters and customers tried to blacken the name of the Preda Foundation for protecting the child witness and enabling her to testify. His supporter got a witness to retract her testimony for money but she thought better of it later and realized that she had been manipulated. Mr. DK committed an act that is an obstruction of justice. These men and their sex mafia supporters were soundly defeated with the conviction of Mr. AB.

They are infuriated and angry with the Preda Foundation (www.preda.org), a children’s charity for saving the children, protecting them and empowering them to testify in court that led to Mr. AB’s conviction. He had to pay a big fine and compensation. The conviction was a resounding statement that the sex bar operators, his supporters and customers are part of a criminal conspiracy to abuse children. By opposing the conviction and supporting the convicted, they approve his crime.

The foreign suspects in the Philippines, some permanent residents whose names have been given to the authorities, are under surveillance and watched and will be arrested once evidence is found against them. There are some foreign retired police still doing the surveillance.

They target the foreigners operating sex bars and their supporters and customers. The sex mafia has launched another black propaganda attack on the Preda children’s charity and against the author of this article. They are angry and frustrated at being challenged by children’s charities for their sex crimes against minors, which some of the pedophiles and sex tourists consider it their right to do.

They hate being called to account and exposed for their crimes against Filipino children. The public can know these foreigners because they falsely accuse the charity workers and spread over the internet false allegations against those brave people who are defending the abused children.

That’s the biggest mistake they could make. Being under attack by the sex mafia is a badge of courage and bravery for the charities protecting children and fighting for their rights. The charities receive international humanitarian awards and greater support as a result. It shows just how much success has been achieved against the sex mafia.

It is poverty that makes so many children vulnerable to the foreign sex pedophiles. Jessica, seven years old, is one of 5.2 million suffering extreme poverty in the Philippines. Out of a dangerously large population of 103.2 million people, she was just one of the millions of unlucky children who missed out escaping the total abject poverty of yet so many poor children and adults in a country that is growing richer.

Jessica missed out and while 3.7 million Filipinos were lifted into a less extreme form of poverty yet 9.5 percent still suffer hunger and deprivation. We don’t forget 5.2 million are still living in poverty. Jessica is among them. It is this poverty that drives children on to the streets and encourages sex tourists, bar operators and their customers and defenders to roam freely with impunity and abuse these children.

She was an abused child and was in grave danger of being sold into a cybersex den. It turned out that Jessica’s mother and female partner had no love or respect for Jessica. She was repeatedly scolded and cursed and beaten. This caused psychological hurt and trauma. She was brought to the Preda Home for Girls and immediately given care and medical attention. Jessica has been saved from life on the streets and from traffickers and sex bars and has a positive life ahead. She is just one of almost seventy children in the care homes of Preda and many more are being helped in the community. Jessica is now relaxed and comfortable at the Preda children’s home and has recovered in the previous five months. She has gained weight, is healthy and playful. She has made friends in the Preda home and is part of the family. A great success on top of the victory over the traffickers.

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[People] Mass Murderer Convicted at the ICC -by Fr. Shay Cullen

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Mass Murderer Convicted at the ICC
Fr. Shay Cullen
29 November 2017

It was a spark of light from the darkness of human rights violations, horrific war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and ethnic cleansing that caused the suffering, torture, starvation and mass murder of thousands. That spark of light was the conviction and sentence to life imprisonment of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb commander known as the “butcher of Bosnia” by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands last Wednesday 22 November 2017.

It came more than twenty years after the massacre at Srebrenica in the former Yugoslavia. When the verdict of conviction and sentence was read out there was relief and satisfaction for the surviving relatives of more than 8,000 men and boys murdered on the orders of the then General Ratko Mladic. They never forgot and they pursued justice to the end.

He led a murderous mission as head of the Serb forces that were killing Muslim civilians to “purify” the Serbian nation. When the Serbian forces were defeated by an international coalition, Mladic went into hiding for 14 years. The international community worked to find him and enforce the arrest warrant issued by the ICC and while Mladic was hailed as a “hero” in Serbia by his devoted and fanatical followers, justice finally caught up with him. He cursed and raged in the courtroom last week while the verdict was read out. That did him no good. He got a life sentence after five years of trial and 600 witnesses gave testimony against him and he will likely die in prison. So it should be for all mass murderers waging any kind of war.

“They will not escape justice, no matter how powerful they may be nor how long it may take. They will be held accountable,” the United Nations Commissioner on Human Rights said of all mass murderers after the verdict was handed down. There are still many who committed terrible crimes against humanity and served shorter sentences and now are released. Others were never brought to trial. They participated in those awful crimes in Bosnia, one of the worst atrocities since World War II.

The world has many similar tyrants and mass murderers and justice is denied the countless victims. The ICC can only go after a tiny fraction of the perpetrators. Perhaps the worst atrocities we see daily on television is the present “ethnic cleansing” and abuse going on in Myanmar where Pope Francis has made a speech that called for justice and equality for all ethnic groups but did not mention by name, for diplomatic reasons0, the most oppressed of all, the Rohingya. He will when he gives his speech in Bangladesh.

The murder of children, the mass killing of men and women and the burning of villages of the Rohingya by the military and fanatical Buddhists are horrific crimes against humanity allegedly condoned by the Myanmar Army High Command. They deny all accusations. The murder of infants and the use of rape as a weapon against the Rohingya have been authentically witnessed and recorded A report in the New York Times said: “Survivors said they saw government soldiers stabbing babies, cutting off boys’ heads, gang-raping girls, shooting 40-millimeter grenades into houses, burning entire families to death, and rounding up dozens of unarmed male villagers and summarily executing them.” More than 640,000 have fled into Bangladesh.

The ICC will have a lot to investigate and bring charges against the perpetrators of these crimes. According to the record of the ICC as published on Wikipedia the ICC “has opened investigations into 11 situations: (1) the Democratic Republic of the Congo; (2) Uganda; (3) the Central African Republic I; (4) Darfur, Sudan; (5) the Kenya; (6) Libya; (7) Côte d’Ivoire; (8) Mali; (9) the Central African Republic II; (10) Georgia; and (11) Burundi. The ICC has publicly indicted 41 people. The ICC has issued arrest warrants for 33 individuals and summonses to eight others. Seven persons are in detention. Proceedings against 23 are ongoing: 12 are at large as fugitives, three are under arrest but not in the Court’s custody, eight are at trial, and one is appealing his conviction. Proceedings against 17 have been completed: three have been convicted, one has been acquitted, six have had the charges against them dismissed, two have had the charges against them withdrawn, one has had his case declared inadmissible, and four have died before trial.”

;Most of the accused are from Africa and that’s why Burundi has withdrawn its membership to the court. It says the court is biased. That will not stop the ongoing cases against the accused in that country. The work of the court is very complicated. The need to find witnesses, protect them and catch the fugitives. It is no easy task but if it is to maintain its credibility it has to show a more robust action to bring more to the justice of the court and to speed up the proceedings and win more convictions.

After the atrocities and extermination policy of the Nazis in WWII, it was a cry “never again” that initiated the Nuremberg War trials but today the atrocities and mass killing continue and the perpetrators can get away with these crimes. The conscience of the international community and that of every citizen must be awakened and each must take a stand against the crimes and work for justice. The ICC, weak as it is, is all we have got.

shaycullen@gmail.com

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