The Philippines National Police (PNP) said more and more children are falling prey to human traffickers, sex offenders and other sex-related exploitation – often within their own communities – due to high online online demand.
“There’s an emerging trend of younger victims of human trafficking and this is due to more paedophiles coming from other countries,” Chief Superintendent Rosaurio Acio, the chief of the Philippine National Police’s Women’s and Children and Protection Center, told a press briefing on Friday.
The report did not touch on the issue of how some Filipinos will gladly prostitute their own children, woman and other family members.
Acio said the problem had been aggravated with human trafficking and child pornography issues has migrated online through cybersex dens – many of those dens are based in poor communities throughout the Philippines.
Acio also went on to say that the PNP has suspicions that ‘syndicates’ are behind the operations – although he said “we are still investigating this.”
PNP officials said they have rescued 148 minors and arrested 52 traffickers since July of this year.
Most recently 11 children, the youngest only six-years-old, were rescued in Illigan City on the island of Mindanao this past week.
In the Illigan raid, five people were arrested who operated the cybersex den.
The report is part of a worldwide investigation mode from Belgium, where a journalist and a Dutch filmmaker doing a documentary on child pornography and sex tourism within the Philippines.
Police say the cybersex den live-streamed lewd shows to foreigners and numerous local clients – also offering the children “for sale” to those wanting to pay a premium for personal visits.
The den is said to have earned over 150,000 pesos per show in several cases – the children were then paid 500 pesos each to perform.
Police said “the younger the actor, the higher the fees for he or she can command.”
The head of PNP admitted that entire communities are often part of the cybersex dens, making the real issue come to light – the Philippines is feeding their own children into prostitution and online sex shows to make ‘peso-peso.’