How child sexual abuse became a family business in the Philippines

When Philippine police smashed into the one-bedroom house, they found three girls aged 11, seven and three lying naked on a bed. At the other end of the room stood the mother of two of the children – the third was her niece – and her eldest daughter, aged 13, who was typing on a keyboard. A live webcam feed on the computer screen showed the faces of three white men glaring out. An undercover agent had infiltrated the impoverished village two weeks before the raid. Pretending to be a Japayuki, a slang term for a Filipina sex worker living in Japan, she had persuaded a resident to introduce her to the children, who played daily in the gravel streets. Her guise was intended to put them at ease, to show them she worked in the same industry; she was one of them. She became close to the eldest, referred to as Nicole although that is not her real name. After a few days of chatting, Nicole causally told the agent about their “shows”. “It was the first time we heard of parents using their children,” said the middle-aged woman. Authorities considered that operation in 2011 to be a one-off case.
But the next month, another family was caught in the same area. Then more cases of live-streaming child abuse appeared in different parts of the Philippines. continue