Saint Patrick escaped slavery and freed thousands
CHRISTIANS around the world, especially those in Ireland, will celebrate today, March 17, the life, words and deeds of Saint Patrick, a great man of courage and action who embodied the true Christian faith. Although he is the apostle and patron saint of Ireland, Patrick was not even Irish. Born in Roman Britain, Patrick was kidnapped by pagan human traffickers around 410 and brought to Ireland as a slave and was forced to guard cattle and goats. He was only 16 then.
He eventually learned to speak Irish and after six years of slavery, he escaped, traveled from the country’s north to its south, and made his way to continental Europe by boat, likely working for his passage. From there, he returned to Britain. That was a brave journey to freedom for a 22-year-old.
This week also celebrates “My Freedom,” an international anti-child labor campaign promoted by CNN. There are an estimated 160 million child workers in the world today, 79 million of whom are doing dangerous tasks, according to a United Nations report.
Child workers receive little or no education and earn a pittance or are usually unpaid and work for food. Of the kinds of work they are forced to do, being sexually exploited for profit is the most dangerous. Such exploitation damages these children’s personality and spirit, deprives them of value, and robs them of their identity and dignity. It also exposes them to diseases and all sorts of abuses by traffickers and pedophiles.
The Olongapo City-based Preda Foundation is combating child trafficking by holding almost daily training seminars against child labor, abuse and trafficking. The participants are students, teachers and village leaders.
Groups of university students in the Philippines, as well as from Japan and Australia, visit and undergo training at Preda to become active child rights advocates and defenders. This educational and training service is partly funded by the British Embassy in Manila. The purpose is to educate and sensitize people to the problem, and to inspire and encourage them to make fighting child labor their life mission.
Over the years, Preda has freed dozens of child victims of human trafficking for sexual abuse. This evil practice was allowed to thrive with impunity by uncaring officials for many decades until recently, when stringent anti-human trafficking laws were enacted to save trafficked children and bring the traffickers to court. But law enforcers are struggling to identify, arrest and convict traffickers. The United States Trafficking in Persons Report for 2023 says Philippine courts convicted only 86 traffickers: 83 for sex trafficking and the rest for forced labor.
The court testimonies of the rescued children at Preda’s home for them have resulted in the conviction of 20 child abusers on average every year. Most of those convicted received life terms. The foundation lobbies for new laws to protect children, like the one raising the age of consent. This law, passed in March 2022, regards sex with someone 16 years old and younger as statutory rape. Before that, it was 12 years. A child reaches legal age at 18.
Children are trafficked for sexual abuse at an early age. Take Daisy (not her real name), a 14-year-old dropout from Subic, Zambales province. She spent all her time on her mobile phone, through which she made contact with an adult — let’s call her Stephi — a human trafficker.
The trafficker persuaded Daisy to become a child sex worker for foreigners in Subic, earn a lot of money and recruit another child as a sex worker. Daisy got a 12-year-old, Alicia (not her real name), to join her. Stephi then introduced them to Roy, a foreign sex tourist, and other unidentified abusers.
Daisy was abused three times and Alicia was raped by the male sex tourist at least once. By chance, they were picked up by local village officials for breaking curfew and the two disclosed they were minors and abuse victims. They were referred to the municipal social worker and consequently to the Preda home to help and protect them.
Daisy later revealed that her three close relatives were working with Stephi in running a human-trafficking and extortion scam targeting foreign sex tourists. They were using her and Alicia as bait to blackmail the tourists when they abused the children by threatening to file charges unless they paid large sums of money.
The children are now safe at Preda but the police are still investigating the scam and Roy is not yet arrested. Such crimes against children are widespread.
The worst aspect of these crimes is that young children are convinced by the traffickers, and even by their parents and relatives, that they are only good for sex work for the rest of their lives.
Daisy was trained by Stephi to recruit other minors like Alicia. These child victims were controlled and persuaded by criminals like Stephi not to file complaints against them. They are also afraid to file cases against their male abusers from whom they stole money. One foreign child sex abuser complained to the police that Daisy stole his money after he abused her. He is yet to be arrested. The children fear they will be countersued for theft. They believe that sex work is normal. How to persuade them otherwise is the big challenge.
An International Justice Mission study on child trafficking for online sexual abuse found that almost half a million Filipino children in 2022 were abused on livestreaming sex shows for the gratification of foreign pedophiles. It also found that one in every 100 children was victimized. The perpetrators number nearly half a million Filipinos.
Everyone must be aware of child trafficking and persuade law enforcers to take it seriously and save those who fall into it.
After escaping slavery, Patrick became not just a priest, but a missionary to Ireland, where he persuaded the pagan kings and other leaders there to believe in human dignity and justice, and to end slavery. And they did. He saved thousands of slaves, and we can do the same.