Cyber porn and human trafficking
The year 2017 seems to have one major cybersex bust after another; this time it is a mother in Mandaue City getting nabbed for pimping her daughter to foreigners online. This is a familiar storyline as many other raids have caught parents directly selling their children’s innocence on camera. Their common excuse is rehashed and totally ignorant: the children are not being “touched” physically, so what’s wrong with making money out of that? A deeper analysis on the correlation between pornography and human trafficking throws this foolish argument down the drain.
Human trafficking is the third largest trafficking trade in the world, with an astonishing 64 percent being involved in sex trafficking. The average age of a sex trafficking victim is 12-14 years old and most of these are females. Imagine the millions of children who endure this painful ordeal, and it is absolutely sickening that traffickers don’t even care what happens to the kids as long as they get their money.
While scores of trafficked children are forced into actual prostitution, the advent of the internet has made cyberpornography the new “cash cow” of traffickers. About 1 in 5 pornographic images online are of a child. In the secrecy of private homes, those with a webcam and an internet connection can make a quick buck selling anybody to anyone in the world. According to the University of New England study on internet sex trafficking, 51 percent of recruiters lure their victims by showing romantic interests, while 18 percent offer food, shelter or financial support.
The Australian national who paid for the lewd videos of the child has been tried and sentenced to three years in prison in his home country, a very light penalty for what is a horrific crime. Meanwhile, the mother has come up with shameful and irrational excuses for her actions. She claims that her daughter and the foreigner have been in a relationship since 2012. Who would believe such an alibi? If so, the victim would have been 10 years old at the start of the “relationship.” The girl hasn’t even reached the age of consent yet so enough with the lies.
Another damning fact is that the mother had a source of livelihood, she ran an eatery and a store, while admitting that she received money from abroad “for her daughter’s school needs.” Remember the statistics: 18 percent of traffickers lure their victims with offers of financial support. There is absolutely no excuse for the mother to subject the child to degrading acts no matter what their financial state is. The human person has inherent dignity, for which there is no price tag.