Protecting children online

GOOD news: the proposed measure, Anti- Online Sexual Abuse or Exploitation of Children (OSAEC) Act, is inching closer to becoming a law with the ratification of the bicameral conference report on the consolidation of the Senate and House versions. This is most timely in the light of the continuously rising cases of minors being sexually abused and exploited online.

The perpetrators are often relatives and neighbors of the victims while the clientele are often those of organized crime groups. Economic gain is the usual motive as can be seen in the many previous arrests law enforcers have made.

The widespread use of internet technology, mobile apps, electronic payments, and sometimes online games has fueled the prevalence of OSAEC. The measure, when it becomes law, would strengthen the capacity of our law enforcers in running after perpetrators of online sexual abuse and exploitation of children.

The law would also hold accountable and liable telecom companies, media platforms and internet services providers for their failure to block, remove, and take other proper actions to ensure the prosecution and conviction of the OSAEC perpetrators.

The ratified bill defines Child Sexual Abuse Or Exploitation Material or Child Sexual Abuse Material ( CSAM/ CSAEM) as referring “to any representation, whether offline, or by, through or with the use of information and communications technology, by means of visual, video, audio, written, or any combination thereof, by electronic, mechanical, digital, optical, magnetic or any other means, of a child engaged or involved in real or simulated sexual activities, or depicting acts of sexual abuse or exploitation of a child as a sexual object. It shall also include materials that focus on the genitalia or other private body parts of a child. For purposes of this Act, CSAEM may interchangeably mean CSAM.”

The ratified bill has a long list of prohibited acts including:

* to hire, employ, use, persuade, induce, extort, engage, or coerce a child to perform or participate in whatever way in the creation or production of any form of OSAEC and CSAEM

* to produce, direct, manufacture, facilitate, or create any form of CSAEM, or participate in the production, direction, manufacture, facilitation or creation in the same;

* To knowingly publish, transmit and broadcast, by any means, any form of CSAEM

* To introduce or match a child to a foreign national or to any person for the purpose of committing any of the offenses under this Act.

Let us protect our children from any form of child sexual abuse and exploitation. It’s diabolical.