Clerical child abuse, a shocked president and a silent church

DURING a meeting of top Cabinet members, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. expressed shock and dismay and was very disturbed about the prevalence of online sexual abuse and exploitation of small children as young as three years old. This is due to the inaction of the telecommunications corporations that defy the law (R.A. 11930) that mandates them to stop it.

The most frequent violators and abusers of children online in the home are parents and relatives. They are responsible for about 42 percent of online child abuse.

The Catholic Church and President Marcos and his Cabinet know the shocking truth that the Philippines is the worldwide hub of online child sexual abuse.

The truth is that child abuse in the family and clerical child abuse is a common crime ignored and left to grow unaddressed by Church and state.

The root cause is the failure of the telecommunication corporations to install blocking and detection Artificial Intelligence-driven software on the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) computers. This is allowing the online streaming of live child abuse to go undetected as they are sent over the Internet to paying local and foreign customers.

This is where President Marcos and his Cabinet, with all the power of government, meet their match. They are out-smarted, out-maneuvered, out-foxed and out-played by the telecoms who make billions from the live streaming of child sexual abuse. They flout the law, Republic Actg (RA) 11930 that orders them to install blocking and detection AI software.

Unicef said that as many as seven million Filipino kids are abused every year. Most remain silent about it since they are trained to keep secrets. The children are wrongly taught “huwag magsumbong .” That is to say never report abuse.

This preconditioning is why children grow up carrying the hurt, pain and anger of being abused and not allowed to report or complain or speak out. The psychological damage is enormous. Their learning is impaired and personalities affected.

Recently, cases of 10-year-old boys raping six-yearold girls are becoming more common as they see it live on mobile phones. Besides, the decline in moral teaching on the dignity and rights of the child by the church is also responsible.

Philippine Catholicism is morally weak. Christian values rarely impact the behavior of most people. There are too few leaders to stand against child sexual abuse and human rights violations. Catholicism, it seems, has become just kneeling in Church at Sunday mass, listening to an irrelevant sermon.