Eight Filipino kids rescued in online sex abuse raid

manila — Filippino police have freed eight children from a house in Manila where they were allegedly sold for prostitution and forced to have sex for an online audience, authorities said on Thursday.

Two people, including the alleged mastermind of the abuse Christopher Villanueva and the mother of three of the children, have been arrested after the raid in the Philippine capital on Wednesday night.

Villanueva is accused of forcing the children, all but one of them girls aged between 13 and 17, and another 18-year-old girl to have sex with him and each other in front of web cameras for watchers in Asia, the US and Europe.

Police found sex toys, web cameras and laptops during the raid on his rundown house in Taguig, a southern Manila suburb.

“It is always shocking how people can be so perverse and callous when they abuse children,” Alex Nuqui, head of the National Bureau of Investigation’s anti-human trafficking division, said.

The mother of three of the abused children who lives nearby was also arrested, accused of forcing her children to engage in sex for money. The other five children are also thought to come from the local area.

Online child abuse was the leading cyber-related crime in the Philippines last year, making up 46 per cent of the 200 reported cases, according to the justice department.

Villanueva allegedly charged customers in the United States, Britain, Australia and Japan between $50-100 to watch the children having sex, Nuqui said.

The 33-year-old Filippino was caught after a US agent, posing as an online customer, struck a deal to sleep with one of the girls at his house for $111.

Nuqui said that Villanueva told the undercover US agent in an online chat: “They (the children) will fulfil all your fantasies. Come to the Philippines.”