User:Nkdawit/Grooming children for sex work

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Grooming children for sex work is defined as befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a child, and sometimes the family, to lower the child's inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse. What makes childhood grooming very hard to combat is the fact that sexual exploitation can occur in person or online. In the Philippines, childhood grooming and child pornography increased in the country at an alarming rate in the early 2000s. With the creation of the internet, these acts were able to occur more efficiently and with more anonymity. The Philippines has become a global epicenter of live-stream sexual abuse of children. With the introduction of the Internet early in the decade and the significant poverty rates that are seen in the Philippines, it has led to the Philippines to be a hot spot of child pornography and sex trafficking. This has led to swift and immediate action by the Filipino government to try and combat this growing trend of children being exploited into sex work. To do this, the government has cracked down on many online platforms were child grooming is evident, and as set into place strict rules and punishments to punish any perpetrator of child pornography, trafficking, and solicitation.

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The Use of the Internet:

One of, if not, the most influential resources used to facilitate childhood grooming is the use of the Internet. With the widespread use of the internet at the start of the 2000s, the implementation of child pornography and grooming began to become apparent within many countries, including the Philippines. A study from UNICEF concluded that the Philippines has become a top global source of child pornography with around 80% of Filipino kids at risk of online sexual abuse. Child grooming is seen on the Internet through various websites. Children are often 'groomed' before they are sexually abused. First, they may be manipulated into thinking they are in a safe and normal relationship with the perpetrator (who can be a stranger or a familiar person) so they may not know they are being coerced into something not explicitly introduced to them. To combat this, the government established the Philippine Internet Crimes Against Children Center (PICACC) – a unique initiative in Southeast Asia – which involves the national police, armed forces, the National Bureau of Investigation and the departments of justice and social welfare.

The use of the internet to solicit sex and groom children is not unique to the Philippines alone, it is evident in most countries. Research from the University of New Hampshire in 2005, 13%, or 1 in 7 children globally, were sexually solicited online. The sites that are often used to solicit sex include Backpage and Facebook, both introduced to the world in the early 2000s. What makes these websites unique, especially at the time, was that there was a level of anonymity among its users. Meaning that sex traffickers could pose as a person that they are not and use methods like providing opportunities and emotional support to children, giving them a reason to trust the trafficker. Thus, allowing sex traffickers to utilize this to be able to exploit children without making their true identity and use a false alias. In the Philippines, until the beginning of the 2000’s, online sexual exploitation was mostly confined to the production, possession and distribution online of child pornography. However, the rise of the Internet in the Philippines in the mid 2000s facilitated child sexual exploitation to include an evolving range of practices such as live streaming of child sexual abuse.

Countries where child pornography is prevalent. Most prevalent in the countries in red, including the Philippines.

Poverty in the Philippines:

One of the most influential components that drives the exploitation of children in the Philippines is the alarming poverty rate that affects a huge portion of the population. In 2006, the poverty rate in the Philippines was 26.6%, this means that almost a third of the entire population did not make enough money to effectively support themselves and their families. Because of this, some people look for other ways to make money. One of these ways is partaking in sex work, or exploiting children for money.

According to the NIH, children in poor families are three to seven times more likely to experience child sexual abuse. This is likely due to higher levels of family and neighborhood risk factors for maltreatment among poor families. Families under economically desperate conditions utilize their children as vessels of income. Children in the Philippines, primarily girls, are trafficked domestically from rural communities to urban centers and tourist destinations for the purpose of domestic work and commercial sexual exploitation. These children are then utilized for sexual favors, which in turn makes them money. However, this money is not given directly to the child who is looking for a way to support their families, it is given to the person who is trafficking them.

Poverty Rates in the Philippines

Laws and Punishments:

To target the use of the internet to solicit and receive child pornography, the Filipino government created and implemented the Republic Act (RA) 9775, the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009. The aim of this legislation was to prohibit the production, offering, distribution and possession of “child pornography”.  The law states that the elements of child pornography include: (1) There is a written, visual, and/or audio material; (2) The content of the material involves a real or simulated explicit sexual activity; and (3) The one engaged in the sexual activity, whether a natural person, a graphical representation of a person, or a computer generated image of a person, is a child or is presented, depicted, or portrayed as a child. Those found guilty of these actions are subject to the punishment of a fine not less than five hundred thousand pesos.

With the increase in reports of child abuse and forced child prostitution in the Philippines in the early 2000s, the Filipino government implemented the Republic Act 7610: Special Protection of Children Against Abuse, Exploitation and Discrimination Act . The legislation defines and affirms that Children, whether male or female, who for money, profit, or any other consideration or due to the coercion or influence of any adult, syndicate or group, indulge in sexual intercourse or lascivious conduct, are deemed to be children exploited in prostitution and other sexual abuse  . The act also states that a child is defined as a person under the age of eighteen and thus, those under eighteen are protected by Republic Act 7610. The punishment for a violation of this legislation is imprisonment of not less than three months but not more than three  years.

A major issue seen within Filipino society is the trafficking of children for sex work. To combat this, the Filipino congress enacted RA 9208, the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003. The clauses of this legislation include, but are not limited to, the acts of recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, adoption, providing, offering, maintaining or receipt of a child for the purpose of pornography. Pornography is defined as any representation through information technology or whatever means of a person engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities or any representation of the sexual parts of a person for primarily sexual purposes. If found guilty of any of these acts, the Filipino penal code finds that imprisonment of one year and a fine of one hundred thousand pesos are sufficient punishments for these actions.

References:

1. "Child grooming", Wikipedia, 2021-12-02
2. "Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012", Wikipedia, 2021-11-30
3. "Child labor in the Philippines", Wikipedia, 2021-11-15
4. "Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003", Wikipedia, 2021-10-19
5. "Child pornography", Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2021-11-26
6. "Sex trafficking in the Philippines", Wikipedia, 2021-04-22
7. "UNICEF", Wikipedia, 2021-12-05
8. "Poverty in the Philippines", Wikipedia, 2021-11-30
9. Matta Oshima, Karen M.; Jonson-Reid, Melissa; Seay, Kristen D. (2014). "The Influence of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Adolescent Outcomes: The Roles of Gender, Poverty, and Revictimization". Journal of child sexual abuse. 23 (4): 367–386.
10. Wolak, Janis (December 2007). "1 in 7 Youth: The Statistics about Online Sexual Solicitations" (PDF). Harvard Edu
11. "SUMMARY PAPER ON ONLINE CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION" (PDF). ECPAT. November 2020