Why Do Filipino Women Sell Their Babies and Sexually Exploit Children?

A few years ago I wrote two articles about child-trafficking in the Philippines being carried out through Facebook. This happens under the guise of adoption but it is nothing more or less but trafficking children. The sad truth of the matter is that poor women who cannot take care of their children hook up with shady characters who broker the sale of their child. Channel News Asia did a three part series on this problem last year in March 2020. Here are a few highlights from each part.

Part 1 

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/babies-for-sale-an-investigation-into-philippines-adoption-trade-779076

A former midwife named Joyce searches the slums for women who want to sell their babies. She is in it for the money and does not care what happens to the child.

Boys and girls, Filipino and mixed-race, she has brokered them all. A few of them were even flown overseas where they might have joined a good family. But Joyce rarely knows where they ended up or if they are still alive. She does not really care. As soon as she got paid the commission, these babies were no longer her problem.

“If the mother is fine with it, why should I worry?” said the baby broker. She sits inside a van at a secluded parking lot not so far from her house.  

Other women operate in the same slums and claim that the practice of selling unwanted babies is widespread. It is not known exactly how widespread this problem is because the "NBI does not have a unit dedicated to tackling this crime." If they actually started looking then the number of cases would likely increase exponentially.

In the course of investigating the adoption trade, CNA spoke to two other baby brokers in the capital. Both of them said they operate in the same slum as Joyce, where unwanted pregnancies are common and paid adoption is widespread. One of the brokers has arranged three illegal transactions so far. The other has organised two. According to them, sellers tend to be young Filipino women who work at bars and do not want to raise their newborn babies. 

“Most of the time, we find these people in slum areas. They don’t want the pregnancy in the first place. So, the moment the child is born, they try to dispose of it. They try to sell it for money,” said Ronald Aguto, chief of the International Operations Division of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). 

Last year, he said his agency examined about 10 cases of commercial adoption of children. The case numbers have been "steady" in recent years, but that is because the NBI does not have a unit dedicated to tackling the crime. 

Aguto said that if there were investigators dedicated to this kind of crime, the case numbers would probably shoot up.

There is a high demand for these babies. Some of the buyers say they are not buying the baby for themselves. The baby will then disappear overseas. UNICEF says there is a global demand for tracked children for both cheap labor and sexual exploitation.

High demand for newborn children means orders keep coming in irrespective of whether there is a willing pregnant woman. Prospective buyers usually come to brokers with requests such as preferred gender, age and appearance. Then they will wait for the search to complete. If Joyce cannot find the right one, she said, her business will slow down. 

“But some people would tell me ‘This baby isn’t really going to be mine. I’m also giving it away to someone else’,” she told CNA.  

“They aren’t the ones adopting the babies; they just get them. Usually, we’d find out that babies bought from us are off to other places. How much did they get paid? They said 80,000 pesos (US$1,600)." 

According to UNICEF, there is a demand for trafficked children as cheap labour or for sexual exploitation. Although there is no case linking illegal adoption to such crimes in the Philippines, Aguto said "it’s a big possibility because otherwise, they’ll go through the legal process to adopt somebody".

Perhaps there is no case yet linking illegal adoption in the Philippines to internationally trafficked children as cheap labour or for sexual exploitation because the NBI does not have a dedicated unit to tackle those crimes. Perhaps the NBI needs to establish such a unit.

Part 2

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/philippines-mothers-trade-babies-for-illegal-adoption-779736

In the case of one woman, Christine, poverty and the fact that she already had eight children prompted her to sell her ninth child for $200 in hopes of starting her own sari-sari store.

Christine has decided her baby boy is worth US$200 and whoever can afford the price is welcome to adopt him. 

“I could use the money to start a business and sell something. At least something valuable could come out of what I’m about to do with my baby,” said the 29-year-old mother from one of Manila’s slums. 

Christine is unemployed and lives with her grandmother, who makes about US$2 a day. Life is already a constant struggle for them, even without the burden of raising a child. She already has eight children from three husbands. Most of them live with another relative elsewhere and hardly get in touch. 

For the likes of her, their unwanted pregnancy could open up financial opportunities and let them have a shot at a better life. The mother-of-eight claimed the idea of selling her son is painful but necessary, and that the money could help her start over. For that to happen, however, someone needs to buy him before he grows a stronger emotional bond with her.

“Money," Christine added. "Of course, I need that for my children. It’s not that I want to sell my kid. I just need the money.”

Illegal adoption is an open secret. For some women it's either an illegal abortion if they can afford it or selling their baby. One lady who sold her baby for $200 equates the ability to pay with the ability to give her baby a good life.

The sale of children for adoption is an open secret in poor Philippine communities. When someone gets pregnant without planning to, and does not have enough money for an illegal abortion, an option could be to look for an adoptive parent with cash to offer.  

Despite its commercial aspect, Jasmine views paid adoption as a guarantee for her child’s well-being. She believes whoever could pay US$200 to adopt him would be wealthy and able to give him a better life.  

“I don’t think anyone would adopt him to abuse him. I don’t think anyone would adopt him and make him work at a very young age,” she said.

Jasmine is naive but she is not alone in her naiveté Some children who are illegally adopted in the Philippines many find themselves in a loving home but many others are put to work or are sexually exploited.

Children traded in illegal adoption are considered trafficked under Philippine law. According to the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO), a number of children around the world are trafficked to become household servants. 

“The babies that are sometimes trafficked for adoption are sometimes an exception to this rule, because they may find themselves in a loving home. Often, however, they find themselves being raised for a specific exploitative purpose, for example to work on the family farm or in the family business,” it said in the Training Manual to Fight Trafficking in Children for Labour, Sexual and Other Forms of Exploitation. 

However, many Filipinos are still unaware of what constitutes child trafficking or the dangers it could pose to children, according to Coronel. At the same time, she added, the government’s crackdown on human traffickers mostly relies on tip-offs rather than being proactive.

Jasmine, as well as other women. do not care to go through the legal channels such as an adoption agency because she and they think it is too much of a hassle. They ask too many questions.

Part 3

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/facebook-emerging-market-for-philippines-baby-adoption-trade-779986

Facebook has emerged as a lucrative black market for those who wish to sell their babies and those looking to buy a baby. Though illegal adoption has been a problem for decades the use of social media to facilitate this trade is new.

Dalisay is 21 and her husband is 24. She said they can barely afford to even feed themselves and did not plan to have a child. Both are desperate to find an adoptive parent for their baby and to do so, they have opted to use Facebook, one of the most popular social media platforms in the Philippines, with more than 66 million users nationwide. 

According to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), a leading agency in the national fight against the illicit trade, commercial adoption of children has existed in the Philippines for 15-20 years. However, its expansion online is a recent phenomenon. 

“Currently, they’re using our social media sites,” said Ronald Aguto, chief of the NBI’s International Operations Division. “They’ve become anonymous.” 

Last year, his division intercepted a gang of child traffickers in an entrapment operation. Following a tip-off and long negotiations with perpetrators, officers managed to catch four Filipinos red-handed, selling an infant inside a department store. Two of them were parents of the child, who Aguto said was six days old. The others were brokers who set up a social media account to look for a buyer and negotiated the price.

Facebook has a zero tolerance for pages which promote human exploitation but they continue to proliferate.

According to Facebook, the company recently consolidated its existing policies into one dedicated section focusing on human exploitation and continues to remove any of such content as soon as it becomes aware of it.  

“We have a zero tolerance policy for human exploitation, including the sale of children for illegal adoption. This is something we take extremely seriously, and we use a mix of proactive detection technologies and community reports to find and remove this content as quickly as possible. We also work with law enforcement in situations where there is immediate risk of harm,” a Facebook company spokesperson told CNA.

Many of these pages are hard to trace because they originate outside of the Philippines.

For years, the DSWD and law enforcement agencies have traced suspicious Facebook pages and groups to investigate possible commercial adoptions. However, according to the DSWD’s assistant secretary Glenda Relova, most of them emanate from outside the Philippines and operate as closed groups. 

“The membership within the groups is closed. So, it’s hard to access without the cooperation of Facebook,” she told CNA.

That fact coupled with the fact that many Filipino babies are being bought for overseas customers is proof enough that something more sinister than merely two loving parents adopting a lovely baby from a needy mother. Undoubtedly these children are being exploited whether sexually or through forced labour.

The first article this series is illustrated with an infographic showing how the baby trade works.

I think we can all agree that the black market for babies is awful and the government should do everything it can to dismantle the networks that support it. That the NBI does not have a unit dedicated to tackling this crime is abhorrent. 

Selling babies is not the only way Filipinas abuse their children. Some of them sell explicit pictures to strangers online. A notable example recently went beyond that.

https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2021/11/ohio-man-gets-27-years-in-prison-for-paying-poor-filipino-mothers-for-child-porn.html

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio says court documents show Frazier used Filipino dating sites to connect with women in poverty. He then communicated with the women using Skype, asking them for sexually explicit pictures of their children in exchange for money, prosecutors say.

Frazier also sent child-pornography images to the women as examples of what he wanted them to create with their children. He also asked the women to show the images to their children in an attempt to convince them to engage in sexual behavior, court records show.

The documents say Frazier discussed committing violent acts against children, including killing infants during sexual assaults.

Can poverty really be blamed for these women selling pictures of their children? Perhaps. But what about enduring conversation about committing violence against them? Would a woman really do that for money? 

Perhaps the most egregious case of a Filipina exploiting children is the girls friend of Peter Scully.

https://www.deepwebsiteslinks.com/daisy-destruction/

It’s a snuff film as I already said, created in 2012  consisting of a series of 3-4 videos. The videos show a masked girl torturing toddlers aged 18 months – 4 years in the most extreme possible ways.

The masked girl was later found to be Peter Scully’s 19-year-old girlfriend, a former prostitute, while Peter was the guy supposedly directing the videos and actually responsible for the whole thing.

Although, this girlfriend of his named Liezyl Margallo was the only one ever seen actually carrying the tortures out (with Daisy), and in an introductory scene to the videos, was referred to as the “mistress” of the victims.

According to the witnesses, the videos consisted of the girl torturing the baby in a number of different ways, for e.g. clipping her private parts with cloth-clips, dropping hot wax (again on her private parts), using the baby to satisfy her own personal sexual needs etc.

She even tied the baby upside down and beat her with rope and various other material for hours, Liza and Cindy too suffered these tortures although their videos were slightly different in type and torture than what Daisy suffered. 

Scully was the mastermind behind a giant Paedophile ring, which he ran from a corner of the world where he thought his chances of getting caught were nill, Philippines.

He recruited his girlfriends to help him out, Carme Ann Alvarez was the first of them, and he asked her “Can we recruit some street-kids”?  To which Alverez said “I’m not sure, what if we bring my sister to live with us”. (Source: Alverez’s Interview in the jail)

But with his ulterior motives, Peter replied he wanted to help only street-kids (cause hey, no one blinks an eye when an orphan goes missing, specially in countries like Philippines and it’s a sad truth).

 Alverez was instructed to bring in kids aged only 9 and 12 specifically, it was quite easy to lure the kids in cause a hungry stomach will follow you just about anywhere, won’t it? So she picked the kids up, and dropped them off with Peter.

Is such horrific torture the result of poverty? Did these women recruit children because they were poor and needed the money? Of course not. Admittedly this is an extreme case and most women would probably not do what she did. 

Recently a man and his Filipina accomplice were convicted of sexual exploitation of minors.

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1160761

A Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Iligan City has convicted a man and his female accomplice for sexually exploiting their relatives for online trade.

In a statement on Wednesday, anti-online sexual exploitation on children watchdog International Justice Mission (IJM) said the RTC Branch 2 has found the man guilty of sexually exploiting his sister, who was then 14 years old in July 2021.

The court also convicted the accused for offering his underage female cousin and another female minor for online sexual exploitation.

Did she do it out of poverty? If so why are other impoverished women not driven to such lengths?

The exploitation of Filipino children is an international crisis. Men and women form around the world flock to the Philippines to take advantage of poor women by paying for their babies and paying for explicit pictures of their children. As of 2020 the Philippines remains the world's number one spot for online child exploitation.

https://www.thejakartapost.com/seasia/2020/05/21/philippines-tops-world-for-online-child-sex-abuse-study.html

The Philippines has become the world's largest known source of online child sexual exploitation, with endemic poverty helping drive a surge in abuse, a report said Thursday.

Parents and relatives were responsible for facilitating the abuse in nearly all cases, according to the International Justice Mission aid group's seven-year study.

The combination of English fluency and high internet connectivity in the former US colony had helped make the country a "global hotspot" for child pornography, the report said.

The proportion of Philippine internet addresses used to host child pornography had tripled in the three years to 2017, said the study, which based its findings on data collected by law enforcement data. 

"The proportion of Philippine internet addresses used to host child pornography had tripled in the three years to 2017." That is an incredible statement a testament to the fact that, despite a few people being caught and convicted for the crime, Philippine authorities seem to not care about its proliferation. They'd rather blast a tricycle driver for smoking meth than do the hard work of tracing ISPs and finding those responsible for harming children. Eradicating child online exploitation, including baby selling, should be a major campaign issue. But it probably never will be.