Inside the Global Taskforce Fighting Child Sex Abuse in the Philippines | Foreign Correspondent

it's merely midnight in Manila his police are searching for a seven-year-old girl they've been trying to find her for months they have evidence she's been sexually abused in videos available on the internet these horrific crimes are happening all across the Philippines we're following the teams who are trying desperately to track down the perpetrators and rescue children from abuse even if it means ripping them away from their own families months of covert investigations have led them to this house the Philippines government has declared a war on online sexual exploitation and abuse of children scale of the fight ahead is staggering good afternoon in this unremarkable office in the Philippines National Police Headquarters these people are gathering to do one of the most difficult jobs imaginable their police and experts from the Philippines and around the world and their task is to find and rescue children who are being sexually abused on demand via the Internet so it doesn't look like he indicated that Caleb Carroll a former U.S police detective advises the anti-trafficking NGO International Justice Mission a founding member of this task force covid drove everybody online which just fueled the crime type to grow we're gonna do a follow-up up on her probably then existing detection technology it's just not capable of finding and blocking live streaming sexual abuse it's a really hard crime type it's oftentimes very grotesque and violent because you're talking about sexually motivated offenders getting to basically Direct in real time the kind of abuse they want to see [Music] [Applause] the people paying for and watching the live stream abuse leave thousands of kilometers away you see the most sexually motivated offenders coming out of the U.S and then in second place is the Australia and almost every study Natalie Rosler is an Australian federal police detective and a key part of the task force he is working on child sexual abuse cases in Australia hello ma'am how are you for moving to Manila 12 months ago thank you morning boss meeting with her colleagues to discuss a new case that's come from police in Australia they've got a recent arrest of a 50 year old male they found that he had been communicating with a Philippines mobile phone number to a female facilitator of course based here an offender might send a friend request or they might be on a dating app and they will connect to a facilitated and from there they negotiate for a child to be sexually abused and that can be live streamed in the privacy of their own homes during communication the male talks about getting some videos of a girl the facilitator has access to who is reportedly only 12 years old how many cases would you and the team be working on now we have probably about um between 50 to 60 Active cases at the moment why do you think such a high volume of Australian offenders are targeting the Philippines a lot of the population speak English which makes it easy for the offenders to communicate and to text and negotiate they've sent through photos of the facilitator from this team of three is a critical part of the chain that connects offenders in Australia with victims in the Philippines and they've also got images of our male sending Financial payments now if you can look through financials just to see whether we can confirm the location of the facilitator here in the Philippines facilitators can be anyone that has access to children people that live next door their neighbors people that know them and are close to them but sadly a lot of the time the facilitators can be their parents [Music] foreign [Music] am and the task force has had a breakthrough in a case they've been working on for months the gays officer will just brief us on the update they've been analyzing videos from the internet of a seven-year-old girl who we will call Jolene being sexually abused of Dutch police we conducted online open source surveillance after this we conducted ground surveillance we were able to locate these residence police believe her mom's boyfriend made and sold the abuse videos and now they know where to find him we will be filing the search warrant before we can pursue these shirts on the identified location based on as the team prepares the paperwork for a warrant application their boss Colonel Porsche manilad attends to the many other cases on her desk these cases are very sensitive especially if it involves children it takes a long time before you can come up with the definite answers you need to have some patience because everything can change overnight Colonel Angela rojano is in charge of what happens next is it just one facilitator or is there multiple in there can be more than one but the confirmed Target is already there so we just wait okay [Music] International cooperation has been key to catching perpetrators and rescuing children case a c a sink led the task force to find 15 victims and five facilitators and landed the Australian offender in jail for 15 years for offenses related to sexual activity on the internet this is a case that originated in South Australia a male was stopped by Australian Border force and they identified that he had child abuse material on one of his phones and they executed the search warrant on his home the man's name is Ian Chapel you said his images on that computer describe those images to me well they're not violent they're not having sex they'd just moved nude images how old would you say those images of those girls are among the more than 50 55 000 video 's Chapel had with some horrific footage of sexual acts involving children some of the catalogs in this case are probably some of the worst that I've read detective rosaler shows us the extremely revealing Skype chat logs between chapel and Philippines facilitators this one here where he says age is no problem to me and then she says my five-year-old is that okay with you so there's a five-year-old child being offered up here that's right and then she sends a an image of a small child closed and he said let me watch her get undressed for me give me a show paid as little as 40 Australian dollars to watch his victims be sexually abused and exploited and they will go back and forth discussing the price so they barter like you would for something in a in a market that's yeah absolutely correct for for children to be sexually abused and they're bartering for it I mean they'll often asked if an offender can just give money now show later because they want to put food on the table and in this case this lady is constantly asking for money because she's in dire need of some money but he won't his youngest victim was just three years old [Music] it's now 10 am the task force looking for Jolene is on the move we're heading now to court where the police going to ask a judge to approve a search warrant it's possible that they won't approve it but if they do that means the police can go to the location try and arrest the alleged offender and rescue any children they might find inside cases like these are so sensitive many of those working on them just don't want to be identified so this doesn't guarantee the arrest this is just for a search yes remember some of this application is for a search this lawyer has been up all night writing the warrant application what's the likelihood that the judge will accept the application uh it's really hard to see uh again it will depend on the pieces of evidence that the police officers will present before the judge investigators have been working around the clock on this case now they have to present their evidence to the judge as the hearing drags on they become more and more anxious we've been waiting here at the court for nearly five hours for the judge to make a decision on whether or not they're going to issue this search warrant one of the police officers who doesn't want to speak on camera said that this is one of the worst cases they've ever seen and that makes you realize that every moment that ticks by is another moment that this child is potentially vulnerable to abuse there's one thing a police officer has told me that I just can't get out of my head that in the videos they've seen Jolene keeps crying and begging for the abuse to stop 7 P.M they finally have a decision the judge granted uh about eight hours yes but very very relieved our law enforcement partners are very happy police put the plan for the raid into action 10 minutes it's nearly midnight when the investigators head to the suspect's house foreign [Music] thank you [Music] police have gone into this house and they have found the suspect that they were looking for but they haven't found the child to arrest the suspect police need to find child sexual abuse material in his possession thank you local s we declare his arrest so you found a device with more child abuse material in the evidence what sort of scale of abuse are we talking about how bad very nice it's disgusting I can't explain it thoroughly Jolene is most likely with her mother who police believe also participated in the abuse [Music] the really hard thing is that you leave work every day knowing there are still more children out there that you know about and you know it's heartbreaking because they may not know that anybody's even out there looking for them even though we're trying in a quiet part of Manila there's a special shelter for children who are saved from this catastrophic abuse where they can start to piece together their shattered lives is a social worker who's often one of the first people on the scene when a child is found during a police operation although I'm trained as a social worker when you hear their stories how they were Live's team how long did they stay in that kind of abuse how dare own mother abuse them exploit them manipulated them difficult the moment of rescue is often deeply traumatic for children for survivors especially for very young survivors who may not understand right away why they are being separated from their parents or family members but we've also seen that some survivors are grateful I relieved [Music] often kids want to know when they'll be reunited with family members not facing charges [Music] to no experience it's like live streaming of child abuse and online sexual exploitation have been normalized at their home and because it's the people that they trust the victims suffer complex drama difficult for them to to move forward you can give them promise when they can go home that's the usual question when can they be very unified with other victims when can they see their family which is normal and yeah they won't easily trust us so it's important that we don't give up on them [Music] these investigations take their toll on everyone involved as a veteran Officer Colonel Porsche manilad has seen many times what happens when children are found and taken away from their parents the Filipinos the family taste is when the child is taken away from the parents um it's really very hard because because every time I'm uniform I should be tough you know I'm also a parent so I wish that every time I hold the damn rescue them and arrest those those parents I I wish I was in in civilian clothes it's like 32 years already in the service and if you ask me which part of my career is very hard it's this the women children it's women and children over the past four years the task force has rescued nearly 600 victims and charged 120 facilitators the examples attorney Kathy Lasko heads up an anti-trafficking division that's part of the task force this is actually a supply and demand thing there's a demand so the parents here are providing the supply so if we could work on the demand maybe we could put a stop on this how common is it that facilitators say they're motivated by poverty yeah it's actually very common because if we go through the places where we actually conduct these operations uh the places are most often than not poverty stricken do you believe that these facilitators have no Alternatives um of course that's not true because we always have options they should be the one providing for the needs of the children not the other way around I think we need to be really careful when we say that poverty drives people to do this because I don't think that's fair to the people of the Philippines and I don't think that's fair to the millions of parents and family members in abject poverty around the world that would do everything other than harm their children okay Kathy nalesco's team regularly conducts rights three weeks ago her team arrested a woman that we will call Marie she's engaged in selling her children for online sex offering her children for a fee so that her children would be engaged in sexual activities online with foreigners they found key pieces of evidence did find the mobile phones and pocket Wi-Fi and some sex toys and also we found some receipts evidence that she was offering her children to other foreigners I still find it unfathomable how a parent could sell their child for sexual abuse chance to find out Marie has agreed to speak with me at the Detention Center where she's being held [Music] [Music] are you worried about your children this is his first time that happened but I wasn't yeah far from me I importantly probably this is the first time what went through your mind when the police officers came to arrest you angry angry oh Fred and angry why were you angry of the situation being poor it's not easy sorry take your time it's so you're saying it's because of poverty when pandemic starts follow me and that's about a chance you were arrested for these crimes towards the end of 2022 so the lockdown was over and you continued to do this how do you explain that just to survive rather than seeing make you sleep with an empty stomach rather than see my mom brother's sister like that sleeping with some upset Marie is facing life in prison it's very hard for me to understand as a mother how you could do this to your children maybe because we are not the same we are not the same situation that's why you not understand so stay alive but but maybe we knew in a situation I'm sure you're gonna you're gonna understand that was a lot more complicated than expected she clearly really misses her fears and she sings very emotional when she was saying that she did this only because she needed money I think the one thing that I'm stuck with now is just the realization that this crime just destroys families maybe just leave in the bag um put down the older girls in yeah perhaps for the police who spend their lives trying to save these children who ride a constant wave of successes and setbacks these are the moments they hold on to we've got some donations between Philippine national police PNP and the AFP so that we could come out and visit the shelter here it is the best part of my job that's why I'm here and sometimes you get a little bit emotional because you can see how much they love what we're giving them when they're riding around on the bikes or even just putting a pair of earrings in it's amazing it fills my heart up and it's why we're here it's it's a lot of my day [Applause] [Music] because they have children also as a mother I can feel their happiness I can also feel their loneliness and yeah the the feelings that they have right now is mixed emotion um maybe limited love at least for a day or for for an hour they they get it from us so for me it's it's a wonderful thing no no no words can explain foreign this isn't some far-off problem these are the same sexually motivated offenders that want to hurt your children the offenders are living next door to you and I if I could send any message to an Australian or a Brit or American that's watching this or from anywhere is that while we're talking about the Philippines this is a problem that that originates in our neighborhoods with people that we know and that have access to our children and and are we okay with that we need to ask ourselves that I'm I'm not [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 322,016

Keywords: abc news, abc news indepth, foreign correspondent, philippines, manilla, news, documentary, abc news australia, abc, stephanie march, Filipino police, hunting predators, stopping predators, police documentary, law enforcement, justice documentary, cop documentary, protecting children, saving children, online crime, true crime documentary, criminal psychology, filipino police, filipino, crime investigation, australia

Id: sYXgHV_SNeY

Length: 29min 31sec (1771 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/OwnPaleontologist408]

This is really disgusting. I'm so thankful na sheltered ako. Sa tulad kong di naranasan ang ganito umiikot na ang sikmura ko sa sitwasyon at kumukulo ang dugo sa mga demonyong gumagawa nito, pano ba yung mga nasa sitwasyon na ganito? Sana gumawa ng batas na machemical castration sa mukha at ari ng mga gumagawa nito.