Worse than beasts

Some news stories can be very shocking like the massacre of 58 people instigated by the Ampatuans of Maguindanao, or the calamity set off by a killer earthquake and epic tsunami in Japan.

The Maguindanao Massacre is the single deadliest event for journalists in all of human history. The warlords have commissioned a battery of lawyers to help them go through the judicial grind using their allegedly ill-gotten wealth. The fact that justice is being pursued should reassure the families of the victims but there is some apprehension because due process takes time. Some sectors say that in time people will forget about the November 2009 massacre and when that happens, the door would be opened, however slightly, to maneuver the courts and the law.

The calamity that shook Japan last March 30, 2011 was a triple whammy that triggered the destruction of the country’s nuclear plants. It is Japan’s worst disaster since World War II, one that holds grim prospects for the Japanese economy. The effects of a nuclear meltdown will affect generations to come and pundits say Japan’s survival has been put on the line. The images of the natural calamities’ thrashing away people, cars, homes, buildings and anything in its path still send shivers down my spine.

These types of news are both shocking and terrifying but I think nothing takes the cake in terms of psychological distress than the report that a couple in Cordova town plied their cybersex business using their own children aged 4 to 15 years old. The sexual exploitation of minors can happen if parents are not watchful in the care of their children, or it can happen that some minors end up in the sex trade because of human trafficking, but to hear of parents not just consenting but willfully offering their children to sexual predators is unheard of in recent times. Tagalogs have an apt phrase, “Masahol pa sa hayop,” (worse than beasts) or “Lupig pay mananap,” in the vernacular.

The immoral and illegal trade was busted last week after agents of the National Bureau of Investigation in Central Visayas (NBI-7) raided the house of the couple and rescued the six children, including a 4-year-old girl. As we know, the NBI through the provincial government had picked up a report about the couple’s illegal trade. Cybersex trade being carried out in the privacy of homes are the buzz in Cordova and Minglanilla, according to reports.

NBI agents tried to set up a solicit-bust operation but the two did not bite because apparently, they cater only to foreign clients. The couple’s proficiency in online transactions, which is now the standard of commerce in most foreign countries indicate that the wicked business is thriving under the noses of local government units.

Fortunately, the NBI tapped its counterpart in the United States and with the help of the Homeland Security Department, the cybersex trading couple fell into the trap laid out by the NBI and the HSD. The US agency had been stepping up its campaign against online pornography within its shores. The raid in Cordova last week netted a body of evidence that would nail down not only the couple but their foreign clients as well. It’s not clear whether NBI-7 agents and US HSD had a conversation but I think even Americans who are very enlightened on libertarian concepts may have been totally bowled over by what they saw.

In 2008, the US Supreme Court upheld the so-called Protect Act, a law which makes it a crime to offer or solicit sexually explicit images of children in the Internet. The law had polarized the US population because while Congress presented the statute as a foil to the growing pornographic trade, critics pronounced the law as an infringement of the First Amendment, that provision in the US Constitution considered as the bedrock of all civil liberties. Critics were worried the law would trample on freedom of expression and consequently set off a wave of needless prosecution.

However, Justice Antonin Scalia, in upholding the Protect Act in 2008, dismissed fears of overzealous prosecutors as mere “fanciful hypotheticals” saying that “offers to provide or requests to obtain child pornography are categorically excluded from the First Amendment.”

The Protect Act applies regardless of whether the material turns out to consist solely of computer-generated images, or digitally altered photographs of adults, or even if the offer is fraudulent and the material does not exist at all. My online resources say the crime carries a punishment of five years imprisonment.

The US Supreme Court decision has not halted the debate over the Protect Act. Those who defend it are often dismissed as religious fanatics or Bible thumpers and offenders touted as people who are merely trying to express themselves.

Cebu Vice Gov. Agnes Magpale is set to craft laws to tighten the screws on cybersex trade, but I think her efforts would require a massive commitment to review all existing laws on pornography, human trafficking and the like. In other words, this would take a lot of time.

I think law enforcement is still the best practice in this case. Government agencies should focus on the prosecution of the couple who had no qualms using their children in the wicked trade. Meanwhile, local governments should support police operations in the surveillance of suspected cybersex dens around Cebu and waste no time in busting them and haul offenders before the courts of law.