Trafficking not about sex

The script maybe all too familiar. Poor rural women recruited to do house-hold chores for families in the city.

Instead of washing dishes and dirty linen, they end up being ravished by men whose hormones need proper management or who are out to prove their testosterone levels are still up to the challenge.

Here comes these two poor guys. One watches parked cars for a fee. The other is a jeepney conductor. Both thought their street savvy could augment their income.

Poor girls meet poor boys. It’s not a love story though; it is a business venture with poor girls as commodities, the poor boys the sales agent. Many say the sex trade is the oldest. Many say it involves no more than a normal transaction between two consenting adults.

The commercial sex trade is, however, not about consent to exchange body fluids and heat and the pleasure that comes with it. The diminishing of one’s person on account of poverty, low self-esteem and worse, coercion, is what the law against human trafficking abhors.

The evening of May 2, 2007 could be any of those nights where poor boys and girls ply their trade. Except that some advocates against human trafficking were breathing down the necks of the Philippine National Police (PNP).

Acting on complaints by the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the International Justice Mission of rampant human trafficking by way of sex trade in barangay Kamagayan and F. Ramos St., the PNP Cebu’s Criminal Intelligence and Investigation Bureau sprang into action.

They netted car watcher Joseph Arganda, 48, and jeepney conductor Fredi Anabia, 27, who dabbled as pimps about to deliver three poor girls to poseurs for the paltry sum of P500 per girl, their supposed share of the transaction.

In a decision by the Regional Trial Court Branch 7 promulgated March 12, 2012, Judge Simeon Dumdum acknowledged the “bruteness” of the law against human trafficking against “the pitiful condition of the accused.”

“Dura lex, sed lex (The law maybe harsh, but it is the law)” may be cliché but it sure hit hardest the two poor boys. Worse, poor girls did not even cry a tear, with one of the three girls, “Lolita” taking the witness stand against them. Sure, there are many criminals out there with more gory stories behind them. Arganda and Anabia may feel too unfortunate that for P500 pesos the rule of law will deconstruct their humanity to correct a social decay.

Perhaps, like many sent to our decrepit and squalid penal institutions, they may not even really comprehend to the fullest what hit them.

The decision to give them the most severe penalty of 20 years in jail and a fine of P1 million is clearly a strong message that despite pervading apathy to human trafficking happening in our neighborhoods, in this instance, the law has not conveniently looked the other way.