‘Values of child victims distorted by parents’

THE 13-year-old girl who performed lewd acts in front of foreign online customers in Cordova town, knew that what her mother told her to do was illegal.

Thus it wasn’t a shock to the girl and her 14-year-old cousin when her mother was arrested by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation in Central Visayas (NBI-7) at their home in Cordova town last Sunday dawn.

“Because of what happened, the moral values of these children are distorted. They cannot distinguish anymore which is right and which is wrong,” DSWD-7 worker Eda Regudo said.

Regudo said the girl’s cousin admitted performing lewd acts when she was 12 years old.

The 13-year-old girl and her cousin are under protective custody of the DSWD where they will undergo psychological and medical examinations.

She said the children need to undergo “rehabilitation to correct the victims’ negative outlook and orientations while they are still young.”

The girl’s mother admitted to operating a cyberporn business in their home in barangay Ibabaw.

Regudo said it was the same barangay where a mother was also arrested for ordering her daughters and her niece to strip and dance in front of foreign online customers last June 2011.

The girl’s 35-year-old mother was known as the “Queen of Cyber-pornography” in Cordova town.

“Some of our parents nowadays are already lazy to get some decent jobs to sustain their family’s needs,” Regudo added.

Regudo also said most cyber-porn victims were paid P200-P500 for every “show.”

Barangay officials of Ibabao, Cordova said poverty drove the girl’s parents to engage in cyber-pornography as a livelihood.

Barangay Ibabao Captain Chito D. Bentozal said the couple also made rolls of rope at P13 per roll for extra income.

The girl’s parent used to work as a data encoder at one of the firms in the Mactan Export Processing Zone (MEPZ).

Her father worked as a fisherman before he got sick three years ago. “Children were made to engage in cyber-pornographyto) to sustain the vices of their parents who drink, gamble and use drugs,” Bentozal said.

“It is not only in our area that this problem is existing but it also covers other areas in the town but our place is considered as the eye of concern because of same place where the raid happened last 2011,” he said.

While he receives reports about cyber-porn activities, Bentozal said they are hesitant to accuse them directly for fear of violating their rights.

He said minors used to earn more unlike this year.

“We did not expect that this would happen again since the 2011 raid was bigger than this year,” Bentozal said.

He said they are conducting seminars to boost their campaign against cyber-pornography. With Correspondent Michelle Joy L. Padayhag