Aussie tip leads to Taguig woman behind child porn

After a yearlong surveillance operation that was coordinated with Australian authorities, the Philippine National Police arrested a pregnant woman who used children for pornographic videos streamed online from a house in Taguig City.

The PNP-Anti Cybercrime Group chief, Senior Supt. Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar, said a 2 p.m. raid on Thursday on the house in Barangay Tuktukan led to the arrest of Joann Santos Miranda, 23.

Three children—two girls aged 10 and 11, and a boy aged 13—were rescued from the house where Miranda was caught taking a video of the naked minors for an online chat session.

Eleazar said Miranda—through Facebook and Skype—catered to pedophiles based abroad and charged fees ranging from P4,000 to P12,000, depending on the number of children shown.

Miranda was also known to join the children in performing sexual acts for an extra fee, the official said on Friday.

The operation was conducted on a search warrant issued by Executive Judge Reynaldo Alhambra of the Manila Regional Trial Court.

Eleazar said his team applied for a warrant after a year of preparing the entrapment operation and following a tip from the Australian Federal Police and the International Justice Mission, a human rights organization that rescues victims of violence, sexual exploitation and slavery.

Pay-per-view video
Miranda was identified as the woman performing sexual acts with children in a “pay-per-view” video recovered from the gadgets of Kyle Dawson, who was arrested by the Australian police on March 18, 2015, for sharing child porn videos from November 2014 to January 2015.

The PNP-ACG arrested another woman, 33-year-old Childa Alcones, who leased the Taguig house to Miranda, for “aiding” her in illegal activities, Eleazar said.

The two women are facing charges for child pornography under the Cybercrime Prevention Act; violation of the Special Protection of Children Against Abuse, Exploitation and Discrimination Act; and violation of the Expanded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act.

Eleazar said he also wanted the parents of the rescued children to be charged. “We could not imagine that these people are using children for money-making. They don’t think of (its) psychological effect on their children.”

In 2015, the PNP Special Task Force Project “Angelnet” investigated 136 cases of online child abuse, 41 of them referred by foreign law enforcement groups. Twenty-one of the investigated cases have been referred to prosecutors, Eleazar said.