Woman, BF ran child cybersex ops, but only she lived to suffer in prison
A woman has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a Taguig City court for pimping out her cousin and four other minors to foreigners in 2016.
Judge Elisa Sarmiento-Flores of Taguig Regional Trial Court Branch 69 found Ilonah Jean Ramos guilty of human trafficking, according to the advocacy group that helped rescue the victims and later provided them with legal assistance.
Ramos was arrested at a condominium on March 8, 2016, along with her Japanese boyfriend Kimura Fumihiro.
Suicide at NBI
The couple worked together to sell girls aged 12 to 16 for sex and cybersex shows, according to the International Justice Mission.
Two days later, however, Fumihiro committed suicide while in the custody of National Bureau of Investigation’s Anti-Human Trafficking Division.
Case records showed that days before the arrest, Ramos enticed five girls, including a cousin, to go swimming at a condo pool in Bonifacio Global City in Taguig.
When they got there, the girls were instead handed over to an American man — who was actually an undercover agent working with the NBI and the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking.
Kimura had been arranging sex shows for his clients for a year, selling photos and videos of himself having sexual acts with the girls, according to the charge which was later corroborated by the victims in court.
Scholarship offer
The girls said the couple took photos of them in the nude, and that Kimura also touched their private parts.
“Lisa,” 15, said Ramos and Kimura even offered to pay for her education if she would give him a “show,” which she refused to do.
In her defense, Ramos claimed innocence, saying she was unaware of the cybersex activities of Kimura, who she said was just a friend, not a lover.
But in her decision promulgated on Thursday, Judge Sarmiento-Flores said the prosecution established all the elements of human trafficking in the case.
She cited Ramos’ “recruitment and transportation of the minor victims for sexual activities and exploitation” and her “taking advantage of (their) vulnerability by telling them that they would swim and eat dinner for free.”
The convict was also ordered to pay a fine of P2 million, as well as P600,000 for moral and exemplary damages to each of her five victims.
The court acquitted a coaccused, the mother of one of the victims, for lack of proof that she conspired with Ramos.
