Cyberporn menace

Reports of a man who forced his wife to engage in nude webcam sessions with a foreign client in Lapu-Lapu City and the arrest of an Internet cafe operator and a caretaker who allegedly allowed three women to also engage in nude webcam sessions showed that the prevalence of cyberpornography isn’t confined to the towns of Cebu.

In fact, the Lapu-Lapu City couple were dragged into a mediation after the foreigner complained that he was fooled by the woman into thinking she was single after he proposed marriage to her.

In Talisay City, the three women admitted to joining the nude webcam sessions in exchange for US $100 per session. Money was the common denominator in the two cases, as in cybersex dens in Cordova town where parents force their children to perform in the nude simulated sex with each other or even with an animal.

But Talisay and Lapu-Lapu City are significantly more economically stable than their landlocked neighbor of Cordova town that does raise the question of why and how cyberpornography spread so fast in Cebu.

It’s the international market of course. With US $100 per session at P40 to the dollar, it is a lucrative, albeit immoral and craven trade that has driven lower income families to exploit children and wives in order to earn more money at the cost of their dignity.

With one personal computer and an Internet connection, an enterprising couple or family can engage in the trade and earn dollars and euros from foreign clients, who pay through a Yahoo! Mail account or other payment schemes.

While the Provincial Commission for Women and Children took to coordinating with nongovernment organizations and the US Department of Homeland Security in locating and raiding cyber sex dens, a Department of Education program that would tap the Parents-Teachers Association is one small, significant step in the campaign against cyberpornography.

Education officials know only too well that parents remain the strongest influence in a child’s life and as such should be enlisted in the forefront of the campaign. Doing so will discourage them, especially if they are from lower income families, from engaging in the racket in the first place.

In Talisay City, an ordinance should be enacted similar to a Cebu City ordinance that outlaws cyber pornography and impose severe sanctions on violators that include substantial prison sentences and fines.

In fact, Congress should think of drafting tougher laws against cyber pornography.

When men exploit their wives and couples exploit their children for profit through online pornography and such practice finds its way through most of Cebu, it’s a wake up call for Cebu officials to intensify their campaign against this menace.