Children betrayed

It was horrific enough that another mother in Cordova town, Cebu was arrested and placed behind bars for making her 13-year-old daughter an actress in a home-based cyberporn business.

But Acting Gov. Agnes Magpale’s revelation that family-operated cybersex dens also prevail in other Cebu towns prompts us to wonder if we have arrived at the biblical end of times.

How can Cebuanos stand proud as residents in the nation’s cradle of Christianity when the abuse of innocent children by their own parents continues?

Just two year ago, parents in the same sitio and barangay of Cordova were  arrested by the National Bureau of Investigation working with the US Department of Homeland Security for involving their children in a cybersex enterprise in their home.

While the  authorities have established the foreign connections of this porn ring, solutions are not found outside, in some first-world country.

The root of the problem is closer to home, in values of families and the community.

What is appalling in Cordova is the discovery (again) that not just one, but several households are engaged in this Internet version of prostitution.

In the latest arrest, the mother who exposed  her child to Internet voyeurs for at least P1,000 per /transaction said she did it because the family was poor.

Poverty is a trapdoor for many ills.   It explains desperate choices.

But the systematic, continued proliferation of cyberden operations in a single neighborhood of Cordova points to something more twisted.

To harm one’s own offspring, deliberately and with knowledge that it is wrong, rings an alarm bell for others to step in and help.

What have municipal officials of Cordova, the parish priest, lay leaders and civic leaders been doing since the first 2011 raid of a cybersex den in barangay Ibabao hit the headlines?

How far gone –   or is it how far lost –  are  the elders of the community from their basic moorings of  parental love and family wellbeing?

Deep damage has already been done  to the psyche of the children involved.  They may not realize it now, perhaps  looking at the web camerastrip tease as a game with rewards.

Imagine how they will come to grips later when they grow up , burdened with the knowledge that their elders had prostituted them with their naked images in the permanent memory of the Internet, for several dollars?

What will the experience tell them about trust, self-respect, being safe and love itself?

(The arrested mother said it wasn’t just her daughter in the spotlight.  Neighborhood kids in barangay Ibabao below 10 years old would go to the house to participate in the Internet “shows.)

The cyberporn raid in Cordova is not a law enforcement exercise.

It’s a red flag for Cebu that society will pay dearly for the betrayal of children.