Corrupted source code

The arrests made by the National Bureau of Investigation of a couple who used their children in cyberpornography exposes a continuing scandal.

The evil enterprise where adults earn fast money exploiting the young is not new.

In the same fishing village, in June 2011, authorities nabbed a couple using their five children and a niece as live “models” for an online porn show.

Poverty is never a tenable excuse to offer children to pedophiles.

That the long arm of the law caught up with two parents in the 2011 case but did not deter the proliferation of cyberpornography in the neighborhood shows a twisted life in this Cordova barangay.

Authorities should revisit the 2011 case.

Parents of the five child victims are in prison, facing unbailable charges of qualified human trafficking.

The children, now virtual orphans, are in safehouses under the protective custody of the Provincial Women’s Commission (PWC).

A sixth child borne in jail had to be sequestered by the state from the parents. A prison is no place for an innocent infant.

The chairperson of the PWC, Acting Gov. Agnes Magpale, once lamented that the case has become a no-win situation.

If a guilty verdict is handed down by the court, the separation of the family becomes final.

The same may be expected of the family whose house was raided in the dawn hours of May 26 in sitio Sung-ok, barangay Ibabao of Cordova. That case involves their daughter, her teenage cousin and the girl’s teenage boyfriend.

Dura lex sed lex, goes the legal maxim. The law is harsh but it is the law.

Nobody wins when a heinous crime is committed, not even the survivor.

But life has to move on, and the government and the community have that duty to restore whatever is destroyed by crime and social aberrations.

Access to digital technology and the Intenet opens many opportunities but it can be grossly misused as the Cordova home-based porn rings show.

The mother arrested by NBI agents said she used to work as an encoder in a Mactan zon company doing leigitimate outsourcing work like offshore bookkeeping.

The problem lies in a criminal mindset and values that have weakened to the point of severe aberration.

That the aberration is tolerated, even encouraged by the community, speeks of deep damage done to the psyche of its residents.