Crusading Priest Calls for Children's Court
National Catholic REGISTER
October 13, 1999
LONDON-The world's exploited and violated children need their own court of human rights, a crusading priest urged a major United Nations conference.
Columban Father Shay Cullen an advocate for the abolition of child Prostitution, made his latest proposal in August at the International Forum for Child Welfare in Helsinki that was sponsored by the United Nations to mark the 10th anniversary of the U.N. Convention on the Rights ofthe Child.
Citing statistics from the Intemational Labor Organization. Father Cullen said 50 to 60 million children between the ages of five and 11 are "laboring in inhuman and potentially life-threatening conditions."
In all, he said, "250 million children between the ages of five and 14 are laboring in developing countries. But many more are maltreated and abused victims of serfdom, child pornography and sweatshops that utilize child labor."
An empowered youth can fight back, argued Father Cullen. He cited the Global March of Young People, an effort to demonstrate for freedom from child labor and sexual exploitation. Perhaps not well known in many places, the march took place in a number of cities around the world over the last year, ending with a demonstration at U.N. headquarters in New York.
But an international court would make for better protection for children whose own nations may be looking the other way.
Vikram Parekh, a research officer with Human Rights Watch, said a children's court "would be rather difficult to implement" because 11 many governments would be reluctant to [cede authority to] another jurisdiction."
He said children's advocacy and human rights groups should first direct their efforts at getting governments to make the United Nation's convention on child rights made part of their own laws.
Father Cullen's call for an international justice forum for children received modified endorsement from Daphne McLeod, chairman of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, a British Catholic organization that promotes loyalty to the Pope and the Magisterium.
"The U.N. has to take action against those who threaten vulnerable children, especially those who are exploited and abused in the Third World," McLeod told the Register However, if the U.N. were serious about children's rights, she said, it would stop funding forced abortion in China and the promotion of pro-abortion policies in the Third World.
"When talk of children's rights comes to the West, it is usually at the expense of parents' rights," McLeon cautioned. For example, "the European Court of Human Rights is being used to stop parents from smacking their children. The next thing you know you will have children going to court to get out of doing the washing-up."
In addition to the proposed court, Father Cullen told the conference that much remains to be done to break down the apathy and complacency that pervades government and society over issues such as child exploitation and child sexual abuse. "We are instead faced with an ever greater challenge so long as millions of children are enslaved, abused, exploited," he said.
LONDON--Columban Father Shay Cullen's call for an intemational court to protect children is the latest effort in a missionary career that has focused on saving abused and neglected children.
The 56-year-old priest's primary effort has centered on the eradication of child prostitution, a practice that is rampant in many parts of Asia where he has spent most of his priesthood since his ordination in 1969.
Often a lonely battle against ingrained culture practices, the struggle has
brought him into conflict with mobsters, "sex tourists," corrupt politicians and
even the U.S. Navy.
Based in Olongapo City in the Philippines for the last 25 years, Irish-born
Father Cullen is the founder of People's Recovery Empowerment and Development
Association (www.preda.org), which began as a community-based drug education,
prevention, and rehabilitation agency.
The organization's activities shifted into the realm of child prostitution in response to the thriving child sex business that fed off the huge U.S. Navy base at the Philippines Subic Bay. "The mayor and the [Navy commanders] were well informed that nine year-olds were being sold as sex objects to the sailors and to local pedophiles," Father Cullen said last month at the International Forum for Child Welfare in Helsinki.
"But instead of reacting to protect the children and bring the abusers to justice, they tried to cover up, no doubt to protect their own personal careers, their own neglect and the immoral and illegal activity," said Father Cullen.
"The policy of the local government official was to make personal gainffor the sex industry. The Policy of the military was to care for the sexual needs of [its] men at the expense of the women and children."
The U.S. courts refused to consider a 1993 lawsuit brought by Father Cullen's
organization against the Navy but, with the help of supporters in Congress, the
group won a $2 million settlement from the U.S. Agency for International
Development that covered the medical and educational expenses for the children
of Filipino mothers who were left abandoned by the American servicemen who
fathered them.
While his efforts have focused on Asia, Father Cullen has cautioned that the
West is not without its share of responsibility for the Asian sex trade.
Earlier this year, the priest assisted British authorities in the prosecution of English and Scottish men who helped run a Bangkok pedophile ring that catered to "sex tourists" from Europe and North America who visit Thailand to prey on child prostitutes.
The West is also home to millions of children who are physically and sexually-abused in government and private institutions, in the home and in their neighborhoods, said Father Cullen.
They frequently grow up in a culture of sex and violence, isolated from human
interaction by the video game sub culture, without role models of virtue to
emulate and admire," said Father Cullen. He added that high divorce rates mean
that many children are "deprived of the stability of family life."
For more information on Father Cullen's work, call the Jubilee Campaign. USA in
Fairfax Va., at (703) 503-0791.
Paul Burnell writes
from Manchester England.
