'Daddy' Accused of Providing Child Sex

They called him "Daddy" but this Autralian, according to Philippines prosecutors, anything but a father figure to the girls who worked in the Fantastic bar.

 Bernadette was 13 when she went to work late last year at the nightclub owned and operated by the Sydney retiree and his Filipino wife in Angeles City, 100 kilometres north of Manila.

 Once home to the big United States Clark Field air base, the squalid frontier town now survives as one of the seedier outposts of Asian sex tourism - a trade dominated by Australian bar operators and sustained by Australian tourists seeking cheap sex, often with children.

 Like thousands of other young Filipinas, Bernadette was lured into the bars by poverty. She had left school before finishing first grade and tried a series of short-term menial jobs before been drawn by the false promise of glamour and money.

 Last November, undercover officers of the Philippines National Bureau of Investigations and staff of an American-funded child protection agency wearing hidden video cameras visited Fantastic where, they allege, this 'Australian' and staff members offered them Bernadette for sex.

 But this was not the usual deal offered by scores of bars to hundreds of mostly foreign men every night in Angeles - a "bar fine" of 1000 pesos ($A27.60) for takeaway sex.

 "The video shows them asking 40,000 pesos for a 'cherry girl' - a virgin," says a legal source involved in the case.

 According to her statement to police, Bernadette was "bar fined" by five men in the two months she worked at Fantastic. She described them all as "kano" - a Filipino term for white men that can mean Australians, Americans or Europeans.

Welfare workers said that during a recent court hearing, the girl wept as she recalled how the last customer who had taken her from the bar before the night of her rescue brutally raped her.

The 'Australian', 56, his wife Editha and bar "mamasan" Rea Dela Cruz are now facing the Angeles Regional Trial Court on charges of procuring minors for prostitution, an offence that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Following the raid on Fantastic and the nearby G-Spot bar, during which six under-aged girls were rescued and taken to shelters by social workers, police ordered the two bars to shut down. The 'Australian' and his co-accused were released on bail of 200,000 pesos.

But the threat of a long jail sentence has not dampened the entrepreneurial spirit of the 'Australian's' family. Within weeks of its closure, Fantastic was back in business with a new fluoro paint job and a new name - the Owl's Nest.

Last week, on the eve of his latest court appearance, "Daddy Terry" was there in a floral shirt and gold chain, playing host to a throng of ageing expatriate regulars - many of them Australians who cradled beers and girls young enough to be their granddaughters into the early hours.

A row of teenagers in lime string bikinis swung provocatively on poles on the bar-top dance floor to the thump of dated disco tracks. "New name. New girls. Same owners," giggled one waitress.

The case against the 'Australian' and his co-accused has highlighted a sex trade that flourishes in Angeles and other Philippines cities more than a decade after the American forces that spawned it were given their marching orders.

It is a trade that continues to shame Australia which, despite tough legislation enacted by the Federal Government nine years ago to combat child sex tourism, remains a primary source of both customers and bar owners.

Father Shay Cullen, a Catholic priest who has lived in the area for 32 years, runs the Preda Foundation, a child protection agency that is now sheltering Bernadette and many other abused children.

"We reckon between 50 and 60 per cent of the bars in Angeles are Australian owned. They are registered in the names of their Filipino partners, but when you look behind the screen you'll find it's often Australians in charge," Father Cullen says.

"These bars are also a magnet for Australian tourists. We've always seen in Angeles that a large proportion of the customers are Australians."

While much of the trade is legal, Angeles City is acknowledged by welfare workers and child protection agencies as a favourite regional destination for child abusers.

"It's common knowledge that this is the place to come for sex with children. Much of it is well hidden, but it's easy for people looking for children to find them," says a Filipino lawyer.

Last month a British university lecturer was arrested for producing pornography with young children. A British and an American bar owner are awaiting trial on charges of procuring children for prostitution.

Attempts to prosecute offenders are often hamstrung by the lack of evidence, by the girls' fear of their employers and by families that rely on their children's income to survive. Many arrested offenders buy their way out of jail and out of the country.

Bernadette McMenamin, head of the Australian branch of the international child protection agency Ecpat, which campaigned for the 1994 legislation under which 16 Australians have been prosecuted for raping children overseas, says Australians are responsible for much of the nation's child sex industry. "We cannot slip into complacency. The Philippines has always been a hunting ground for Australian child sex tourists and . . . clearly there are a lot of Australians still actively involved," she says. "We are in the thick of it and the Australian Government should be doing more to try to stop it."

During cross-examination in a closed-chambers hearing last Wednesday, lawyers representing the 'Australian' argued that the young Bernadette and the other under-aged girls had worked in other bars before being hired by Fantastic. They claimed the 13-year-old's mother approved of her working there. The arguments were attacked by the girls' lawyers. "The fact is that if it were not for these bars, these girls would still be in school," a social worker said later.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/09/14/1063478066604.html?from=storyrhs

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