The PREDA Program for Human Development and Child Protection &
Recovery
"The Olongapo Colonial Experience" - pp. 129
Independent Media, Inc.
By: Herman Tiu Laurel
Fr. Shay Cullen
Fr. Shay Cullen is a Missionary
priest from Ireland, now 59, a member of the Missionary Society of St.
Columban, an Irish organization working for human rights around the
world.
After he finished six years of college education in Ireland he was
sent to the Philippines in 1969 and worked among the youth and drug
dependents in Olongapo City.
This was the homeport of the US Military base at Subic Bay.
The social situation was corrupt because of the huge sex industry
that sexually exploited women selling them to the marines in hundreds of
clubs and brothels and on the street.
This evil business caused the spread of drug abuse, the AIDS virus,
broken homes and child sexual abuse on a huge scale.
Fr. Shay learned to speak the
Filipino language fluently, adapted quickly to the Filipino culture, and
showed a deep understanding and solidarity with the suffering of the
poor.
He began working for human rights and protecting young people from
the dreaded death squads that roamed the city that protected the US
military personnel on recreation.
There were 16,000 women and children prostituted in to the hundreds of
bars, nightclubs and brothels that lined the streets of Olongapo.
In 1974, he established the PREDA
foundation The People's Recovery Empowerment Development Assistance
Foundation Inc. (PREDA) to help the victims of torture and military
oppression by the Marcos martial law regime and it became a sanctuary
for those threatened with summary execution by the military.
The PREDA center became famous for the help given to young people
dependent on drugs.
With the help of the assistant
founders of PREDA, Alex and Merely Hermoso, a therapeutic community
developed that brought healing and empowerment to the young people that
came seeking renewal of life.
Fr. Shay and his co-workers
developed Emotional Release Therapy that enabled the young person to
express the deepest emotional pain of
childhood and to release it with all the pent-up pain, hostility and
anger. This was called scream or cry therapy and is used until the
present to help sexually abused children who come to PREDA to seek
refuge from their abusers.
In 1982 together with Alex Hermoso, Fr. Shay discovered and exposed a
huge child sex business that was selling young children to US military
personnel for sex. The
local Filipino officials who made big money from the sex industry were
angry and tried to have him deported and discredited.
However, Fr. Shay won
his legal cases one after another but was harassed and threatened the
more he exposed the evil trade of little children.
The sex mafia has tried to close the PREDA center with the help of
corrupt politicians in Olongapo city.
He tried to restore Filipino dignity and self-confidence that had
been taken away by the presence of the US military that dominated the
community.
He began a campaign against the
military bases, proposed, and advised how they could be converted into
productive industrial parks providing employment w' h dignity for the
Filipinos. Local politicians opposed him and his plans.
After ten years of campaigning with other NGOS, the political
battle was won and the US bases had to close.
Fr. Cullen's conversion plan was realized and the facilities were
converted into the high tech computer and other production zones.
There are as many as fifty thousand Filipinos working in these
converted military bases today because of Fr. Shay Cullen and the PREDA
co-workers. It is a big
success for the peace movement.
The PREDA center has many social
services that help street children, and children in prisons.
The project provides a therapeutic home that helps heal sexually
abused children and a PREDA legal office pursues the offenders and
brings them to Justice.
The PREDA workers have uncovered international syndicates trafficking
children and have brought offenders to Justice in Europe and North
America with the help of the Interpol and national police officers.
Fr. Cullen is one of the early founders of the Fair Trade Movement in
the Philippines and was an early board member of the International
Federation of Alternative Trade (IFAT).
He set up with Mrs. Merely Hermoso the PREDA Fair Trade organization and
today thousands of Filipinos benefit from the projects.
Fair Trade criteria are spread in industry and are implemented and
practiced in many projects.
The export of dried mangos is perhaps one of the biggest success
stories.
Thousands of farmers benefit because of this export.
They receive the best prices and the volume of sales has almost
eliminated the buying cartels that dominated the lives of the poor
farmers. Mango Puree is
mixed with organic apples in Germany for a tropical apple mango drink
that is very popular. Today
prosperity has come to the farmers and they remain in their villages.
This has reduced greatly the migration of people to the cities.
In this way the alleviation of poverty prevents the prostitution of
impoverished and slum dwelling children.
Fr. Shay is a popular international speaker, campaigner, media
commentator, a writer and journalist.
He was an invited delegate to the conference drafting the Convention on
the Rights of the Child, Helsinki 1989, and is nominated for the Nobel
Peace Prize 2001. Fr. Shay
was awarded a German Human Rights of the City of Weimar Award in
December 2000 and an Italian Human Rights Award at the City of Ferrara,
2001.
Numerous newspaper articles and television documentaries have
reported the success of his work protecting children and campaigning for
human rights.
