Church Congress and child sex tourism
(republishing, copying, no restrictions)
By: Father Shay
The commercial sexual exploitation of children is growing at enormous proportions around the world. Conservative estimates are that of the 20 billion dollars generated by prostitution worldwide, more than 5 billion annually comes from child prostitution. It has been estimated that one million children are victimised by the sex tourist industry every year. Every cover is used by the traffickers of children for sexual exploitation. Football team tours, golfing tours and innocent package tours are being hijacked and the image of good tourism is being damaged.
The tourist industry has taken the wrong turn playing down the growing sex tourism industry especially when so many children are abused. They have to face reality that this policy of see no evil hear no evil is only going to damage good clean international tourism.
The Pontifical Council for the Pastoral care of Migrants and Itinerant People will hold the 6th World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Tourism in Bangkok Thailand the first week of July. I have been invited by the President of the Pontifical Council Stephen Fumio Cardinal Hamao to preside over a round table conference on the economic exploitation for sexual motives caused by tourism.
The congress will be addressed by Cardinal Hamao and Dr. Francisco Franglais the secretary General of the World Tourism Organisation.
I hope that he will address the terrible reality and not so dark secret behind the tourism industry - the exploitation of children.
Recently I wrote about the many children in the tourist destination of Puerto Galera, on Mindoro Island where children as young as 8 were trained by the foreign tourists to do sexual acts to them after being shown child pornography videos. The little we do doesn't make much of an impact but we hope the Church World congress in Bangkok is an opportunity to plead with the church agencies and dioceses everywhere to take this much more seriously. Trafficking of women and children goes on in so many places that no official can say it doesn't happen in their diocese. The days of denial and cover up of sex abuse of children are over, and a new opportunity to make amends and defend children exploited is going to open in the Church, we sincerely hope.
Knowing about the sexual abuse & exploitation of children and doing nothing about it is being like an accessory to a serious crime and everyone has to learn that lesson and act on it.
Every person of conscience can and must do something to stop the abuse of children. Every responsible tourist can report abuse if they see it when on holiday.
A tourist tipped us off recently about a suspected British serial
child abuser and pornographer that allegedly abused children and video
taped his crimes when in progress. A former university math teacher from
Middlesex was charged but had the case dismissed despite the
overwhelming evidence.
He was arrested in the act of sexually abusing a 14-year-old child in a
hotel room in Angels City. Dozens of tapes of other child abuse by him
were discovered. We protested but the suspect was hiding until we
received the tip off that he was in Puerto Galera a day’s journey away.
The police said they had no money to go to Puerto Galera to arrest the suspect. The PREDA children's home agreed to pay all their expenses if they would go. Then instead of just two police officers, five rushed to join for an all paid, joy ride. After a long drive and a dangerous sea crossing by a rickety rusting ferry we got the police to the suspect’s hideout in Puerto Galera . He was arrested but the charges had been reduced again by the prosecutor and he was able to pay bail and walked away. These are the difficulties we have in protecting children and bringing the sex tourist to trial. This work needs the support of the public and politicians, we can only hope the church congress in Bangkok can mobilize help too.
