Dear Friends and supporters,There are many
important events and success stories in the past few months.
The International Person of the year award is given to Preda
from the Irish RTE Media and by Rehab Ireland. It will be presented
in City West Hotel, Dublin on 13 September. It’s a fund raiser for
Rehab Ireland and tickets are €200 but contact kate.ryan@rehab.ie.
Preda friends and volunteers hope to gather earlier in the hotel.
This prize is in recognition of the work of Preda.
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| Small girls are imprisoned together
with young boys are rescued by PREDA. |
The International Solidarity Prize will be
presented to Preda in Barcelona on the 9th October by Jose M.
Carrera, President of Matres Mundi International representing a
group of three famous Spanish children's medical associations.
International Conference in BOGOTA. Fr. Shay is invited by
the Vatican Pontifical commission on Migrants and Street children to
give a presentation in Bogota, Columbia at an international
conference on street children and juvenile justice.
Wanted Volunteer engineers and builders as supervisors
We are inviting engineers, experienced builders and skilled workers
to join us in building the new Children's Home with our local
contractor for a few weeks or months as the work begins around the
last week of September. Please Contact PREDA.
Kids still being rescued
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| Youth released and rehabilitated get
vocational training. Hundreds have been helped. |
The Preda Jail rescue team has continued to save
children from detention. Despite the new law (2006) police still
hold minors in cells but not as many as before. Change is slow
despite the new law forbidding child detention.
Local government has not provided homes for children picked up by
police. Three small boys 12, 13 and 14 years-old were rescued from
behind bars last week. Since they are below 15 they cannot be
charged but they are still detained in converted toilets in cage
like cells with bars.
The Preda rescue and legal
team travel to Metro Manila 3 times a week to monitor jails and save
all they can. An average 9 to 12 kids are rescued every month. They
have visited 35 Police stations and 8 detention centers in July. 18
kids were rescued and returned to their parents and 11 more brought
to Preda, that’s 29 rescued in July alone. In August, 40 Police
Stations, 6 youth detention centers were visited and 11 minors
released from the cells to PREDA while 6 kids were released and
returned to their Parents. Total released 17.
We found that Small girls are mixed in with boys
in some places. We rescued five of them already. We are searching
for their parents. Many more await rescue in dungeon like conditions
all over metro Manila and beyond. They should never be behind prison
bars, the detention and conditions are violations of Philippine law
(R. A. 9344) and Convention on rights of the child and International
law. Preda is fighting for these rights for the children with your
support and help. Politicians are proposing to change the law and
make kids criminally liable at 12 yrs old. PREDA is opposing this
and calls on all to protest this move.
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| Girls have a happy home after rescue. |
We are lobbying the
government to allow NGO’s to visit the children and monitor jail
conditions. Even clergy are banned unless they get a permit from the
highest authority. None are given unless the requesting party is non
critical and ready to turn a blind eye to abuse. This is to cover up
the bad inhumane conditions. The children's detention centers should
be open to all if there is nothing to hide. The detained children
should be able to talk freely to charity workers. The youth should
be released to proper homes like Preda. While detained by
government, however illegal it is, the children have a right to
daily educational activities, sports, out door exercise, counseling,
legal assistance, medical care, nutritious food, beds, showers,
freedom from threats, abuse, violence and fear. All these are denied
from them. Preda provides an open home by the sea where all the
needs of the rescued kids are provided for.
Abuses in police detention centers
Interview with 20 minors who were formerly detained in police
detention centers yielded the following findings:
Thirteen of the boys (68.42 percent) reported
being physically abused by the older inmates, who they call 'mayor'
and 'bastonero’, and by the jail guards themselves. Such abuse
includes hitting at the back of the thigh with a 2 x 2 piece of wood
or with a paddle while lying with their faces to the floor. Others
are hit while standing with their backs to the 'mayor.' This
physical abuse also includes forcing the boys to kneel on a chair so
that their soles are on the same level and hitting the soles with a
piece of wood or with the paddle.
Fifteen boys (78.95 percent) complained being
clobbered by the inmates.
Thirteen boys (68.42 percent) said upon entry to
the cell their hair was forcibly cut so that they become bald and
humiliated.
Twelve of the boys, or 63.15 percent, the food
given to them is not fit for human consumption ('parang pagkain ng
baboy'); another five said the food is not enough and another four
boys said they do not eat regularly (once or twice only in a day).
Ten boys, or 52.63 percent, complained of lack of
sleep because they were festered by mosquitoes, the cells were
overcrowded and too filthy. At night, some of the boys (five
percent) are assigned as 'marinarya' and were forced to stay awake
to look after the other inmates and their supplies.
Twelve boys, 63.15 percent, were forced to cling
to the metal bars like monkeys for hours the longest being over
night.
Fifteen boys (78.95 percent) said they spend days
inside the cells. Sixteen boys (84.21 percent) complained of being
deprived of physical exercise and sunlight. Three boys (15.79
percent) reported not being allowed to get out of the cell for more
than a month.
Twelve boys (63.15 percent) said the jail guards
extort or forcibly take money and/or supplies for the boys given to
them by relatives who visit them.
Eleven boys (57.89 percent) complained being
forced to massage the older inmates and the jail guards while nine
boys said they were forced to wash the clothes of older inmates/jail
guards.
Ten boys (52.63 percent) reported they were not
given medicines and medical attention when they complained of any
kind of illness.
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| Recovered from abuse the children go to
school and join the sports festival. |
Combating child prostitution and trafficking.
A young 15 year-old Filipino girl, Hazel, was trafficked abroad and
rescued in Malaysia. She is the latest arrival of trafficked and
commercially exploited children at Preda. She is now protected,
happy and safe and starts a new life free from fear and abuse.
Another child, Florence, was abducted when she was 14 and was
imprisoned with 6 others in an Angeles City warehouse where they
were sold to foreigners and abused, after months all escaped.
Florence got a ride to Manila was abused again by the driver and
wandered on the streets. Then was picked up by a trafficker, was
sold into domestic slavery. She escaped and found her way to safety
at the Preda Children's home. There are 45 girls recovering from
abuse and are doing well and most are attending school in the
community except the newest arrivals.
With the help
of supporters we are planning a new home for these children to be
built in a country area with stunning views and a place of peace and
quite where they can recover and start a new life. Preda has been
appointed a member of the anti-decency Board of Olongapo City to
help implement the anti-prostitution ordinance. We helped lobby for
that law.
Why we have to do it
Police, government social workers and village leaders seldom respond
to reports of child abuse, instead they negotiate a deal with the
abusers and the victims parents. The abused and suffering child is
ignored. This is especially true in cases of abuse by parents or
relatives. It’s a domestic matter they say. We are getting the
arrest warrants from the court against the abusers but the police
either can’t serve them or some take a payoff from the accused not
to do so.
The Preda Human rights team is
holding training and awareness building seminars in villages all
over the provinces to change this corrupt practice. The Preda Public
education team concentrates on seminars for teachers and children in
the schools to teach them their rights and how they can safely share
their problems and report abuse. We distribute thousands of small
purse size laminated info cards and stickers with a hot line number
they can contact for rescue and help. Soon we will have a comic book
with the same message.
Legal action is the most
difficult challenge of all. Uncaring prosecutors seem to be
favoring the abusers and do not take action on our formal complaint.
Months or even a year can pass without a decision by the
prosecutors’ action. If we get a case to court, endless
postponements and obstacles are thrown into the path of justice. A
case of a child abuser was dismissed because the prosecutor failed
to present any witness. This is a tactic to favor the accused, most
likely in return for a pay off. We write complaints to the Secretary
of Justice and undersecretaries but see little positive change.
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| Children of Summer camp 2008. There are
46 girls recovering at PREDA. |
Youth Activities and Training.
There were separate youth summer camps last June for girls and
boys. Previous to that they participated in a 3 day sport contest
and camped out in the sports complex. Everyone was delighted when
they won many prizes. Vocational training classes have begun in a
small way for the boys. They learn how to make soap, drive a vehicle
and do electric welding and carpentry.
They are
also learning to be actors. Their own drama group presents a play
based on their life in prison. It is very powerful and they love to
act. The group goes with the Preda education team to villages and
schools to give seminars and they perform the play there. The older
boys 15 of them are living at the new boys home on the Preda organic
farm called New Dawn opened in March this year. They are learning to
grow organic food. The home is a 35 minute drive from the Preda
Center. This will be the site of the New Boys home to be built soon.
We can rescue many more when it is available as many as sixty can
live in a dignity.
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| PREDA-AKBAY theater group at National
Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), Australia. |
The Preda-Akbay theater group had a
fantastic 6 week tour in Europe earlier this year advocating
children's rights and showing the realities and the terrible
exploitation and abuse suffered by victims of human trafficking and
modern slavery. After 5 weeks on the continent they had a great
welcome and audience in Poole, Winchester and a thousand people
audience in Southampton. They were supported by the Evangelical,
Anglican and Catholic churches in these towns. They traveled to
Ireland and had a great welcome in Ennis and Galway where they had a
happy time.
New projects
A child nutritional meal program delivers a quality meal and
healthy snacks to 50 impoverished and hungry children at a local
school in Olongapo city. Former street kids stay off the street
thanks to an Irish project “The Philippine Human Development Fund”,
The Preda Fair Trade has expanded its social
development assistance for the education of the children of mango
and pineapple workers and farmers in mango producing cooperatives in
the Davao area, Mindanao. Hundreds of children will now get better
quality schooling US$11,000 annually (€7500 or £6000). From the
mango project, good people who support PREDA Fair Trade are bringing
happiness and dignity to those who need it most.
Tree Planting
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| Tree planting with indigenous people &
kids at Preda |
Another important project of Preda Fair Trade
working with communities of indigenous people is the planting of a
mixed variety of trees including fruit trees to restore the
bio-diversity of the denuded mountains. This reduces the effect of
global warming. This rainy season, from July to September, a total
of 2,398 grafted mango saplings (at least one meter tall) have been
planted together with eight Indigenous People's communities
benefiting 282 families.
This is helping to
strengthen their claim to their ancestral lands. The onslaught of
mining companies grabbing ancestral land with the connivance of
corrupt government officials is damaging the natural habitat and
brings no benefits only loss to the rightful inhabitants. Preda is
helping them organize themselves to protect their rights and allow
only responsible mining that protects the environment. For the long
term survival of their villages and culture Preda is also helping
them to have the lands surveyed and titled.
DOCUMENTARIES FOR TV
There were four documentaries made by and television stations.
The latest being a investigative report on Incest that focused on
the human condition of a few of the children in the Preda's
children's home where 20 of the children are victims of the most
horrific form of abuse. Al Jazzera, a international news channel
based in the Middle East covered the story of the children in Jail,
boys and girls, and the work of Preda to release and care for them.
Our partners Cordaid and Tatort and Misereor made video reports on
the projects. The identities of the children were protected of
course. Numerous newspaper stories and radio interviews were given
in Europe last May and June during the tour of the Preda-Akbay youth
theater group as also in Sydney.
We thank you all
for your generous support and commitment to protect the children.
Father Shay Cullen, Alex Hermoso and the Preda team
Please send donations for PREDA to the Columban Fathers
Widney Manor road, Knowle
Solihull W. Midlands B93 9AB England
or to
St. Columbans, Dalgan Park, Navan. Ireland
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