PREDA NEWSLETTER August 1999
Summer Camps and Sports Fest
The big event for all the youth and children in the
PREDA recovery and development programs was the summer camp. It was held
at a beach with good facilities, beautiful weather and plenty of sports,
games and group educational sessions. One hundred participants attended
the three-day experience.
One answer to the problem of youth people falling into drugs and vice is
to help them to organize themselves. The PREDA youth development
programme has been training youth leaders and organizers throughout the
city and province. They in turn are getting their friends and
schoolmates to join the youth service organization through which they
spread the message about children's rights, warn about the dangers of
child labor, drug abuse and AIDS.
A group of twenty-five children and youth from the PREDA programmes
joined a provincial sports meeting and came back with medals and prizes
galore and were as proud as punch with their achievements.
From among the Filipino-American youth in our human development
programme, brothers Jason and Jacob Snow won the championships for chess
and table tennis respectively.
A special two-day summer camp was held in a forested resort for the
young children of the PREDA recovery programme for victims of sexual
abuse. Participating youngsters were twelve years old and below but
mostly they are 6 to 8 years old. The program included forest walks,
spiritual formation sessions, bible reflections, games galore and lots
of fun.
While so many of the children are doing good in school, overcoming the
effects of the abuse there are new cases coming in every week or so. A
16-year old victim of rape, Jennifer, was admitted to the PREDA
children's home six weeks ago. She gave birth at a local hospital a
month later. Her abuser was her own father. She was so traumatized that
she could not care for the baby and it was given to a special child care
center of infants. Slowly, Jennifer is recovering .
Legal Victory
Those of you who follow the trials and tribulations of PREDA in fighting
off the retaliation attacks of suspected paedophiles and their
supporters will be glad to hear that one of our tormentors and black
propagandists, Hartmut "Harry" Joost, a German national has been
formally charged in court with obstruction of justice. It has taken us
one year to bring this to court. Along the way, it seems that certain
payments facilitated the dismissal of the case and we had to work hard
to have it reinstated.
To help his convicted paedophile friend Australian national Victor
Fitzgerald (jailed 8 to 17 years), whom we brought to justice for
abusing children on his yacht, Joost lured away a young 14-year old
witness, who at the time was recovering from abuse at PREDA childrens
home, had her adopted and got her to sign a document saying that PREDA
forced her to lie during the trial of Fitzgerald.
Not only that, but Mr. Joost has a charmed life when it comes to certain
prosecutors in Olongapo. Joost was charged before the court with
falsification of papers and thievery in 1983 by his employer. However,
he miraculously persuaded the city prosecutor to withdraw the charges.
The judge did not agree and now the provincial prosecutor, a good and
honest prosecutor who never takes bribes, has been able to reinstate the
charges against Joost. If found guilty, he will be jailed and later
deported after serving sentence.
PREDA filed defamation and libel charges against Joost and his group of
paedophiles for putting defamatory statements against us on their
internet web page. The evidence of this is huge but a less than
trustworthy prosecutor ruled that their may be no case because we
ourselves could have broken into the webpage and put the defamatory
material there ourselves. We are appealing this ruling before the State
prosecutor. But you can understand how difficult it is to get justice
under this system. Not only for the many victims of child abuse but even
to protect ourselves from the paedophiles attacks.
Victory was finally achieved in the case against the abuser of Anna, one
of our children. After a year of court hearings, he was convicted last
25 May and sentenced to 7 years in prison.
We want to thank all of you who sent letters of appeal to the Secretary
of Justice in Manila to do something about the little 7-year-old girl
abused by her half-brother and the house boy. The adopting father did
nothing to help her. Your letters have resulted in action from the
Secretary of justice. He ordered that charges of child neglect be filed
against the father for allowing the abuse to go on unhindered.
The Fair trade activities were many during the past two months. Our
General manager. Programme directors Merle Hermoso and her husband Alex,
co-founders of PREDA having been here since the start - 25 years ago,
went to a Fair Trade conference in Italy. There they introduced a new
product from PREDA - Ink cartridges - for the computer printers. Here at
PREDA we are working with a local partner, remanufacturing these empty
cartridges so they are like new. The older girls who have finished their
therapy and are now going to school are finding part-time work in the
recycling of the cartridges. Now they have extra money to help their
sisters go to school and stay away form the brothels.
Our two volunteers from North Wales, Jamie Lee and Cristopher Jones,
completed eleven months at PREDA helping in every way they could. They
left for home last week and are carrying on the work there selling the
PREDA Ink cartridges.
Saving the Throwaway Children of the Philippines
Eleven months ago, when volunteers Chris Jones and Jamie Lee came to
Olongapo City, Philippines to help out at the PREDA Center for
children's rights they were not expecting to work as undercover
detectives finding the 'throwaway children' enslaved in the city's
brothels, bars and clubs.
Not only were they able to meet and talk with these exploited children,
they also gathered vital information and evidence, and helped Father
Shay Cullen, an Irish Columban missionary and his social workers to
rescue the children and give them a new start in life and bring their
abusers to justice.
PREDA - 'People's Recovery, Empowerment and Development Assistance
Foundation Inc.' -- was established by Father Shay Cullen and his
co-workers in 1974 as a project to save street children and drug
dependents from the death squads who shot them as a warning to others.
It provided sanctuary, therapy, reconciliation and education as a way
out of poverty and the misery of life on the streets.
Soon the PREDA Center was helping the sexually abused and prostituted
children and campaigning world wide against the exploitation of children
in the sex industry of South East Asia.
To help reduce poverty, support the children, pay legal costs and run
the campaigns, the PREDA Center does not wholly depend on donations.
There are self-help employment projects. By supporting Fair Trade
livelihood projects in the towns and villages, hundreds are employed and
the products are exported and families stay together and prosper. The
families make handicrafts, the cooperatives produce dried fruits and
there are remanufactured ink cartridges for computer printers that save
the environment , save money and provide jobs with just earnings. What
Chris and Jamie found too were that hundreds of children, victims of
poverty, who were enslaved in the child prostitution industry that
attracts sex tourists from many countries including the United Kingdom.
They set out to do something about it.
Jenny, a 14-year old runaway from poverty and family troubles, was
working in the Cartunes, a sleazy sex bar, financed by a British
national. The two sleuths, Chris and Jamie, posing as casual tourists
made contact with Jenny in the bar where she was being sold to customers
for sexual abuse.
They were able to persuade her that the PREDA Children's Home could help
her escape from the child prostitution business, give her legal
protection and send her to school. She took the offer and agreed to quit
there and then. She left the bar, met the PREDA social workers waiting
nearby and the rescue was on. The bar manager suspected that Jamie and
Chris were not ordinary customers. As soon as they got up to leave and
were heading towards the getaway car the manager's guards came running
to bring her back.
Chris and Jamie with Fr. Shay and the rescue team jumped aboard their
vehicle and were speeding away when the guards took up the pursuit in
their car. Child prostitution is illegal in the Philippines and if Jenny
were to testify, the bar would be out of business and operators could
face long jail terms. It was a risky and tense operation but there was
no other way to save these children.
Twisting through the narrow streets lined with neon lit sex clubs and
bars, they lost their pursuers and made their escape. Today Jenny is
happily recovering at the PREDA Center for abused children and going to
school having been reconciled with her parents.
Breaking a child trafficking ring
Then there was the case of Madam Lydia, a child trafficker and pimp that
offered the intrepid detectives children for prostitution. By playing
along with her evil suggestions they let her talk about how she could
supply children as young as fifteen. With a hidden tape recorder they
gathered the evidence proving that this was trafficking children for
prostitution.
They agreed to meet at her house in the suburbs the following day and
bring their wealthy customers who would pay for the children. This time,
together with Father Shay, dressed in baseball cap and dark glasses, and
Robert his undercover assistant they posed as shady representatives of
sex tourists who wanted to buy the children.
They brought along a video camera and taped Madam Lydia offering minors
for sale. It was agreed that before the deal would be made the children
had to be present. The trap was set and so the next day when the PREDA
undercover team retuned there were two young girls who madam Lydia
introduced as 14 and 15 years old. The children too admitted their ages.
She offered them for prostitution and her associate took the marked
money. At that moment the trap was sprung.
On a pre-arranged signal the police suddenly arrived and arrested the
child trafficker. Her associate ran into the back of the house locked
the door of the bathroom, broke a window and escaped. The children were
taken into the protection of a child care center. The notorious
trafficker now faces trial and years behind bars.
Marketing remanufactured Ink Cartridges
Besides many other operations that found the throwaway children Chris
and Jamie became involved in helping to set up a marketing programme for
the sale of the remanufactured ink cartridges. The proceeds of sales
will help the children go to school and even provide summer jobs for the
older girls. They too can help their sisters and brothers study and stay
safe from the pimps and traffickers who would enslave them in brothels
and bars of Olongapo city. Now back in Britain, Jamie and Chris are
carrying on the work marketing these quality ink cartridges of the PREDA
Children's center and promoting the campaign for Children's rights.
Every Best Wish
Fr. Shay Cullen, MSSC
