Ugly Australians are helping to drive Filipino online child sex trade

Of all the faces we present to the world, they are the ugliest Australians and our national shame.

They are the paedophiles who prey on the poor children of the Philippines and our other South East Asia neighbours and despite years of warnings and publicity, Australians are now major contributors to the dark and disturbing demand for online sexual abuse that burgeoned during the pandemic lockdowns.

Girls are seen inside a playroom at the PREDA children protection centre, in Olongapo, Zambales, The Philippines.Credit: Photo: Daniel Ceng

As the Herald’s investigation, Children for Sale, by reporters Clare Sibthorpe and Daniel Ceng reveals, an international study by the Washington-based International Justice Mission found that, after the US and the UK, Australia has the third-highest ranking for reported remote sexual offences in the Philippines. Australia has also consistently ranked the third-highest source of transactions, by both volume and value, related to online sexual abuse and exploitation of children.

Manila-based Australian Federal Police child protection officer, Detective Sergeant Daisie Beckensall said the traditional face-to-face “sex tourism” was still prominent, but it now sat alongside the growing problem of pay-per-view live-streamed abuse. “During the COVID pandemic, worldwide, we saw an increase of people online and an increase in live-distance child abuse … COVID made it so much easier for offenders in Australia to contact the children, and we’re seeing that continue,” she said.

The Philippines’ child for sale trade to foreigners started around US navy and air force bases but received a considerable boost when word of mouth from crew working on the 1979 film Apocalyse Now turned Pagsanjan, south of Manila, into a paradise for paedophiles. AIDS only slightly inhibited child sex tourism trade and over the years Australians occasionally were deported or arrested on arrival back home. Only one, Peter Scully, of Melbourne, was already sentenced to life in prison in the Philippines for human trafficking and rape when he received an extra 129-year sentence for sexually abusing dozens of children as young as 18 months in 2022.

Church, judicial, welfare groups and media coverage regularly exposed the underbelly of child sex tourism, but Philippines governments did little to halt the trade. They only bothered to raise the age of consent from 12 to 16 in 2019.

But last year, the Philippine government did agree to strengthen law enforcement tools and promote the use of videotaped evidence to prevent re-traumatising victims. Enforcing aspects of the law, however, had proved challenging. Australian and Filipino authorities have stressed the challenges in curbing this insidious trade, while human rights advocates have called for the online industry to follow new standards introduced by the Australian eSafety Commissioner to protect children from online sexual abuse.

That may be a fraught exercise. Australia’s cyber safety regulator dropped a legal challenge against Elon Musk-owned X over removal of a Sydney stabbing video. Such insouciance suggests some tech giants and payment platforms do not like being pushed around. Yet, they, like the world, have known for years that these innocent and impoverished children are preyed upon but still continue to enable paedophiles to abuse them by facilitating transmission of child abuse images. Like pimps, they are living off the earnings of a vile sex trade.

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