NBI arrests mom selling own children for cybersex
EXCERPTS from a chat exchange between the suspect and a foreign client. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines–“They do not want me. My clients want young girls so I asked my daughter to do the show,” a 37-year-old mother told the Inquirer after NBI agents arrested her in a raid on a suspected cybersex den in Taguig City on Wednesday.
The agents rescued the mother’s daughter and son, aged 10 and 7, during the raid on the family’s house in Taguig City, said Czar Eric Nuqui, head of the National Bureau of Investigation’s human trafficking division.
Nuqui said the raid was carried out with assistance from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency under the Department of Homeland Security, and the International Justice Mission.
Nuqui said the 10-year-old girl and the mother were inside a room in the two-story house that was converted into a “studio” and the child was already performing when the agents broke in and arrested the mother.
“As a procedure, we swoop in before the girl can start, but as we were going in, the video showed later, the girl had already started to perform and we caught her and her mother in the act,” Nuqui explained to the Inquirer.
Bills to pay
Nuqui’s group is the same NBI team that discovered and busted a child cybersex racket in Cebu City on May 26 last year.
In an interview at NBI headquarters, the mother admitted to the crime, saying she needed the money to pay bills.
The mother said she learned cybersex operation while she was employed as a housemaid to someone who ran a cybersex den.
She identified her former employer as “Ate Beth.”
“It used to be just me, but when the clients started asking for young girls I told my daughter to do it,” she said.
The mother also said that aside from her daughter, other girls as old as her child were also involved and most of them did not have to be forced to perform.
“They volunteered,” she said.
She said that as a reward after a performance, she would bring her daughter to a popular fast food and give her extra allowance for school, while the other girls received P500 as their share in the payments from her foreign pedophile clients.
Nuqui said the NBI discovered the mother’s racket because “she was openly recruiting” girls in her neighborhood.
Money transfer receipts
“She had no qualms about it,” Nuqui said.
Money courier receipts recovered by the NBI agents from the mother’s house showed the mother received cash transfers almost daily from various parts of the United States and from Singapore. The transfers were as high as $200, with $30 as the lowest.
Among the senders, whose names appeared on the transfer receipts, were Philip Smith, John Head, Robert Warnes, Fernando Solis, William Federes and Sevido Gavio.
The mother said she met her clients through an online dating group called Cupid, under the group “Adult.”
She said most of her regular clients liked young girls.
She said the girls posed in the nude or sometimes were asked to perform using “toys.”
Entrapment
Nuqui said a US Homeland Security agent posed as a client, chatting with the mother online and asking to be shown the girls on video.
The agent arranged for the raid and went with the raiding team, Nuqui said.
Nuqui said the mother would be charged with violating Republic Act No. 9208, or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003; Republic Act No. 9775, or the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009; Republic Act No. 7610, or the Special Protection of Children Against Abuse, Exploitation and Discrimination Act, and grave scandal in relation to the Electronic Commerce Act.
The mother faced life imprisonment and a fine of P2 million to P5 million, Nuqui said.
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