
Filipino children abandoned to internet sex abusers during coronavirus
- Online sexual exploitation of children in the Philippines has soared since the outbreak began, while lockdown has robbed them of safe havens
- Shelters are operating at only half capacity, but staff say there is an unofficial policy of keeping their doors closed
Online child sex abuse cases triple in the Philippines, as lockdown fuels trafficking
And so the 16-year-old is abandoned to his abusers: unaware of the increasingly frantic dispute over his safety taking place via email and video call across the city, or that anyone is looking out for him at all.

But despite the need for comprehensive child protection services during the pandemic, many children’s shelters and safe houses either run or supported by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) have been operating at half capacity since the outbreak of the virus, with limited space for girls and boys in urgent need of somewhere to stay.
Newcomers are expected to spend 14 days in quarantine to reduce the risk of spreading infection: meaning that accommodating an extra child is no longer a matter of squeezing a mattress into a dormitory and making do. Accepting at-risk children shouldn’t be impossible, shelter staff members say, but it has become unofficial policy to keep their doors closed.
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It is not unusual for cases of online sexual exploitation to be time consuming and complicated, involving months of undercover investigation and the painstaking gathering of evidence. But once a victim has been identified, agents move quickly to get them to safety. In seven years of work with the NBI, Chief Francisco says she has never had to delay rescuing a child for more than a couple of days. She’s known the location of this 16-year-old for more than two weeks.
But after initially receiving a response informing the NBI that their shelters in the country’s National Capital Region were full, the DSWD stopped responding to the bureau’s requests for help, Chief Francisco says.
The DSWD’s NCR office declined to comment.

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The shortage of appropriate accommodation for vulnerable young people and trafficking survivors in the Philippines has been becoming increasingly obvious in recent years. According to the United States’ Trafficking In Persons Reports, the DSWD has identified 7,884 possible trafficking victims in the past five years – 15 per cent of whom were male – yet there are only 44 government-run residential care facilities across the country – a number that hasn’t increased since 2016.
Now, as Covid-19 places both girls and boys of all ages at increased risk of abuse, many are questioning the DSWD’s commitment to resolving the issue.
Catherine Scerri is Deputy Director of Bahay Tuluyan, a non-profit organisation running four private – but government-accredited – shelters across the country, and accommodating over 70 vulnerable children and young people aged between three and 22 years old. The shelters have formally been in lockdown since the middle of March, which has meant not taking in any new residents, but she says that in emergency cases when children are in danger, the organisation wouldn’t turn them away.
As far as she’s aware, nobody at the DSWD has been in touch about case referrals – a lack of communication from the department that she says has been consistent since the start of the outbreak. Staff at three other private shelters in the National Capital Region said the same.

In June, Scerri and the other staff members at Bahay Tuluyan relocated all of the children living in their Manila shelter to a larger space in Laguna, a region to the south east of the capital. The original shelter has stood empty in the city centre ever since, designed to accommodate up to two dozen young people in need. Staffing the shelter would require energy and funding from the Philippine government, Scerri says, but if there was a real will to rescue children from abusive situations, it could definitely be done. “I don’t believe that [Covid-19] is an excuse to put everything on hold,” she says. “These are some of the most vulnerable kids and you can’t just bypass them because you’re being paranoid.”
Chief Francisco still isn’t sure what will happen to the 16 year old boy, although his situation weighs on her mind every day. But she is certain of one thing: there are many more girls and boys being exploited across the Philippines, and it’s the government’s responsibility to find them somewhere safe to stay.
This article is a collaboration between the South China Morning Post and The Fuller Project, the award-winning global non-profit newsroom dedicated to groundbreaking reporting on women. Corinne Redfern is a correspondent for The Fuller Project based in Southeast Asia
