13 cybersex victims rescued in Philippines;
one only 4 years old
Photo courtesy of International Justice Mission (IJM)
THE National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Anti-Human Trafficking Division rescued 13 cybersex victims, including minors, in separate operations in Tacloban City and Culaba town, Biliran province, February 23.
The victims were rescued when NBI agents conducted an entrapment operation against three suspects identified only as "Jessa," her male live-in partner, and her cousin.
The suspects were caught in the act of offering to a foreigner Jessa’s two younger siblings (ages 15 and 17) to do sex acts via live streaming in exchange for money.
The agents recovered a laptop computer and a cell phone from Jessa's house in Tacloban City.
On the same day, NBI operatives armed with a search warrant swooped at a house in the sleepy town of Culaba, Biliran, about 150 kilometers away from Tacloban City, where Monica was allegedly operating a cybersex den.
Seven children, ages 4 to 17, and two adults, ages 20 and 24, were rescued inside the house and from the neighborhood.
Authorities retrieved desktop computer with accessories, an iPad tablet and a smartphone inside the house.
The case of British national Alain Charlwood-Collings, (see story immediately below) a known convicted sex offender in the United Kingdom who once lived in the Philippines, has led the National Bureau of Investigation Anti-Human Trafficking Division to rescue the 13 victims.
If convicted, the suspects will face a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment under Republic Act (RA) 10364 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act. They will also face criminal charges under RA 9775 or the Anti-Child Pornography Act in relation to RA 10175 the Cybercrime Prevention Act and other related violations.
IJM assisted the police in these raids and is currently looking after those who were victims giving them safe places to stay and counselling.
Alain Collings paid women he knew in Manila to abuse children and babies while he recorded them at his home in Devon
By Richard Booth
The jailing of a man in Devon who arranged for toddlers to be abused while he watched online has led to a number of children being rescued in the Philippines.
Three people have been arrested and a number of children have been safeguarded as part of a Devon and Cornwall Police-led operation into convicted Devon paedophile Alain Charlwood-Collings.
Alain Collings paid women he knew in Manila to abuse children and babies while he recorded them at his home near Tiverton
The judge at Exeter Crown Court said the behaviour was "abhorrent" and "some of the worst I have ever come across".
The abused girls were aged between two and fifteen years.
As part of Operation Aero, two woman and a man were arrested on Friday 23 February 2018 in Biliran and Culaba and will face justice in the Philippines over allegations of child abuse being carried out and live streamed through Skype.
Charlwood-Collings, aged 39, from Tiverton in Devon, was sentenced at Exeter Crown Court to 18 years in prison on 12 May 2017.
Throughout the trial, the court heard how he arranged for children to be abused in the Philippines while he watched online.
Children being rescued
Over £33,000 was transferred over to recipients in the Philippines by Charlwood-Collings to pay for the sexual abuse of up to 46 victims while he watched on Skype and recorded them at his home address in Devon.
Investigating Officer from Devon and Cornwall Police Detective Sergeant Darren White said: “Our team were monitoring websites that his IP address was accessing and downloading images from, which resulted in the discovery of over 100 hours of recorded abuse in 107 individual files. Amongst the 2,000 images, pictures also showed Charlwood-Collings abusing a child.
“Anatomical analysis of individual’s hands depicted in abuse footage and images led to the conviction of Charlwood-Collings.
“Following his conviction, assistance was requested from the National Crime Agency (NCA) in the United Kingdom to facilitate the transfer of investigative material from Operation Aero to authorities in the Philippines to assist in the apprehension of outstanding suspects and the rescuing of children.”
The abused girls were aged between two and fifteen years
As a result of this warrant, the National Bureau of Investigations Anti-Human Trafficking Division (NBI-AHTRAD) arrested three suspected traffickers which resulted in thirteen victims, including nine children aged between four and 17 and four adult victims, aged 19 and 24, being rescued and taken into care by local authorities for safeguarding.
The number of victims is expected to rise in the coming weeks as the NBI & social workers work in the local community to find the others.
The operational activity comes after DS White gave evidence in the Philippines which secured the arrest warrants.
DS White continued: “This has been a protracted and difficult investigation. Our team are a group of specially trained officers in this criminal area who will leave no stone unturned in an effort to bring offenders to justice for these horrendous crimes.
“It is through extensive police collaboration both nationally and internationally that we have successfully been able to carry out the arrests today and also safeguard 13 children. This could not have been achieved without the work carried out between the NBI, the NCA and authorities in the Philippines.
"Paedophiles are using increasingly sophisticated methods in order to carry on their offending and we, together with other law enforcement agencies, are also using increasingly sophisticated methods to catch them."
Detective Inspector Andrea Kingdon of Devon and Cornwall Police’s Paedophile Online Investigation Team said: “Child abuse doesn’t stop at our shores and we were determined to find the other offenders involved in this despicable crime.
“Through tenacious police work, thorough evidential analysis and an effective multi-agency collaboration, we have tracked these suspects down and carried out arrests.
“We have received both great assistance and resource from the NBI and the NCA and our message is clear; there are no limits as to how far and wide our investigations will go to bring offenders to justice and safeguard the vulnerable and exploited.”
BBC radio star being investigated over allegation of historical sex offence involving a child
The presenter, who cannot be named, is accused of committing the crime in the late 1990s when the alleged victim was under the age of 16
By Mike Hamilton and Mike Sullivan
A BBC radio host is being investigated over an allegation of a historical sex offence involving a child. They cannot be named.
The alleged victim, under 16 at the time, came forward last year in the south of England.
The accuser has been interviewed by officers from Operation Winter Key. The unit is thought to have identified several potential victims in cases examined by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
It is not known if the radio host has been interviewed at this stage or if he is even aware of the allegations. But if charges are brought he could face a crown court trial and a potential jail sentence.
Scotland Yard is reportedly investigating the case but it is not known if officers have spoken to the accused yet
Scotland Yard would not comment on the case, but sources have confirmed the broadcaster is under investigation by Winter Key officers.
The squad is linked to Operation Yewtree — the specialist unit set up to probe high-profile personalities accused of sex crimes in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.
The fresh case is a further blow to the BBC, which employed Savile while he committed dozens of sex crimes against vulnerable children.
It is not known if the BBC is aware of the current investigation over one of its stars. Other BBC broadcasters such as Rolf Harris and Stuart Hall have also been jailed for sex offences involving children.
In April 2013 Hall, now 88, admitted indecently assaulting 13 girls aged nine to 17 between 1967 and 1986. He got 15 months and then a second 30-month term after being found guilty of two other charges a year later.
Harris, 87, was convicted in 2014 of 12 counts of indecent assault — one of which was later quashed — and sentenced to almost six years.
Britain's 'worst ever' child grooming scandal exposed:
Hundreds of young girls raped, beaten, sold for sex and some even KILLED
Authorities failed to act over 40 years - despite repeated warnings to social workers - with up to 1,000 girls, some as young as 11, abused in Telford
By Nick Sommerlad Geraldine McKelvie
UP to 1,000 children could have suffered in Britain’s worst known abuse scandal - where sex gangs targeted girls as young as 11.
The rape hell of vulnerable young girls in one town - Telford - went on for a shocking 40 years, the Sunday Mirror can reveal.
As many as 1,000 children could have suffered at the merciless hands of perverts and torturers in Telford since the 1980s.
Girls as young as 11 have been lured from their families to be drugged, beaten and raped in an epidemic that, say victims, is still ongoing.
THREE people were murdered and two others died in tragedies linked to the scandal.
Despite similar high-profile cases in Rochdale and Rotherham, authorities in Telford repeatedly failed to stamp out a network of abusers.
The Mirror’s 18-month investigation reveals abuse on unprecedented levels. We found:
Social workers knew of abuse in the 1990s but police took a decade to launch a probe.
Council staff viewed abused and trafficked children as “prostitutes” instead of victims, according to previously unseen files.
Authorities failed to keep details of abusers from Asian communities for fear of “racism”.
Police failed to investigate one recent case five times until an MP intervened.
One victim said cops tried to stop her finding out why her abusers had not been prosecuted because they feared she would talk to us.
The scale of the abuse uncovered in Telford – population 170,000 – is feared to be the most brutal and long-running of all.
The Rotherham toll was put at 1,500 – but that was in a community of 260,000.
Tonight Telford’s Tory MP Lucy Allan demanded a public inquiry and said our findings were “extremely serious and shocking”.
She said: “There must now be an independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Telford so that our community can have absolute confidence in the authorities.”
Specialist child abuse solicitor Dino Nocivelli, of Bolt Burdon Kemp, said: “These children were treated as sexual commodities by men who inflicted despicable acts of abuse. The survivors deserve an inquiry. They need to know how abuse took place for so long and why so many perpetrators have never been brought to justice.”
Our investigators have spoken to 12 victims, most of them unconnected. They accused more than 70 abusers and claimed that violent rapes were still taking place just months ago.
One 14-year-old, groomed and abused after her phone number was sold to paedophiles, said: “I hated what was happening and my abusers made my skin crawl but I was told that if I said a word to anyone they’d come for my little sisters and tell my mum I was a prostitute."
“Night after night, I was forced to have sex with multiple men in disgusting takeaways and filthy houses. I must have been getting the morning after pill from a local clinic at least twice a week but no one asked any questions."
“I fell pregnant twice and had two abortions. Hours after my second termination, I was taken by one of my abusers to be raped by more men. The worst moment came just after my 16th birthday when I was drugged and gang raped by five men. Days later, the ringleader turned up at my house and told me he’d burn it down if I breathed a word of what had happened.”
Documents which will be passed to the Home Office reveals authorities knew of the horrors a decade before investigating – and shows how they tried to hamper our probe.
We presented our findings to Professor Liz Kelly, from the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University. She helped estimate the number of victims based on figures gathered by our investigators.
The Mirror has been at the forefront of exposing the child sex abuse scandals
(Image: Sunday Mirror)
Prof Kelly said: “We are acting as if we didn’t know about child sex abuse rings. We have an unfortunate capacity to choose to forget.”
Sheila Taylor, of the NWG Network, worked on the Rotherham Inquiry. She said the true scale of the Telford problem might never be known because many victims were unlikely to come forward.
She said: “There is probably a whole cohort of young people that are not identified. We are good at identifying white girls but are less able to identify young men, young people from ethnic minority backgrounds, from travelling communities, or with learning or other disabilities.”
A police investigation called Operation Chalice identified more than 100 potential victims abused between 2007 and 2009.
Cops also said there could be as many as 200 perpetrators – but just nine were caged and the case was then closed. Today our investigation reveals the authorities were told of the abuse epidemic more than a decade before Chalice.
Our probe – backed by documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act – found two predatory paedophiles began targeting girls from a local children’s home in 1981.
One of the abusers earned thousands a night for years trafficking girls around the country for sex with hundreds of men, according to one victim. In another case, a 14-year-old was groomed by an 18-year-old Asian man in 1985. After she had his baby he passed her to friends to have sex with and allegedly rape her.
The Mirror has repeatedly asked questions over the response by authorities (Image: Sunday Mirror)
The girl, now 47, says she reported her abuse to the council and school but does not believe action was taken. She says her doctor said she was mentally ill and should take medication.
The vast majority of those targeted were young white girls but teenagers from the Asian community also fell victim.
One report commissioned by local Telford and Wrekin Council in 2013 admitted: “From the late 1990s professionals had concerns about the nature of some of the child sexual abuse cases presented to them.” But it blamed “understanding and learning at that time” and “existing procedures”.
Two separate investigations were launched at the same time as Operation Chalice after two victims named dozens more abusers.
The victim in one case – groomed at 13, sold for sex and gang raped – said she pulled out of the investigation because she “didn’t feel she was being emotionally supported” by police.
Another victim claims officers discouraged her from pursuing her request for evidence after she told them she was speaking to the Mirror.
Catholic Church fails to confront tragedy of
'epic proportions'
By Ben Schneiders, Royce Millar & Chris Vedelago
The Catholic Church has failed to fully accept the horrific impact of child sexual abuse and its own role in a tragedy of “epic proportions”, a member of the Royal Commission has said.
In a surprisingly frank speech, Robert Fitzgerald - one of the six commissioners that oversaw the recently completed, five year inquiry - has slammed the church’s approach to abuse survivors, and its failure to tackle practices that contributed to the scourge of abuse and the secrecy around it.
Speaking at a Catholic Social Services Conference in Melbourne late last month, Mr Fitzgerald highlighted the ‘’disease’’ of ‘clericalism’ - the belief that the church’s male-only clergy are mystical beings, accountable to the Pope and to God, not to civil society or church laity.
Robert Fitzgerald said clericalism was a ''disease''.
Photo: Kylie Pickett
Mr Fitzgerald, a practising Catholic, described the leadership of the church as "arrogant’’:
"A church that placed its own reputation above the interests of those victims and survivors and did so knowingly and willingly in a way that would cause further harm to those victims.’’
The final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, delivered last December, made 400 recommendations to secular and religious institutions.
But already the Catholic church has rejected any changes to celibacy or to the seal of confession.
Archbishop Denis Hart said even if a priest admitted to acts of child abuse during confession, the seal was ‘’inviolable’’. Instead he would encourage the abuser to admit their crimes outside confession.
Archbishop Denis Hart has said the seal of confession cannot be broken.
Photo: Pat Scala
Mr Fitzgerald, in his speech, described a church divided between those that accepted the evidence of abuse and the need for reform - including a greater role for women - and those conservative Catholics who were "yet to fully understand what has just occurred’’.
He said the church was the only institution he’d ever known to have the answers to such major problems "but refuse in fact to look to those answers, look to those solutions’’.
The scale of abuse recorded by the royal commission across all institutions, secular and religious, was immense, affecting countless, tens of thousands of abused children, most of whom were now adults.
But such abuse was particularly prevalent in Catholic institutions. Nearly 62 per cent of all people who notified the royal commission of abuse in a religious setting were abused in a Catholic institution.
‘’For the church itself it is a greater tragedy; it is a tragedy of epic proportions. Those who believed that this would be something small … have (been) proven to be wrong,’’ Mr Fitzgerald said.
‘’The church must now accept the evidence … the evidence is the church has been found wanting.’’
Mr Fitzgerald said a ‘’confluence of factors’’ had contributed to high levels of abuse in the church, including celibacy, inappropriate teaching of sexual and human development, a lack of women’s voices and a lack of understanding about governance.
Not to mention a remarkable and un-Biblical tolerance of homosexuality in the priesthood.
A recent six-month investigation by The Age, found the church misled the royal commission by grossly under-valuing its property portfolio while claiming that increased payments to abuse survivors would likely require cuts to its social programs.
Figures extrapolated from a huge volume of Victorian council valuation data obtained by The Age found the church has more than $30 billion in property and other assets, Australia-wide.
Religious institutions, including the Catholic Church, are exempt from reporting financial information to government regulators.
Mr Fitzgerald said the church needed to decide if it was ‘’going to be a church of the gospel or a church of the Roman empire"?
‘’A church that will govern others, or with us’’.
Truth Justice and Healing Council chief executive Francis Sullivan this week conceded the church had made serious mistakes. The council was set up in response to the royal commission to represent the interests of the church.
Speaking at a Senate hearing into a national redress scheme for survivors of abuse - in both secular and religious institutions - he said the church was not denying the extent of the abuse.
‘’There is no question that history is riddled with the movement of perpetrators, with the concealment of their activities, with the blatant secrecy and with that culture in the church. Who's arguing that? Not me.’'
Mr Sullivan said the national scheme needed to be based on ‘’procedural fairness’’ and questioned the proposal for reasonable likelihood to be the test of abuse, not the balance of probabilities.
On Friday, the Victorian and NSW governments said they would sign up to the national redress scheme that will have compensation payments capped at $150,000, not the $200,000 recommended by the royal commission.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Friday, flanked by premiers Gladys Berejiklian and Daniel Andrews to announce both states had joined the redress scheme.
Major churches are being asked to opt into the scheme.
And even if they finally redress most of the victims financially, they still have a dreadful, spiritual deficit, not just for survivors, but for everyone in the priesthood of the Catholic Church. Barely even willing to admit their sins, they seem utterly incapable of repenting of them and getting right with God. If they think they are right with God because of their 'clericalism', they are completely delusional.
Garda’s dysfunction is harming
child sexual abuse victims
State bodies’ slow progress in implementing child protection
reforms is deeply disturbing
Carol Coulter
‘State institutions have been slow to put in place the necessary policies and structures to protect victims of child abuse.’ File photograph: Getty Images/iStockphoto
After almost 20 years of commissions of inquiry and of extensive media coverage, it cannot be said by now that there is little awareness among the public and among policymakers of child sexual abuse. Yet State institutions have been slow to put in place the necessary policies and structures to ensure that victims of child sexual abuse have access to timely support and protection and that perpetrators are brought to justice.
Conviction rate just 4%!!!!
The Report of the Garda SÃochána Inspectorate, Responding to Child Sexual Abuse, published late last month, provides a depressing litany of delays, lack of professionalism and lack of co-ordination with other State agencies that cause additional trauma to victims and contribute to a low conviction rate of 4 per cent for child sexual abuse.
The report points out that 69 per cent of allegations of child sexual abuse are made against a family member or a person otherwise known to the victim, such as a neighbour or family acquaintance. Nine per cent are made against a person in authority, and only 5 per cent against a stranger.
The fact that a child victim generally knows the perpetrator of abuse, who may be closely related to him or her, immediately raises the issue of the current safety (or future protection) of that child, and this involves the Child and Family Agency, known as Tusla.
It is obvious, therefore, that there should be close co-operation between Tusla and An Garda SÃochána in the investigation of the allegation and in securing the safety of the child.
The inspectorate revealed, however, that such co-operation is incoherent and patchy at best, despite the fact that joint working was recommended by the inspectorate in 2012.
The report also highlighted major shortcomings in the approach of the Garda SÃochána to investigating child sex abuse, including the use of untrained gardaà to interview child victims and serious variations between different areas in the urgency with which cases were dealt.
Where there is a serious allegation of sexual abuse against a family member living with the child, or where there is a suspicion that the child’s parents have been aware of the abuse or otherwise unwilling or unable to protect him or her, Tusla will usually seek an interim care order in the District Court, normally a precursor to a full care order until the child is 18. As child sexual abuse is a criminal offence, there should be a simultaneous investigation by gardaà in preparation for a criminal prosecution.
In most jurisdictions these investigations take place in a co-ordinated way, usually with joint interviewing of the children by police and social workers.
That is not the case in Ireland, and the Child Care Law Reporting Project, which reports on child protection proceedings, has seen a number of cases where delays in the Garda investigation, or a Garda refusal to share information, have held up the care order proceedings.
In other cases, delays in Tusla obtaining assessments of children for child sexual abuse contributed greatly to delays in the cases coming to a conclusion.
Qualified interviewers
According to the inspectorate report, there are only 16 social workers in Tusla trained as specialist interviewers of child victims of sexual abuse, though it recommended in 2012 that only specialist interviewers should be involved in interviewing child victims.
Such training of social workers did take place for a time in the Garda College, but was discontinued and not replaced by anything else, though further courses are planned.
This means that there are few social workers available to interview children jointly with gardaÃ, a measure recommended back in 2012.
It also means that in whole swathes of the country a child who reveals they were sexually abused has no access to a trained interviewer, who can assess their therapeutic needs and what they need for future protection.
In addition, the few specialist child sex abuse units that exist, usually run by the HSE, have a specific catchment area and do not cover the whole country.
All this can cause significant delays in care proceedings. For example, in one case the Child Care Law Reporting Project reported on in a rural town outside the catchment areas for child sex abuse units, two children alleged extremely serious sexual abuse against their parents and other family members.
The children were interviewed by social workers who had not received specialist training. One of the children later retracted his allegations. They had yet to be interviewed by gardaÃ.
A forensic psychologist from another jurisdiction was then called to give evidence on the credibility of the disclosures, and he told the court that children of this age could not possibly have given the accounts they did unless they had experienced the abuse.
In another such case, also in a rural town, there was a delay of almost a year in getting the children interviewed by a specialist child sex abuse unit as they were outside its catchment area. These children were also not interviewed by gardaà at this stage. As the inspectorate report points out, best practice requires that children be interviewed as soon as possible after a disclosure, normally within days, if reliable evidence is to be obtained.
In a case in Dublin, where two children's alleged abuse by a relative and where there are specialist services and Garda specialist interviewers, it was 10 months before the children were seen by a specialist unit, 18 months before one of them was interviewed by gardaà and 22 months before the second child was interviewed. This case was also marked by a succession of legal disputes about the admissibility of evidence obtained by gardaÃ.
It is only fair to acknowledge that the Garda SÃochána and Tusla are now discussing a new protocol to enable joint working, though it is still at draft stage, and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs has recently been examining best practice internationally in dealing with child sexual abuse.
However, it is disturbing that so little has been done since such measures were first recommended by the Garda Inspectorate five years ago, and that organisational structures and institutional habits have been allowed to hamper change.
Indeed! The Garda are decades behind most police forces in the western world and they should be ashamed.
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