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The USA, UK, Australia, and Canada lead the world in this sickening trade
1 in 100 Children Sexually Exploited in Livestreams
September 7, 2023, MANILA, PHILIPPINES – In 2022 alone, nearly half a million Filipino children, or roughly 1 in 100 children, were trafficked to produce child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) for profit according to estimates from the pioneering Scale of Harm prevalence study by International Justice Mission (IJM) and the University of Nottingham Rights Lab that was co-designed with survivors of this crime. With abuse largely driven by demand from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Europe, survivors and IJM are calling on leaders across governments, tech companies and financial institutions to protect children and prevent this growing problem from escalating further.
The Scale of Harm study – the first of its kind — measured the prevalence of the trafficking of children in the Philippines to produce CSEM for profit, especially livestreamed child sexual abuse. In this crime, a local trafficker sexually abuses a child in person while an offender, typically from a Western country, watches the abuse happen in real time via video call. The sex offenders pay Philippine-based traffickers as little as $35 (CAD) to participate in online sexual abuse of children. Although it is a small amount for the offender, it is sufficient within the Philippines to drive an ongoing demand for CSEM. The Philippines has become a global hot spot for financially motivated development of livestreamed child sexual exploitation.
Top countries for CSEM perverts
A 2023 report by the Philippine Anti-Money Laundering Council found that Canadian-originating payments triggered the fourth largest number of suspicious financial transaction reports related to online child sexual abuse and exploitation in the Philippines.
The report states: Since 2015, the top source of Online Sexual Abuse and Exploited Children (OSAEC) related remittances in terms of volume and Philippine Peso (PhP) value is the United States. Trailing behind a significant margin are the countries of the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Notably, Australia and Canada have consistently ranked third and fourth since 2015.
“As a survivor who knows the pain of online sexual exploitation, the [Scale of Harm] study’s findings underscore the urgency for stronger collective action to protect innocent children. Co-designed by survivors, this study is informed by lived experiences. With recommendations involving government, tech and financial companies, civil society organizations and individuals in our communities, this study marks a crucial step forward,” said Ruby (not her real name), a survivor leader and one of the survivor consultants who shaped the study.
John Tanagho, Executive Director of IJM’s Center to End Online Sexual Exploitation of Children said, “It is crystal clear that digital spaces and internet-connected, camera-enabled devices pose growing opportunities for offenders to sexually abuse children with ease, anonymity and impunity. What we’ve seen through Scale of Harm is the sickening scale of abuse. Child protection urgently demands increased tech sector detection, reporting, a duty of care, safety by design, transparency and accountability, along with improved law enforcement responses – in both demand and supply-side countries.
Passage of online safety legislation in the EU, U.K., U.S. and Canada is truly urgent because this growing societal cancer has – for many years now – been outstripping our global capacity to respond and is constantly evolving as technology changes.
To my great shame, Canada has not passed legislation of any kind to protect
sexually abused children since its current government took power in 2015.
To stem the growth of these violations of children’s rights, it will take coordinated global action among legislators, criminal justice systems, tech and financial sectors, civil society and survivor leaders. The challenges are complex, but child protection solutions – in the justice, tech and financial sectors – already exist. It is time for key stakeholders to prioritize their broad deployment.”
IJM undertook the Scale of Harm study over the course of two years, in partnership with the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab in the UK, survivor consultants and 24 world-class experts, researchers and field practitioners from organizations across the technology, financial, government and child protection sectors.
There is much more on this study at IJM > Survivor focus groups helped
B.C. marks 10th anniversary of Orange Shirt Day
with new statutory holiday
British Columbians asked to mark holiday by learning about legacy
of residential school system
WOLF DEPNER, Sep. 29, 2023 1:30 p.m.NEWS
Public exhibitions, educational sessions, communal walks and survivor testimonies will help British Columbians reflect on the legacies of Canada’s residential school system tomorrow on the 10th anniversary of Orange Shirt Day.
Events stretch across B.C. Sept. 30, from Taylor in the Peace River Region to Cranbrook in the Kootenays, from the Okanagan to Fraser Valley to Downtown Vancouver, which will host multiple events, to western Vancouver Island.
Phyllis Webstad, a Northern Secwepemc (Shuswap) from the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation (Canoe Creek Indian Band) (Oh, thank you) started Orange Shirt Day in 2013. Webstad had received an orange shirt from her grandmother, only to see it ripped away after arriving at St. Joseph’s Indian Industrial School in Williams Lake.
The anniversary not only marks National Day for Truth and Reconciliation across Canada, but also the inauguration of a new statutory holiday in British Columbia after the provincial legislature had passed legislation in early March.
B.C. joins Prince Edward Island as the second Canadian province to formally commemorate the holiday with a paid-off holiday. The Northwest Territories, Nunavut and the Yukon also recognize Sept. 30 as a statutory holiday with the actual day falling on Monday, Oct. 2. Sept. 30 became a federally recognized holiday in 2021 following a recommendation from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Does that mean that British Columbians get paid twice for the double holiday?
It defined the residential school system which existed for almost 150 years as a “systematic, government-sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples” as part of a “cultural genocide.”
Spread across more than 150 locations, the system forced more than 150,000 Indigenous children to attend sub-standard, over-crowded schools, where they frequently experienced harsh treatment, with many becoming victims of emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
While the search for the exact number of children who died in the system continues, current research pegs the number at more than 4,100 with other estimates pegging the number closer to 6,000.
I was familiarized with this atrocity, Residential Schools, back in the 1980s. I was horrified! The schools helped me to understand the despair in so many Indigenous communities that exist to this day that manifests itself in alcoholism, sexual abuse, child suicides, drugs - they are all connected.
Recent discoveries of multiple bodies buried on Residential School grounds, however, has been overplayed by Canada's far-left media. First of all, the numbers are very realistic for normal deaths from disease and accidents for the number of students and the length of time they lived there. Remember, The Spanish Flu roared across Canada in the middle of the period of the Schools' existence.
Second, so far, digging up the graves that were first spotted by ground-penetrating radar, has so far, not produced any remains.
Yes, of course there were many deaths, many of which were completely unnecessary. Deaths from disease, physical abuse, kids who ran away in winter and died from exposure, suicides. It was definately a horror story for kids and their families and a real mark of shame upon Canada. But it doesn't need exaggeration by Canada's irresponsible media.
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