AN IRISH priest who works with disturbed children in the Philippines has said that the majority of children he encounters in child prostitution have first been sexually abused in the home.
The most common offender, according to Fr Shay Cullen, was a "live in partner" of the children's mother, who moved in after the natural father abandoned the family.
He was speaking yesterday at a fringe meeting of the congress in Stockholm's Adolf Fredrik church hall. Fr Cuklen, who has worked in Olongapo city, the former site of a US military base, since 1969, described the work of his Preda foundation. This tries to rehabilitate children who have been victims of drugs, violence or sexual abuse.
Fr Cullen played a major role in the apprehension of an elderly Australian child abuser Victor Keith Fitzgerald, who was jailed under a new Philippine law earlier this year.
"We found him aboard a yacht with three small children," Fr Cullen said. "We had been watching him for some time."
Laws introduced by the Philippines in 1994 as a response to its escalating problem of child prostitution sound draconian, in that it is an offence for any adult simply to be alone with a child to whom he or she is not - repeat not - related. And this, of course, does not deal with the primary problem of incestuous abuse.
Fr Cullen defends the approach.
"It is like the offence of loitering with intent. In the old days the child had to have been abused, you had to find them (the abusers) in the act. It was favouring abuse in every way," he said.
Now the laws, which apply everywhere, in a car, on a boat, are driving the problem more than ever off the streets. But this is not to say it is yet diminishing.
Fr Cullen said his organisation which is on the Philippine government's Task Force on Child Prostitution, has uncovered a syndicate which is taking young girls to Japan and Britain.
They pass them through Brunei, where there is some sort of a British military force," he said.
The military legacy in Olongapo city is thousands of children born to local prostitutes made pregnant by US servicemen.
There were as many as 20,000 women working as prostitutes during the base's existence, he said, and their children, because of their more Caucasian features, are a prime target of those trafficking in children for prostitution and pornography.
"This is because of racism," Fr Cullen said. "These children conform more to the international ideal of beauty."
He said after his address that the current international focus on exploited children would make a difference. "Governments are watching each other now."