THAT children have rights is extremely difficult to assert in a culture where their first line protectors their mothers themselves have little status. Even highly educated and wealthy women are the wives of so and so, and must be married to command any respect.
Cory Aquino came into power as the widow of a hero on a huge wave of popular feeling. But she never achieved what was expected of her. "Her limitations," a sympathetic American scholar writes "her acceptance of family, class and social stratification and her passivity, in the face of open threats to her values and her person, clearly reminded Filipinos of what has kept them from achieving the economic and political progress they see in the Asia around them." The passivity has also impeded social progress, as in the struggle for the rights of women and children. Imelda Marcos notwithstanding, the present system treats women as inferior people.
In a dingy room, lined with mattresses, in an unmarked house on a Manila back street, a battered woman hides from her husband. Melinda Angelo Cabiling, once a career woman with an excellent job, is in the shelter with her youngest child. The other four are at home, in her mother's house, with the husband who beat her black and blue, and emotionally abused her "he poked his big finger in my face all the time, and the things that I bought, he destroyed, and the things I cooked, he threw away".
Melinda's family keeps the husband. He gets an allowance of $200 a month, and the use of the house. His violence is known when she heard that the youngest child was sick, and went to get him to take him to hospital, she was accompanied by two policemen. But when she could take no more, Melinda had to leave, not the husband. There are no barring orders in the Philippine system. A recent judgment decided that restraining orders were not appropriate in domestic situations. Nor is marital rape recognised. The woman must accept her home situation, or run away.
This women's shelter is always full. It is so poor that unlike the places which are run by clerics, which can tap into worldwide church funds, it has no transport, even though it badly needs something to serve as an ambulance when women arrive with injuries. In fact, its fund raisers have not been able to give it anything since last May.
But it was the very first crisis centre in the Philippines, and it is "anchored on the principles of collective decision making and feminist management". It is not a charity, and it is not run by a man as powerful, if altogether more benign, than a male abuser. It was started by anti Marcos dissidents who had been raped as a form of torture of political detainees by the military. Then it expanded to take on the taboo of violence within the family.
There are other private initiatives which help women. A group of Congressmen's wives, for instance, contribute money to a shelter which provides luxuries such as dental care and training in "lifetime skills". The women's crisis centre has asked for some space in the wives place, so as to offer, instead of the model of victims receiving charity, their radical perspective "that women need to understand, support and help each other analyse their situation, redeem their self worth and claim their civil, legal and human rights".
BUT SO FAR, in spite of the thriving women's organisation, Gabriela, the exploitation of women and children is largely treated as a natural phenomenon, which can be relived or punished, but not changed.
Cory Aquino and Imelda Marcos went to school, like all the other top girls, in St Scholastica's Convent in Manila. It is an oasis of order and cleanliness in the filthy, swollen, city, and extraordinarily progressive in its curriculum. Yet the energies of its alumni seem to be neutered by the wider society when they enter it as wives and mothers. And women's and pro woman efforts seem to dissolve in the general hysteria of public life.
The vice principal of St Scholastica's, Sister Mary John Mananzan, is also chairperson of Gabriela, the National Coalition of Women's Organisations. There are 50,000 women, in 200 organisations, affiliated to Gabriela and it runs day care centres and health care centres such as would be run by a government elsewhere. Yet in a recent survey which ranked the priorities of the politicians in Congress, women's and children's issues came last.
Sister Mary John points out, "It is necessary to put the woman's movement in the context of poverty. Two per cent of the people own 75 per cent of the wealth. And when you belong to the top two per cent you have no under standing, because you are always on top."
That is the first thing to bear in mind, when considering the strong local resistance to efforts, such as Father Shay Cullen's, to oppose sex tourism in general and sex tourism involving children in particular. His city, Olongapo, was a fishing village until the Americans opened their huge base. Poverty drew the women in to service the sailors. Domestic values disintegrated, at the same time as the women harboured dreams of being properly married to the American sailors they went with. The neglected children of those bar girls continue the cycle of vulnerability.
And perhaps even more important Sister Mary John begins her analysis with it is the post colonial mind set which, after Spanish, American and Japanese occupations, still inhibits Filipino pride. Three years ago, when the last of the US Marines left Subic Bay and the American flag came down, President Ramos noted "Since 1571 there has been no day that foreign troops were not based on our soil". Filipino children will be protected from foreign men only when they seem as valuable and important as foreign men.
IN THE court rooms in Olongapo, where The Irish Times accompanied Father Cullen to a hearing in a paedophile case, the defendant in the first case of the morning was a local 16 year old who had gone berserk and entered a hospital and shot eight people dead. He was dangerous, but the warders had forced him to wear the T shirt that says "Inmate, Olongapo City Jail". The paedophile, however, is a foreigner. So he doesn't expect local rules to apply to him. Neither do the warders expect it. He doesn't want to wear the T shirt. So he does not. It is a tiny but a telling point.
The Thailand based End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism Group estimates the number of prostitutes in Asia aged 17 and under at one million. Seen from below from the perspective of the child of a penniless Filipino family, say there is no choice at all. Seen from above, by the wealth wielding Japanese and Caucasian men who fly in and out, the choice not to gratify themselves is ignored. An Australian newspaper last year taped hundreds of phone calls in an investigation into an Australian paedophile ring. They have a typically insouciant air.
Man: And then my other stroke of luck was when I was at the hotel in Manila just before I was leaving and I went up on the roof and he said, can I come in? Well, every day he visited me and he is growing into a lovely boy, a lovely boy. So your mother was very lucky.
Man: How old's he?
Man: He's about 15.
Man: Good screw?
Man: Yes.
Man: All screwing?
Man: Well, he did at the end. It all started off with him just laying there and not doing anything but by about the third day he was very active and by the time I got back for the second visit . .
Man: Ooooh (laughs)
Man: He was ...
Man: Prancing Catherine wheels.
Man: Yeah, yeah. So I would buy him a pair of pants or a pair of shorts or a T shirt or something and he was thrilled to bits.
Man: Oh, that's nice mate.