The Survivors

'They call us survivors because we were rescued, but I don't feel rescued at all,' says Charmae. Together with her sister Cherry, she is abused for years by a network of human traffickers in Iligan, in the Philippines. The family sells dozens of children for online abuse to clients in the United States, Asia and Europe. Belgian investigative journalist Peter Dupont tracks down the network and informs the police. These heavily armed raid the house where the girls are staying. 'I felt I was being arrested,' Charmae recounts 'I should feel safe, but I didn't. We all got traumatised.'

Journalist and documentary filmmaker Roel Nollet goes to the Philippines with Peter. They dive into the nightlife in search of human traffickers and follow young women there as they work their way out of sexual slavery. Samantha is used for online shows from the age of eight, but she is also raped several times. 'My self-image was completely destroyed,' she says, 'because I didn't understand what they were doing to me.' Samantha's rapist is a Dane. 'I met him at the market,' says Samantha's aunt. 'He was looking for young girls, and I then arranged it.' Roel and Peter get her in front of the lens and what she says is hallucinatory. Besides Samantha, she exploited at least 12 other girls. Yet she was never arrested.

After corona, the problem of online sexual abuse and exploitation has only increased. As many as 1 in 5 children in the Philippines face it. At any time of day, 750 000 people worldwide are searching for images of child abuse. Yet international interest in the problem is declining. 'They just don't have the right method,' says Father Shay, an Irish priest who has been fighting sexual abuse in the Philippines for years. He has already been nominated several times for a Nobel Prize. 'We ourselves may not look for the images, but the police just don't have the right skills. There are thousands of trafficking victims, but hardly any convictions. Telecom operators could also block all those images, but they don't.'

Together with his team, Peter got dozens of perpetrators behind bars - including from Belgium, but now he refuses to cooperate in rescue operations. For a long time, he believed that removing the girls from their situation was enough to “save” them. The opposite turned out to be true. Children are taken away from a devastating situation, but also lose their families and their social network. Due to the high dependence on the adults who abuse them, the chances of relapse are very high. They often end up making the transition into physical prostitution and a cycle ensues where the girls later in life involve their younger sisters, nieces and daughters in the sex business.

In 80 per cent of cases, the immediate family is involved, Bart van Oost knows. Together with his wife Jolene, the Nederbelg runs a shelter for victims of online abuse. It is the largest centre of its kind in the archipelago. 'The problem in the Philippines is poverty,' he says. 'But the punishments are leaden. How can you send these girls back?' Because of the extreme poverty in the Philippines, and the trauma the women have suffered, the threat of new abuse is never far away.

To be able to help the girls, Peter sets up an organisation himself: the Underground Child Foundation. 'Without the necessary guidance, they end up back in the situation they were rescued from. I am sure there are also a lot of girls in prison who either didn't deserve any punishment at all or a smaller punishment,' he believes. 'Many of those girls have a past full of abuse behind them. And so you only solve the problem if you solve poverty.'

Photo: © The Redhorse Collective