Analyzing structures of Child Sexual Exploitation and the Online Rise.
SECTT, do you know what this stands for? Or OSAEC? SECTT stands for Sexual Exploitation of Children in Travel and Tourism, and OSAEC means Online Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children. Two various ways children are sexually exploited globally, so common, they have abbreviations, which will be used within this article. These exploitations are global, however, there is a country that is experiencing a heightened contrast, specifically of OSAEC, and it’s the Philippines. While the exploitation of children is multi-complex and these variations have vastly different approaches, the structures that exacerbate it within the Philippines are similar. Please note that within this article, offenders refer to facilitators and the consumer/exploiter.
credit : Darren Whiteside
This article will mention SECTT and OSAEC, to explore the structures, the concluding focus and complimentary article will be based on OSAEC, as a 2020 UNICEF study has declared the Philippines as the number one global production of child sex abuse materials. UNICEF has estimated 80% of the Filipino child population is vulnerable to online abuse (16). 80% might have you wondering, why can’t the government change this and why the Philippines? In this article, the structures that manifest the heightened abuse navigate the framework on the multi-complexity of the issue. This framework article will serve as an introduction to the complimentary article which will explore why generating policies within the multicomplex exploitation occurring within the online sphere remains so difficult.
The article will answer, why this 80% is occurring and why is it heightened within the Philippines, arguing why the issue of Child Sexual Abuse is unable to be solved within the Philippines as its roots are systemic, and its policies must revolve around dismantling the colonial and capitalist structures present.
Colonialism
The Philippines has a long in-depth history where they’ve suffered at the expense of other countries, two of the most significant colonization have occurred from Spain as the longest, and the most recent, the USA. The exploitation of young bodies is nothing new and the US is significant in the modern correlation of high sexual violence in the Philippines. Margold presents how the US had institutionalized prostitution for the military. This didn’t occur long ago, this was present until 1991, when the US vacated their biggest military installation, only 30 years ago, personally younger than my parents.
These institutions promoted ST diseases, rape, battery, abandoned children and a variety of dehumanization. Margold pertains that a single deployment, correlated to a surge of prostitution of over 20000 Filipinos. These women were dehumanized for American lust, while Americans describe it as the exchange for their military aid (Margold).
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It portrays how colonization furthered the sexualization of the Filipino body. Coloma demonstrates how pre-colonization, they dressed differently as the culture didn’t see the naked body as a sexualized item, it was the Americans who formatted it as a porno-tropic fantasy ( 252). As mentioned this was only 30 years ago, meaning those abused may be alive and contributing an intergenerational sexualized trauma. Adolescents normalize behaviors through parental or guardian depiction, meaning if the American soldiers violate a mother, the trauma can become manifested within the child and allow the exploitation of that child. This intergenerational trauma formed due to America’s exceptionalism. In the formation of these colonial spaces, the brothels, establish a hierarchy themselves. Jonsson navigates how brothels establishes gender and wealth status (413). After the Americans cement a space of hierarchy, they position themselves at the top to abuse power, through means such as Orientalism. This power balance within sexualized industries created through colonial roots aids by “exploitation, creating stereotypes of both victims and offenders that help to perpetuate” (Hawke, Raphael et al, 56).
The study also presents how the perpetrators of SECTT are male foreigners, such as military or businessmen. This paints the exploitative dynamic of gender and how the American colonial hierarchies are still prevalent within these issues (31).
Orientalism
However, it's rather not women vs men, as the study states that women are also offenders (Hawke, Raphael et al, 31); but as Prianti explains the colonial framework of masculine vs feminine. He states how the ethnic other is represented as the feminine, the weak, the exploitable and the west is masculine for superiority, basically orientalism (701). Dehumanizing is a large correlation to exploitation as many of SECTT and OSEAC clientele are situational and the imagery of colonized feminized bodies is less than consciously allows them to exploit as they don't see them as equal or human (701).
Orientalism is the representation of the ‘Orient’ / the East by the West, to uphold their ‘exceptionalism’, for example; if they showcase the Filipinos as sexually deviant and feminine, they by contrast are pure (Said). The sexual deviant correlates as mentioned to the need to be saved, and in the Philippines, “virginity seeking” within SECTT is specifically prevalent, showcasing how orientalism manifests (31).
Coloma establishes within the American Colonization, they would reveal their orientalist notions through photographs, presenting the brown women as sexual and available, requiring saving, producing ideas of desire and temptation through figurations. They produced images of these women in western ideals to contrast and formulate the complex of whore versus virgin ( 252). Painting the proximity to “whore” to being Filipino, not only sexualizing and fetishizing the bodies but specifically correlating it to being available for exploitation.
This complex of brown bodies is still used in media today, sometimes subtle to the ignorant eye, produced through films and racialized tropes to strongly suggestive anti-Asian propaganda by headlines.
SECTT, OSAEC & COVID
This answers our question of how does this exists and why is it specifically relevant in South East Asian countries; because Colonialist and Orientalist structures through militarization, media, education, etc. have produced the demand for fetishized bodies. Children are easily exploited to fill this demand due to their vulnerability age-wise. Regardless there’s the critical and most major factor of why specifically the Philippines and why children; the socio-economic culture that continues to fill the demand.
2020 was the year UNICEF announced that the Philippines became the majority producer of OSAEC material, the peak of the COVID pandemic, which ensured low tourists rates and economic compromises within Tourism. The SECTT Global Study defers how tourism is
credit : IJM.ORG
complex in its relation to countries' financial states as it creates expansion into isolated areas and can benefit through new financial opportunities, nonetheless, these opportunities are not equal, and can actually further the existing inequalities. They specifically mention those unable to take advantage of the tourist sector are usually those of the lowest income in the capital hierarchy and that's what propositions them within exploitative markets ( 22). The tourist destinations are usually centered towards more densely populated areas promoting migration of parents, which can leave children alone with relatives, the SECTT study states how migrant settings exacerbate vulnerabilities to sexual exploitation (22).
As previously mentioned that American Exceptionalism is engrained once again. Coloma specifically navigates the Filipino education that was established within American colonialism. The education prepared girls for household skills rather than actual employment; causing women who received education to lack employment skills or girls to drop out due to the insignificant education (256).
Brigette Sicat, 10 (on left), with her cousin Arianne, 11, and her grandmother Juana.
Credit : Dave Tacon
Understanding the country's colonial history with the exploitation of sexual abuse, and understanding how colonization, even within modern framing like tourism can create financial disparity; you can make the connection of how the SECTT market is so heightened in the Philippines. However what happens when that market and the inclusion of those even able to profit from the tourist sector, cannot due to COVID? The same study navigates how when these dips occur, the community policing decreases, exemplified through cases such as hotels removing SECTT warnings or pretending not to notice offenders (56).
The Global Study of SECTT released that “the production and distribution of child pornography has an estimated value of between $US3 billion and $US20 billion” (24).
OSAEC occurs within high poverty areas, where there is a lack of opportunities and as mentioned due to colonialism even if there were, people may not have the education to pursue. So what are their options, well what if a facilitator offered to video chat with their child, and provided all the essentials to do so, now offering income and the tools for it? The rationalization of this content comes to the Filipino cultural importance of family, they view it as a way to fund their child as they aren't “ actually being touched.” The next article will discuss the current policies and with this framework of the structural components set within this discourse, it can be understood why regulations to prevent OSAEC have remained inefficient.
Conclusion
To conclude, the colonization of the United States largely manifested a global representation of the Philippines as a fetishized people through militarization, education and media, allowing demand and dehumanization of its people to promote exploitation. The post-colonial effect on the Filipino people frameworks sex work, specifically child exploitation, as one of the main financial sources for poverty-stricken communities, required within global capitalism. It presents the problem of child sexual exploitation much larger than just the idea that it’s just pedophiles but structural components that fuel its existence. Within the current world state, the article has argued how these political and economic structural components of Capitalism and Colonialism directly correlate in an interconnected relationship that heightens OSEAC in the Philippines.
Works Cited
Coloma, Roland S. "White Gazes, Brown Breasts: Imperial Feminism and Disciplining
Desires and Bodies in Colonial Encounters." Paedagogica Historica, vol. 48, no. 2,
2012, pp. 243-261.
Hawke, Raphael et al. “ Offenders on the Move”, GLOBAL STUDY ON SEXUAL
EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN IN TRAVEL AND TOURISM, 2016.
Jonsson, Hjorleifur. "Good Attachment in the Asian Highlands: Questioning Notions of
"Loose Women" and "Autonomous Communities". Critical Asian Studies, vol. 52, no. 3,
2020, pp. 403-428.
Margold, Jane A. “Women, Violence, and the Reinvolvement of the U.S. Military in the
Philippines”. Human Rights Dialogue 2.10 Violence Against Women, Carnegie Council
for Ethics in International Affairs, 2003.
Prianti, Desi D. "The Identity Politics of Masculinity as a Colonial Legacy." Journal of
Intercultural Studies, vol. 40, no. 6, 2019, pp. 700-719.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Print.
Tarroja, Lapeña et al. National Study on Online Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children in
the Philippines, UNICEF Philippines, 2020.
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