Crimes Against Children on the Internet Must Be Punished
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(Source: PXhere/cc0)
Readers have responded positively to a previous article of mine, expressing relief and thanks that an alleged child rapist priest Karole Reward Ubina Israel, 29, of Solana, Cagayan was arrested and hopefully will be charged with child sex abuse in court. The child victim was 15 years old when she was allegedly first abused by him.
According to the testimony of the child victim, this priest in Cagayan videotaped the sex abuse several times and threatened to post them on social media to instill fear, intimidate, and control the child.
Father Karole Israel admits the sexual acts, but he claims it was consensual. The victim denies that. The videos used to blackmail her make that a useless defense. Republic Act 11930 otherwise known as the Anti-Online Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Act says in Section 5: “Effect of Consent of the Victim. — The consent of the victim is not material or relevant and shall not be available as a defense in the prosecution of the unlawful acts prohibited under this Act.”
He is one of the very few priests ever charged with child abuse in a Philippine court, and not one of them has been convicted or sent to prison. The priests enjoy total impunity, it seems. That is an invitation for them to continue abusing children.
Such is the power of the Church as an institution. It is able to protect the child abusers and allow the victims to suffer and intimidate government officials in allowing out-of-court settlements. Over a dozen complaints of child sexual abuse against Filipino priests have been filed with prosecutors in recent years, but all have been settled privately or dismissed by the prosecutors.
There are seven priests serving today in various dioceses who fled child abuse allegations or convictions in the United States and sought refuge here. As Cardinal Antonio Tagle said on two television interviews, including HardTalk on the BBC, the Church considers child abuse an internal matter and deals with it privately. Pope Francis disagrees. Suspects should be turned over to the civil authorities as crimes may have been committed.
Defenders of children applaud the revelation of the truth about this case, painful as it is to the victim and the community. It is only the truth that will alert and warn people that child abusers can be anybody and abuse anytime, anywhere. Everyone must be protective of children.
Priests and bishops like everyone else can be sinners and must be held responsible like everyone else for crimes against children. There must be no impunity, deference or special protection for them. The law applies equally to all, and when the evidence is compelling and convincing, the punishment must follow the law.
Posting child abuse images to blackmail or intimidate victims is one of the worst negative uses of social media as Father Karole Israel allegedly did to his victims. Internet-based platforms such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, TikTok are used to post vile, degrading, and abusive images of children being sexually abused.
The Internet is an instant worldwide communications technology that transmits to social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. messages and images through telecommunications corporations that provide Internet connections to Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The Internet can be used by anyone who has a smart phone and can pay for one hour or a 24-hour connection and transmit images of live sex shows of child abuse.
These ISPs are the pathways by which images and videos of child sexual abuse images and live-streamed videos of child abuse are shared to depraved pedophile criminals around the world, who order and pay for them. This is a terrible crime forbidden by RA 11930 passed in July 2022.
The challenge for the Internet Service Providers and their telecom corporation owners is to provide the most powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven software to detect, capture, and block such evil images and videos. This is mandated by law RA11930.
“Priests and bishops like everyone else can be sinners and must be held responsible like everyone else for crimes against children.”
It may be impossible to prevent them from being made and posted, as there are so many, but not impossible to intercept and capture, block, and then report them to the authorities so the abusers can be identified and brought to justice.
Social media platforms under Philippine law are called “participative network platform provider” or a “social media intermediary”, and have been used to fix elections, brainwash the public, and transmit evil content, such as child rape videos and images and live-streaming of child abuse. They are mandated by Philippine law (RA11930) to identify and block and remove such content from reaching the public. They do this in Germany, Australia, France and Turkey, the US and other EU countries lest they be held criminally liable for illegal content on their platforms.
This work has been out-sourced to contractors that hire call center workers to train as “content moderators” in the Philippines and elsewhere. These Filipinos have to view a quota of child abuse images and other hateful and barbaric posts on the platforms and judge to keep or delete them. They apparently do not report them to the authorities as the law says they should.
Content moderators must first report child abuse images to the Philippine Internet Crimes against Children Center, which was established in 2019 to investigate sources of abusive material and hold them accountable. It is already totally overwhelmed by the task, how much more if they receive the content found by the content moderation call-centers? What is needed is to install artificial Intelligence-driven detection software.
Parents, citizens, Church, and state are challenged to behave in a morally correct way and respect and follow the Gospel mandate. Jesus of Nazareth says children are the most important in the world above all others, even bishops. He also says a millstone be tied around the neck of abusers and they be brought to justice (Matthew 18:1-7). That is what we must all strive to do; but above all, we must help the victims to heal, recover, and be empowered.
Report abuse confidentially to shaycullen@gmail.com or +63 9228768621.
First published in www.preda.org
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