Cyber-crime destroys children’s lives

by Fr Shay Cullen

It is the most disturbing crime that you will ever read about when young children, only six years old and above, are taken to a room in a rich suburb or a squatters shack in a slum and made to perform sex acts before a camera linked to the Internet.

This is massive criminal business growing by the day. Despite the very slow Internet connections throughout the Philippines in general, the cyber-sex operators and the sex dens that show child pornography seem to have the fastest broadband speed of all. Inside deals with Internet service providers (ISP’s) might account for this but one thing is certain- it is wrecking havoc on the lives of thousands of small children.

During these sessions young boys and girls are coerced or lured into doing sex acts for foreigners who view them from abroad for payment. They are traumatized and disturbed for life.

Full article on Preda website here.

The SPOTLIGHT on crimes against children
by Fr Shay Cullen

There is time when the truth has to be revealed, when the secrecy of crimes can no longer be contained, denied and when the guilty must be held to account. History shows that secrecy and cover up keeps that day of reckoning at bay but one day the truth will come out.

That is the story of Spotlight, a film about the Spotlight team of investigative reporters at the Boston Globe newspaper that exposed the sex crimes against children by priests and the church cover up of the crimes.

It is an award winning film that will shine in the Oscars this year for the pure strength of its powerful and honest story-telling of a most painful subject in the Catholic Church.

This truth-telling film has won the prestigious and coveted Catholic SIGNIS Jury Prize of the Venice Film Festival.

Full article here.

The Road to Justice and Equality

by Fr Shay Cullen

Last week Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, Archbishop of Manila, raised eyebrows in Cebu during the International Eucharistic Congress when he spoke directly about the greed and corruption of Philippine politicians who are so much a part of the throwaway society of greed, corruption, materialism and waste.

“Politicians, will you throw away people’s taxes for your parties and shopping, or guard them as gifts for social service?” He said politicians when elected consider the public treasures as their own piggy bank and plunder it wherever they can without being caught.

In recent years several senators and others have been charged with plunder and theft of billions of pesos.

The young cardinal’s statement against corruption and thievery is just touching the painful wound of poverty and low wages suffered by 99 percent of the one hundred million Filipinos. The painful truth is that the Philippines is just part of the great global inequality that is driving more money into the bank accounts of the super-rich and ripping it off the hard working poor and middle class people and driving hundreds of thousand into demeaning poverty in slums and working brothels for the sexual satisfaction of the rich.

Full post here.

Dives and Lazarus, Leandro Bassano, c.1595

Private Collection [Web Gallery of Art]

Sylvia, an Abused Child Rescued and Healed

by Fr Shay Cullen

St Francis of Paola Resuscitating a Dead Child, Sebastiano Ricci, 1733

San Rocco, Venice [Web Gallery of Art]

[21 January 2016]

What Filipino Officials Found in Child Detention Centers

Reflections 

by Fr Shay Cullen

[15 January 2016] “Houses of Horror” is how one visitor described the centers where children are held illegally behind bars or in cages.

Senior Philippine officials responsible for the protection of Filipino children at risk made spot inspections of four child detention centers around Metro Manila this week on the orders of Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman following reports in the foreign media. The officials representing various government agencies were shocked and greatly disturbed when they saw the terrible conditions of the jailed children behind bars in these detention centers run by local government units. The national government has limited jurisdiction over them.

In one center, children are held in these conditions from three months to over one year and nine months. The cells for boys are overcrowded. In another detention center, there is only one social worker to handle the 43 cases. In three centers, the children were in prison cells behind bars. In one jail, a child looked as young as 6 years old.

All the children in another center were barefooted walking on wet floors. One little girl had swollen feet. The children interviewed told the team that they just do cleaning and food preparation all day. Some of the children were mentally challenged and in need of special care. A mentally challenged old lady was in with the children in one center.

The complete text of Fr Cullen’s column is here.

Street Children Locked Up

Columban Fr John A. Keenan (in photos above and below) wrote about one center in Manila in the March-April 2012 issue of MISYONonllne.com. You will find his article here.

THE JOY OF CHILD FREEDOM 

by Fr Shay Cullen

St James, Andrea del Sarto, 1528-29

Galleria delgi Uffizi, Florence [Web Gallery of Art]

[8 January 2016] This was a very happy Christmas and New Year celebration for the 70 children, boys and girls IN THE PREDA children’s homes in Zambales. They are recovering and finding a new life.

The boys are aged from nine to 15 and have been rescued from terrible sub-human jail conditions.  The girls have been rescued from rapists and sex bars; some are victims of human trafficking and sex slavery. Other are rescued from abusive parents.

The greatest moment for the children is to be to be rescued from cages and prison cells or saved from brothels and rapists.  To be rescued and to be brought to a place that is in a beautiful location in the countryside surrounded by nature and to feel safe from abusers is what the children tell is their greatest joy .

The first thing a child will experience in the Preda children’s home is freedom, respect and a feeling that they are wanted and belong to a family.

It is the community spirit of affirmation, support, encouragement, respect and dignity that the children love. They are taught their rights and human dignity and receive therapy and values formation and education.

They soon learn that the abuse done to them is a heinous crime, that it is  always wrong for the adult  and the children are not to blame. Usually the adult will claim that the child seduced them and the child gave consent.

This cannot be upheld anywhere.

The case of Marianne, is a case of abduction and human trafficking of a deft mute child who had no way to cry out and defend herself or even to make a complaint. A woman using sign language offered her snacks and food in a 7/11 store in the next town. There she was introduced to two men and they brought her to a hotel and raped her continually for almost 24 hours.

Her sister was looking for her and traced her to the hotel and called the police.The rapists  were  arrested and Marianne was rescued. But her two sisters took her home but blamed her and shaved off her hair as a punishment as if she had been responsible for her own abduction.

Full post here. 

The Philippine struggle for power 2016

by Fr Shay Cullen

Soliciting Votes, William Hogarth, 1754

Sir John Soane’s Museum, London [Web Gallery of Art]

[2 January 2016] The New Year has begun and the road ahead will be filled with the challenges of Elections in several countries; in Ireland, the United States and the Philippines among many. And what are elections in a democratic system of governance but the selection and election of the leaders who are appointed by the citizens to take command of a nation .
They will be given the power and authority to craft its laws, raise it’s wealth to be spent for the common good and to direct its course and the welfare and safety of the people they represent.
In the selection process the personal and moral values and way of life of the candidates are scrutinized and examined. Because it will be these values or the lack of them that will determine if that person who is elected president or leader has the qualification and the ability to lead the nation along a path of peace and prosperity.
It will be his or her vision, moral courage and determination to do what is true, right and just that will greatly effect the lives and well being of every man, woman and child in the nation.
The task of the leader is to listen to the needs of the people and to respond with concern and the resources, human and material at his or her disposal to improve the lot of the people especially the poor and the excluded. That is among other things the way it should be.
In the Philippines the population is more than a hundred million and the wealth of the nation is in the hands of about 1% or less of the population.

Full post here.

Madonna of the Magnificat, Sandro Botticelli, 1480-81

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence [Web Gallery of Art]

The Astounding Child from Nazareth

For millions of Filipinos, Christmas is a celebration of the family. They come together from around the world, they delight in the togetherness and sharing of respect. They honor the aged, they bless the children, they feed the hungry. They fill the churches with light, song and festival and bring the children to be baptized and they have joyful celebrations.  They recall the story of that astounding child who became the greatest person to influence the history of mankind for the good.

Christmas is a time to celebrate the greatest values of human kind brought to us thousands of years ago by the Child from Nazareth. He survived the poverty and the dangers and grew up at the knee of his mother and the workbench of his father and was taught the Song of Mary, that most challenging of songs.

He learned well from his parents who had suffered poverty, rejection and who fled the massacre of the children by Herod and they crossed the border into Egypt as impoverished refugees. They knew the merciless anger of the fanatical tyrant king Herod and seen the intolerable injustice of his regime.

The child heard the stories and listened when his mother sang that song where the mighty power of love would scatter the proud elite and rubbish all their evil plots and plans, where the mighty elite would be put down from their positions of power and the poor would be lifted up.

The teenage youth from Nazareth learned how such love can change the world and fill the hungry with good things and how in justice the selfish rich are sent away empty to reflect, repent and ask forgiveness for their greed, arrogance and abuse. He grew to be that powerful personality who was and is a hero of the oppressed and became  a threat to their rulers. He was a great teacher, a servant leader and the example of self-sacrificing love where no greater love can be found but in giving one’s life for others. It was a loving message of compassion and care, helping and sacrifice.

But justice, equality and compassion for the poor, the refugees and the homeless had no place in the society into which he was born. The culture and religion of his time had become fanatical and cruel- stoning the women, crucifying the dissidents, beheading the reformers. He taught justice, compassion, mercy, and love of neighbor. It was a world where such great powerful values were salvation for the huddled masses ground underfoot by the religious intolerance and oppression and the military might that claimed to be always right.

Rebellion and wars were common in a world where foreign military occupation, oppression and exploitation of the poor by the rich, the control of the many by the few, the silencing of protest and opposition with the sword was the way of life.  In that violent culture, Jesus of Nazareth was a indeed a savior.

The poor and disposed realized the truth that they were not the dung, vomit and a curse on the earth as the rulers told them they were. The prophet from Nazareth told them that was untrue; that they are the children of eternal goodness and love that they are worthy of the dignity inherent in every person. He said they are called to a life of dignity, have inalienable human rights and equality and have a right to a happy prosperous life. Blessed are the poor for they have the right to inherit the earth, he said.

The knowledge of this powerful truth if lived out would awaken them and give them the courage to transform their society. This truth would set them free. The Child from Nazareth set out to change the world, to turn it on its head to cause a non-violent peaceful spiritual revolution with social justice. Before he could make it a reality he was arrested, jailed, tortured, and given the death penalty. The barbarism of the intolerant religious fanatics and Roman cruelty ended his mission and scattered his followers. Today it seems the powerful truth and dream of a just society where equality and love of neighbor reigns does not escape the barbarism of modern conflict and corporate greed.

That great truth revealed by the Man from Nazareth would only be realized when his followers had shunned all exploitation, violence, and abuse and organized a community to live out the extraordinary values together. They would be helping each other as one family and making those values real. What emerged was a powerful social and spiritual movement based on personal dignity and social justice that was capable of redeeming humanity, changing society from being a cruel and brutal regime to one of compassion, forgiveness mercy and love of neighbor following the example of the Good Samaritan.

It was this force that came into the world at the first Christmas, had its roots in the Song of Mary, and had the possibility of saving suffering humanity from the garbage heap of rich man’s dominance. But sadly it seems to have failed, or has it?  When he was born so was this dream but can it ever be a reality in the modern world or remain a dream, an unattainable reality? It is up to each one of us to work together to make that dream come true.

shaycullen@preda.org
www.preda.org

FREE AT LAST

Preda Children

Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Gerard Davi, 1500

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC [Web Gallery of Art]

The Injustice That Causes Poverty

by Fr Shay Cullen

Christmas is here already and we have to think what it means. It’s much more than Santa Claus and consumerism. It’s about compassion, love for the poor and seeking justice in an unjust world. Jesus was sent to help change it. We must carry on this mission. We have to understand what that challenge is.

The world economic trade system is constantly depriving the poor of land and livelihood, fairness is excluded and corruption and exploitation take over the world. This evil system of unjust trade policies and practices is growing and has caused great damage to families. No less than Pope Francis himself condemned this unfettered liberal runaway economic system that causes such social and economic injustice. He, quoting a fourth century bishop and making the fat cat capitalists cringe, called it the “dung of the devil.”

In the Philippines, it is said that 140 politically-powerful families control the Congress and consequently, the lives of 100 million Filipinos. Jose is representative of the many poor Filipinos who suffer from deprivation because of this unjust power system.

There was a great moment during the visit of Pope Francis to Bolivia when he spoke out and supported the rights of farmers and peasants. It was in the city of Santa Cruz where participants of the second world meeting of popular movements gathered. This is an international group of organizations, mostly victims of oppression, as well as globalization and multinational corporations.

Millions of poor are living outside the normal economy. They are mostly people on the peripheries of society, landless and disposed people. Poor and unemployed, they are the voiceless. But Pope Francis gave them a voice heard around the world. He told the leaders that he stood with them in the demands for justice and social & economic inclusion. This is his mission of lifting up the downtrodden and sending the rich away empty-handed as we read in the gospel song Magnificat.

“Let us not be afraid to say it: we want change, real change, structural change,” Francis, referring to the unjust globalization of the economic system that “has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature,” told the cheering crowds.

Full article on Preda website here.

Freedom Song
By Róisín Seoighe

I have no recollection of feeling any affection around here.
No one comes to sympathize or listen to my weeping cries, around here.
I feel so scared all they do is stand and stare..,staring at me.
There are too many people here I wish I could disappear,
I can’t breathe.

Chorus.
Could I please have some freedom?
It’s not like I don’t deserve to feel the sun
Locked up like an animal treated like a criminal.
My life has just begun,
Could I please have some freedom?
I’m put into a cage with no way to escape, all I want is to be free,
I dream of a foreign land where children have freedom in their hands,
Unlike me,
Excitement on Christmas day,and I’m crying my sorrows away,
Aching to be free
How can they just ignore me sleeping, and this cold floor beneath me

Tríd PREDA, tabhair saoirse
Do na gasúir atá sánaithe go fóill,
Ó mo chroí, an tAthair Shay.

Beidh muid ag fáil níos fearr ó céim go céim.
Tabhair misneach do na gasúir bocht,
Bímid ag cuimhneamh ortha anocht.

(English translation)

Though Preda, give freedom

to the children who are still trapped.
From my heart, Father Shay.

We’ll be getting there step by step.
Give courage to the poor children,
Let us be thinking of them tonight.

——-

You can read the story of this song, inspired by the awful conditions of so many children in jails in the Philippines, written in English and Irish and sung by an Irish high school student, on the Preda website here.

Children’s Games (detail), 1559-60, Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Kunsthistorischesmuseum, Vienna [Web Gallery of Art]

Recently I was talking to a group of forty young boys who had been taken out of filthy jails and sub-human conditions in the so-called youth detention centers of Metro Manila. I told them, ‘You are the children of God and the most important in God’s family. That’s why you are here. You are free and have rights and dignity’.

They stared wide-eyed with incredulous looks of awe and bafflement. Jason, ten years old, jumped up, spread out his arms and began to spin around in a playful demonstration of ‘being free’. Everyone laughed and enjoyed the moment.

The boys between 9 and 16 are living happily in a beautiful home in the countryside and finding and experiencing their basic rights and joys that we, who have never suffered an injustice or been in conflict with the law or lost our freedom, take for granted and so hardly ever cherish and celebrate. You may never value it until it is taken away.

A large majority of the boys at the Preda Foundation’s New Dawn Home for Boys in conflict with the law are not convicted and not on trial. They are sent to get treatment and therapy and help for troubled lives. They are free to run wherever they want in the grounds. There are no guards, steel bars, wire cages and brutal treatment which they experienced in the jails and youth detention and so-called reformatory centers where they were locked up like animals without light, exercise, education or entertainment, affirmation or legal process.

It is the first time for them to experience such rights and respect and for them it is an amazing wonder. The Preda staff and I tell them the truth about themselves – ‘You are good, you have rights and dignity, you have had a hard life and made mistakes under the bad influence of adults but you can choose now to live another positive way’.

They listen with wide-eyed wonder and can scarcely believe this good news since they have hardly ever experienced being loved, wanted, valued, supported, fed and cherished. Instead they have been rejected all their lives and told they are a burden and a pest to their family and society and deserve punishment and imprisonment. They might as well have been on death row.

Now at Preda this bad experience and negative conditioning is being turned on its head. Now they are told – ‘You are free here at the Preda New Dawn Home for Boy to stay or leave. Know that you are of importance, value and are good in yourselves. Do not believe or think of yourselves as bad, criminal or useless young people. You are God’s children and the most important in God’s family. Jesus said so.’

Hearing and knowing this good news, each one, free of fear, reprimand and punishment, they can develop self-awareness, self-consciousness and begin to grow as persons. It is a vital part of being fully human and something they have hardly ever experienced. They feel respected and valued and can have a dream to reach a positive goal. They are assured that they will be helped to achieve a better, happier life for themselves and their future families when they grow up. What attitudes they have today will be how they will treat others in the future. They must learn and grow for the better.

It takes time for all this to sink in, so conditioned are these 9- to 16-year-old boys. We have to undo the harm and negativity that has been heaped on them from childhood by parents, relatives and local authorities. They have been branded by parents and society as worthless thieves, drug dependents and social outcasts. But they are not.

Normally good children who are misunderstood and unloved and branded as bad will likely become what they are called. Adults and parents must be careful never to physically, verbally or emotionally abuse children. They will rebel and find ways to retaliate. They feel injustice like everyone else.

At times I challenge parents of troubled, unruly and drug-taking children by asking how it is that they were born innocent but have become like this. I ask them, ‘Why do your children take pain-killers? Who is causing the pain? How have you treated and spoken to them as they were growing up?’

Inevitably the parents will respond defensively. ‘It’s not us, he (she) never listens to us, has no discipline, never obeys, steals, takes drugs, seldom goes to school, is a computer games addict, does not come home and prefers to be with the street gangs.’

Some parents admit that they voluntarily turned their child over to the detention center, ‘To teach him/her a lesson’, they say. Punishment is no cure for troubled and hurt children. It hurts and alienates them all the more.

To parents like that I usually respond, ‘How is it then that your son is here at Preda for two months and has never run away, does not steal, does not take drugs, is never violent, is helpful, does his duties, attends classes daily and respects the staff and other boys? Perhaps there is a problem in the home? With you he is a wild rebel. Here he is a normal respectful boy. Who needs to change, you or him?’ And so the parents have to reflect on their family life and ask if there is a lack of loving parenting.

What inspires and motivates the youth is to know that their parents are willing to cooperate and attend parenting seminars and to accept and admit that they too have made mistakes and are willing to reconcile with their child. The hope of family reconciliation and peace-making and acceptance back into the family is what motivates the boy to continue in the Preda home. The loss of love and friendship with parents and family is the greatest hurt and loss. Peacemaking and acceptance is the greatest gift.

shaycullen@preda.org