Taken

“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. But if you don’t let my daughter go, I will find you… I will kill you.”  Calm and determined, that was how former intelligence operative Bryan Mills (played by Liam Neeson, Taken [2009], 20^th Century Fox) addressed his teenage daughter’s abductor in Paris. Sex slavery and child prostitution is an international problem and according to the UN, children are “kidnapped, trafficked across borders or from rural to urban areas, and moved from place to place so that they effectively disappear.”   The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act (RA 9208) was passed way back in 2003 and yet, a BBC investigation reported that there could be as many as 100,000 Filipino children involved in the sex trade today. From the Philippines, the young girls are forcibly transported by organized crime syndicates to North America, Europe, various parts of Asia and the Middle East. After being forced to service several clients, 13 year old Sharon said, “My back ached and I bled. I tried to run away but the guard at the door blocked my way and pushed me back into the room. I cried and cried all night.” Occasionally, the kidnappers would even make video tapes of children while being sexually abused. According to Cecilia Flores Oebande of the Visayan Forum Foundation, child trafficking “is next to drugs and arms smuggling, the second most profitable business here in the Philippines.”

By: Eduardo R. Meneses Jr.