BY RAYMART ESCOPEL AND RUBY SILUBRICO
ILOILO City – Policemen raided a cybersex den in Brgy. Sinikway, Lapuz district yesterday afternoon and arrested four women performing for paying clients in the United States and Australia.
One performer, a 16-year-old, was caught cavorting in front of a laptop.
She was wearing nothing but a panty and a bra, said Supt. Peter Naboye, director of the Regional Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit (RCIDU).
The four young women, all residents of Tapaz, Capiz, were taken to the RCIDU office after the raid staged about 5:40 p.m.
The cybersex den was a house but owner Helen Delotavo, 57, denied having any knowledge of the illegal activities of the women renting two of her rooms.
The other cybersex performers had ages between 18 to 23 years old.
RCIDU operatives seized four laptops, camera tripods and dildos from the rooms.
Delotavo was arrested, too.
According to Naboye, the women will be charged with violating Republic Act 10175 (Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012).
“The women were paid through Western Union,” said Barangay Captain Philip Ventura of Sinikway. He witnessed the raid.
From what he had gathered, Ventura said, the women performed for male clients in California.
One of the performers, an 18-year-old, told a radio station she agreed to this kind of work because she needed money to send her siblings to school.
She said her parents did not know she was into cybersex.
House owner Delovato said she frequently made “surprise inspections” of the rooms and found nothing unusual or irregular in them.
She charges between P5,000 to P6,000 monthly rent for each room, she said.
“Renting out the rooms of our house is an honest business,” Delotavo insisted.
The RCIDU learned of the cybersex den from an asset. It took them a month to ascertain its location.
RCIDU’s Christiano Cordero Jr. said the young women would do whatever their viewing clients tell them to do, but for a fee.
One of the girls said she had been performing for some three months already.
Cordero said the women do not directly get the payment. A middleman would transact for them and get payment from clients, then the performers would just be getting their “share” from the payment.
A client spends a minimum of $50 per minute of session with the women, added Cordero.
One of the performers was said to be the local contact of a foreigner, a certain Robert Meyer who was the one looking for clients.
This Meyer would collect the money from the clients, then download the share of the performers through money transfer./PN
