BY FR. SHAY CULLEN
IN THE Philippines and many other countries, children are under attack by the pedophiles and child abusers that use the uncontrolled social media platforms connected to the internet by Internet Service Providers (ISP) owned by the telecommunication corporations (telecoms).
The children are groomed, seduced, lured and entrapped. Many are sexually abused on live shows by video streaming to international customers for money done through the telecomsâ ISP servers. The child abusers are sometimes their own parents.
Many good parents are worried sick and helpless to protect their children from these criminals that are enabled by the telecoms and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, X and others. Children are lured by predators or their peer group to watch child sexual abuse images online on a mobile phone connected to the internet via the telecoms. As a result, many 10- and 12-year-old boys have and are sexually abusing girls as young as six years old.
Exposure to child sexual abuse materials has a deep damaging psychological effect on the personality of the viewer especially children. This generation is suffering the consequence, with millions of children suffering abuse. The Internet is still in its âWild Westâ period of history.
Change may be on the way. It is the first time a CEO of a huge media platform like Telegram has been arrested and charged. French police and Interpol are investigating Telegram for enabling crimes of child abuse and exploitation, human trafficking, illegal drug sales, fraud, hate speech, financial crimes and illegal weapons sales.
The billionaire owner and CEO of Telegram is Pavel Durov, 39, a Russian national with dual French and United Arab Emirates citizenship. He was arrested in France on August 24 this year. He is charged with aiding and abetting acts of various crimes listed above on his platform which has about 800 million users.
The platform has end-to-end encryption that enables the criminals using Telegram to carry on illegal activities without interception by law enforcement. It is open to all and used by extremist groups to foment political unrest and riots since it allows 200,000 people in a single chat room. A single message can reach a huge audience. It was used to spread racist hate recently in the UK. If found guilty, Pavel could face 10 years in prison.
The worst crimes over the platforms and through the telecom enablers of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the Philippines and elsewhere are those that allow child abuse images to be shared and transmitted without filtering and control, just like Telegram does. This is a challenge to PLDT, Globe and Dito- CEOs to strictly obey RA 11930 or not travel to the EU.
Through the servers of the telecoms, criminals connect to platforms like Facebook, Telegram etc. where predators posing as teenage boyfriends groom and trick children into sharing with them their nude photos online.
Then, the victims are blackmailed (sex-tortion). Their childhood lives are destroyed by the threats of posting the photos on social media and sent to school mates and parents if they donât pay the extortionist, or send him or her more explicit photos. In the Philippines, some children are forced to have sex with the abusive blackmailer. (To be continued)/PN
