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Josie Magano is one of the bravest Filipino women I ever met. One
day she came asking help to rescue her teenage daughter from the
clutches of a Danish sex tour operator who owned a hotel in Baloy
Beach in Olongapo City. Josie was from the poorest part of Samar
Island, had struggled with poverty and yet walked five miles to
school everyday. She survived on a plate of rice and a few
vegetables and graduated from high school. She then worked as a
street vendor and went to night school finishing a junior course in
restaurant management. There were no restaurants in her part of the
island and hunger swept the land after the forests were cut down by
rich families and floods and land slides destroyed the fragile
topsoil.
Josie married her high school love and had four
children but life became even harder as the super greedy government
officials and their big family cronies wallowed in corruption
siphoning off hundreds of millions of public funds into their
pockets and building sumptuous mansions and lavish second homes
abroad.
Good jobs were to be had in the hotels and
restaurants in Olongapo and Angeles City and so she came to
Olongapo City with her 15-year-old daughter named Irish. It was only
a few months into the job when Alexander, 48, a Danish man seduced
Irish and disappeared with her. She sent a message saying she was in
love with Alexander and he was going to marry her.
We got a tip about his secret sex den in Angeles
City and set off to rescue Irish. On the way, we picked up the
female police officers in Angeles City we know are helpful in
rescuing children and we found the house and did surveillance. His
car was there. Josie was nervous and shaking with fear about what
she might find behind that door. She knew, too, that this would
likely be the end of her hope for a better life for her family, an
end of dreams and job. She would be banned from every hotel and
restaurant.
Unlike some other mothers who encourage their
young daughters to live in with foreigners to marry them for money,
Josie was determined to save her daughter from child prostitution.
She was resolute and determined to go up against this rich and
powerful man to save the child she had carried for nine months in
her womb and had given life to.
I left the team in the van parked meters away. I
went to the door and knocked. He opened it and he was shocked to see
us, “We came to get Irish,” I declared, “Okay if we come
in,” I asked. “Yes, yes, she is here,” he replied. Within
minutes we had the child out the door and into the van and the
police arrested the suspect. Josie filed a formal complaint of
abduction and sexual molestation in the office of the Angeles City
prosecutor. A powerful city councilor who is a lawyer and a member
of the government women’s and children council defended the
Dutchman. He got bail. Then he went and sold the hotel and took a
flight out of the country. The prosecutor, we learned, had never
even filed the charges in court.
Josie is just one of millions of women who need
all the help they can get to defend their children from people
traffickers and traveling sex offenders. In the Philippines,
thousands of women and minors are forced into sexual servitude every
year in brothels, sex clubs, massage parlors and other fronts for
prostitution. The politicians allow them to thrive by issuing
licenses and permits, for a price, to foreign bar operators.
Women’s rights must be strengthened and laws protecting them and
their children have to be enforced. The culture of corruption and
impunity in the Philippines must end and empowered women like Josie
will lead the way. Later, I asked Josie why she named her child
Irish. She replied, “When she was born, she was beautiful and
smelled so sweet after I bathed her in that soap called Irish
Spring.”
preda@info.com.ph
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