Filipino 'Sweety' attracts a thousand child molesters

Children's charity organization Terre des Hommes traced over a thousand child molesters on the internet through a virtual Filipino girl. Among these were twenty Dutch.The data and deeds of these perpetrators from more than 65 countries, were transferred to the Dutch police Monday, announced Terre des Hommes.

The children's charity organization stated it discovered a new, rapidly growing phenomenon of sexual child abuse: webcam child sex tourism.

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Tdh child relief
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The Philippines alone involve tens of thousands of victims. The police in some countries are ignorant about the trend, resulting in little or no action taken against this form of abuse, according to a spokesperson for Terre des Hommes.

The charity researched the phenomenon for eight months. To find out how child sex tourism works through the webcam, they entered chat rooms undercover. A 10-year-old virtual Filipino girl was developed, who listened to the name Sweetie, as many Filipino girls call themselves in chat rooms.

The computer model could not be distinguished from real. She could talk and move and one could not tell she was animated, according to Terre des Hommes. In two months time Sweetie was able to entice over a thousand men. As soon as she entered a chat room and announced she was 10 years old and from the Philippines, she was overwhelmed by men, offering her money.  She would immediately receive a variety of requests, oftentimes very specific, such as if she wanted to bring her little sister in also. If desired, dozens of conversations could be carried on at the same time, but the researchers kept it to two at a time, according to the Terre des Hommes spokesperson.

This allowed over a thousand perpetrators to be identified and ultimately captured on video, proving they wanted sex with a Filipino girl for money. Terre des Hommes is aware that Dutch courts don't approve of cases where adolescents are used as bait, even though there is legislation in the works that allows for police to use this method.

Terre des Hommes wants to use this research to prevent the phenomenon from spreading rapidly.