DAVAO CITY, Philippines — Poverty remains a driving force behind the online sexual abuse and exploitation of children (OSAEC) in the Davao Region, and unless families are economically empowered, awareness campaigns alone will not stop the exploitation, a child rights advocate warned ahead of World Day Against Trafficking in Persons on July 30.
Jeanette Ampog, executive director of Talikala Inc., a women and child rights organization, said financial vulnerability sits at the center of cases where children are exploited for payment, even as she acknowledged that not all forms of online sexual exploitation such as sextortion and intimate image abuse stem directly from poverty.
“If we say it’s not just poverty, it’s important that we have context about the victims,” Ampog said. “If we can prove that these families are below the poverty line or struggling, then it is still poverty.”
Commodification of people
She cautioned against attributing the trade in children to materialism alone, pointing instead to broader structural forces that commodify people.
“A child was promised something, where else do we attribute that? To materialism or consumerism? We should also look at capitalism, where everything can be sold, including people,” she said.
Ampog called for prevention efforts that go beyond awareness drives, urging the government to address digital safety gaps, economic insecurity and weak community-based child protection systems.
She said many children lack basic knowledge of digital safety, leaving social media accounts open to anyone who might message them and gain their trust.
“If families are economically empowered, they won’t become vulnerable,” she said. “I would affirm the value of awareness raising, but we also need to look into other preventive mechanisms so Filipino families are not vulnerable to OSAEC.”
She also pressed government agencies to make reporting mechanisms more accessible at the community level, saying authorities must “popularize” the channels for reporting suspected cases so ordinary residents know how and where to come forward.
How the gov’t sees OSAEC
Law enforcement and prosecution officials, while intensifying their crackdown, said the roots of OSAEC cannot be reduced to poverty alone.
Deputy Regional Prosecutor Karl Andre Salcedo of the Department of Justice’s Regional Prosecution Office XI said the causes are multifactorial. “Not only poverty, because we also have victims who are not really poor but are exposed online,” he said.
Salcedo said many cases involve perpetrators who are members of the victims’ own families like their parents, aunts or other relatives, a pattern investigators call “in-house.” Abuse occurring inside homes, he noted, creates additional hurdles because authorities must gather sufficient documentary evidence to secure convictions.
Provincial Prosecutor Norman Solis of Davao del Sur echoed that assessment, saying their review of OSAEC cases found that perpetrators are typically people children know and trust, making the crimes harder to detect and prevent. He also stressed that children remain vulnerable regardless of sex.
Regional Prosecutor Janet Grace Dalisay-Fabrero said authorities have intensified efforts against OSAEC, citing recent rescue operations in Davao del Sur and stronger coordination with cyber investigators in building cases against perpetrators.
By the numbers
The DOJ has handled 11 OSAEC case build-ups as of July 15 and expects more before the end of the year as collaboration with law enforcement deepens, Dalisay-Fabrero said.
Among the cases intercepted in the first half of 2026 were operations in Digos City and Matanao, both in Davao del Sur. The Digos City case involved five minor children, while the Matanao case involved a victim as young as 2 years old.
“It is sad to note that in the first incident, it involves five minor children, the one intercepted in Digos City,” Dalisay-Fabrero said. “And in Matanao, it involves as young as two years old.”
The regional prosecution office is currently handling 203 active trafficking-related cases, including 148 trafficking-in-persons cases and other offenses related to trafficking such as OSAEC. (davaotoday.com)
