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Fr. Shay Cullen | Hope and Recovery

PUBLISHED ON November 9, 2007 AT 7:54 PM

(Continuation of the Meriol Trevor lecture given at Bath University last 25 October 2007)

By Fr. Shay Cullen

We live in a materialistic world driven by consumerism, a passion for profit where human value is measured by how much money one has and the poor are excluded and rejected as worthless. Christian love means sharing our wealth and it is a love that that will conquer greed, selfishness, injustice and enslavement.

It is that love that asks no payment, seeks no reward, other than to serve and not to be served. It is to liberate the poor and the oppressed, free the enslaved and the imprisoned and it never compromises with evil or injustice, it will not tolerate abuse, never to turn away from human suffering or any cover up any child or woman abuse or exploitation.

It is this love of the poor and the enslaved that carried and sustained the early human rights campaigners that saw slavery as a contradiction of everything that Christianity stood for and moved by unshakable moral convictions ran the first human rights campaign to abolish slavery. This is what we need all the more today to confront the modern slavery that is an affront to the human race.

Slavery today is the same as it always was, its human beings being reduced to a commodity, deprived of freedom, working for nothing, exploited for profit, owned like an animal, forced to grovel. And worst of all it is the slavery of children in the organized sex industry, a billion dollar business. In the worst forms of sexual exploitation child sex slaves are chained to beds, abused daily, threatened and tortured, punched and punished, beaten and bruised, and made a plaything for the powerful, a toy for the depraved.

This kind of sex slavery is organized, financed by local and foreign investors; many of them have criminal backgrounds in their own countries and are protected by politicians, prosecutors and judges. Some of these are implicated and compromised by illicit relationships with minors and open to blackmail by the child and women traffickers and exploiters. They can prosper with impunity. The criminals who travel from Britain or other Western countries as sex tourists are the modern slavers of today, they profit from the poverty and bondage of the weak and vulnerable. The big time sex club operators are mostly western too, assisted by corrupt politicians in the developing nations. These westerners and wealthy Asians become the investors in brothels and bars.

They operate with impunity, protected by local police and politicians in the exploitation of the enslaved women and children. They are not sufficiently pursued abroad by British and European law enforcement officers nor is there political will to investigate the criminals and bring them to Justice in their country of origin. It is a sad reality that some believe that it is ´better let the sex abusers and pedophiles abuse the children abroad than here¡ this attitude would seem to say.

One child, the case, of 15 year old Angelita, is not unusual. She was hired by a recruiter in Negros Island. Her parents were given an advance payment from her promised future wages. She was brought from Negros Island to Manila as a domestic worker to be a house maid for a wealthy businessman but was raped by his son, Angelita ran away, was offered food and shelter by a pimp on the prowl and then sold in to the Sweet 16 sex club in Subic Town, near Olongapo City.

Angelita was given “loans” so she was continually in debt and only earned a pittance. Most of her earnings was deducted to pay the loans and her board and lodging, laundry and other needs. Angelita was warned not to leave until all her debts were paid or she would be jailed. This is the situation of thousands of women and children in the sex industry that is allowed to thrive with the support of local politicians who issue the licenses and permits to the bars and clubs.

Addendum: Angelita was saved by the Preda rescue team, received protection and therapy and recovered at the Preda children’s home. Today she is a practicing social worker helping abused children. With affirmation, care and support the greatest hardships can be overcome.

Contact Fr. Shay Cullen at the Preda Center, Upper Kalaklan, Olongapo City, Philippines.
e-mail: preda@info.com.ph

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2 Responses to “Fr. Shay Cullen | Hope and Recovery”

The Equalizer Says:
November 9th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
“PAGPAG”:Recycled Garbage Food for the Poor

I just watched the episode on” Poverty in the Philippines” on ANC’s “Crossroads ” .I got so depressed when I learned about a coping mechanism of our very poor called “pagpag”.In the vernacular,”pagpag” is a verb that describes the act of dusting off dirt.One does this with food, such as a piece of bread, when it accidentally slips your hand and you rescue it from the floor. You can still eat it, just dust it off or “pagpag” it.

In Payatas, people makes a living by recycling garbage.”Pagpag” is apparently a very common practice there.

They gather the thrown away plastic, papers, and whatever they can find, including food, that could still be recycled. They sell the papers and plastics to the factories and the recovered food items, usually half-eaten meat, to some stall-owners who cook them again and sell them to the customers. This dish is “pagpag”. The verb has become a noun.

One angry viewer called the “Crossroads” program to express outrage that the “Pinoy Big Briber” can give away P500,000 packed in brown bags to Governors and Congressmen while the very poor are eating recycled garbage food called “pagpag”.

Gloria ,your callousness cries out to high heaven, your stinginess to the poor cries out to high heaven!You remember them only during elections.
Alan Dale Edmonds Says:
November 23rd, 2007 at 6:46 am
Shay Cullen cites many good points about the enslavement of women and children for sex slavery.

However, as a guest of the Philippines, he writes abusively about the President, Senators and other government officials and past attempts to deport him for his abusive writings and deeds have been for naught. Why? Does he or his supporters pay off the officials at immigration?

Be that as it may, let us consider for a moment this example of his writing style:

He writes about the plight of Angela. Now, is this a real person, or just a made up name for sensenalization? After all, the name(s) of perpetrators are not listed, and according to the law of the Philippines, no information will be released to the public in cases of child sexual abuse without the permission of the courts, and obviously, he has no such permission, as he does not cite any filed case.

Why has he not mentioned the names of the people behind the attrocity of rape of Angela not mentioned, and more, why were not charges prepared against her rapist before Shay Cullen releases this information to the world? Clearly an abuse that he has been charged for. I know, for I charged him for exactly that, but he got the case dismissed. I wonder in truth if he paid off someone to do that, but I guess I will never know, will I?

Consider the fact that I charged him in court for the rape of my daughter. He submits not one, but two logbooks; one in English, and a tampered, backdated logbook in Filipino - both signed by the same staff members. And that was only one of the irregularities in the case against him, but the case never got to his arraignment. While hiding from a warrant for his arrest issued before a resolution by the Department of Justice denying his appeal, when he got the denial of his appeal, he wrote to the President of the Philippines for relief from the charges without submitting to the court for arraignment.

No new evidence was submitted by him, just his base denials, yet he never stood trial. Why?

I even suggested to the Department of Social Welfare and Development to suspend the license to operate for the duration of the investigation for the charge of rape, and would you believe that he continued to take in children during that period of time?

Yet, the case is pulled from the Court by no less than the Office of the President. Not the President, but an underling who promptly resigned to run for another position. Evidence of a payoff? Why was the court not allowed to weigh the evidences, such as the tampered log book and submitted reaccomplished log book? Why are libel cases thrown out by prosecutors before they get to court for more than nine years?

If Shay Cullen did not write libelous and illegal writings, why does he continue to write the same things in different formats, opening himself to more charges over and over?

As of right now, there is a charge of libel in front of the prosecutor for libel for his writings against me in his book “Passion and Power” and I am fairly convinced that the charge will be thrown out despite the fact that the man made one sworn affidavit stating that he was never a writer and another sworn affidavit that he has been a writer for the past 30 years.

More than that, he has libeled Philippine Presidents, including Ferdinand Marcos who is dead, but I think he’ll probably get the case thrown out.

Shall we take bets?

He writes that there is corruption in the government of the Philippines. Perhaps. He may possibly be part of that corruption, couldn’t he?

Consider this: He says in his last sentence, “Gloria ,your callousness cries out to high heaven, your stinginess to the poor cries out to high heaven!You remember them only during elections.”

Do you think she’ll respond to this slap at her from this foreigner named Shay Cullen? I don’t think so. He’s too powerful, it seems, to be brought to justice.

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