Australia Men Sex Tourists Leave Behind Women & Children in The Philippines
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: July 20, 2015
WUNRN
http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/2987/59/
Australian
Men Sex Tourists Leave Behind Women & Children in The Philippines
Peter, 8, and his mother
Grace, 35, with a picture of Peter’s Australian father, Max, who stuck around
and provided for the family but recently stopped his payments. Picture: Dave
Tacon
IN tiny houses a stone’s throw from the red light district in
one of the Philippines’ most heavily-populated regions, young boys and girls
are growing up without their Australian fathers.
The children, born to young prostitutes, will never know their
dads. They stopped through like thousands of other Australian men do, looking
for cheap sex with young Asian women. They found it, but when the women fell
pregnant, the men fled. Others don’t even know their children exist.
It’s no surprise the offspring of Australians are growing up in
Angeles City, the entertainment capital of the Philippines. It’s practically a
home away from home for many Australians, with hotel names like the Boomerang,
the Swagman, the Eureka and the Walkabout.
The Swagman Resort, Angeles City, The Philippines.
Francine, 7, doesn’t know her Australian father. She lives in a
slum with her mother and the rest of her family. Picture: Dave Tacon
They attract hordes of Australian men, thirsty for a drink and
something else: A young woman for the night.
Described as “blow row” and a “supermarket of sex”, the red
light district 85km north west of Manila is a hotbed of debauchery and
fantasies fulfilled. Money changes hands quickly and sex is a commodity.
Nights out on the infamous Fields Avenue are sold as innocent
fun for tourists. But beneath it all is an undercurrent of sadness and
heartbreak and crime. It’s sex tourism targeted at and propagated by lonely,
rich Australian men, and the consequences are long lasting for families left
behind.
Journalist Margaret Simons toured Balibago recently. She wrote
in The Monthly that she was one of the only western women in a city of tens of
thousands of people.
More concerning still was her discovery that Australian men were
fathering children to prostitutes and leaving them behind, either with
knowledge of their birth or otherwise.
“Some of the fathers paid to support their children, then
stopped. Some never paid at all. Some don’t even know they have children,” she
wrote.
On her visit, she met Kevin, 10, who wants to be a pilot, and
Francine, 7, who she says wants to be a teacher. Kevin’s father, she said, was
a paedophile in his 50s who groomed his victim from Australia using social
media.
“Kevin lives in a 9-metre-square shed patched together with
scraps of building refuse,” she wrote.
She also met Judith, 19, who recently gave birth to
three-month-old Jaden. His father picked her up in a bar and, according to the
Monthly, doesn’t know he has a son.
The story paints a picture of a poverty perpetuated by
Australian men and a sex industry dominated by them.
“In the front bar of the Walkabout Hotel on Fields Avenue, you
sit elbow-to-elbow with middle-aged, board-short-wearing Australian men who
could have been plucked from any suburban shopping mall,” Simons said.
“More of them are on the street, surrounded by women, moving
like lords of creation.”
Tourism figures support what she saw first-hand. Of the almost
five million foreign tourists who enter the Philippines each year, Australians
are the third biggest spenders. They’re not buying T-shirts and fridge magnets.
Dr Caroline Norma visited the Philippines in 1998, where she
worked with an outreach program going bar-to-bar. She told underage women they
had other choices and prostitution wasn’t the only way.
Seventeen years later, she says little has changed, and that
Australian men are the biggest problem.
“Australian men were everywhere then,” she told news.com.au.
Dr Norma, who teaches global and social studies at RMIT
University, says Australian men are “taking advantage” of a sex industry driven
by poverty and corruption.
“I did an internship with a women’s organization and we did
outreach to bars in 1998. By that stage, Australian men were everywhere, even
as bar owners,” she said.
“Back then I was surprised because Australia didn’t have a
military presence in the Philippines like America. There were Americans over
there but that was slightly more understandable.”
She said she was not surprised to learn Australian men are still
flocking to the Philippines because the attraction to Asian women in
prostitution is stronger than ever.
“Prostitution of Asian women has become almost the model for
prostitution in Australia,” she said.
“Rates of Asian women in Australian brothels are about 50 per
cent. The research that’s been done in Australia all points towards increasing
numbers of Asian women in Australian brothels.”
Margaret Simons wrote that in Angeles City, “the entire town —
with a population of about 350,000 — is a brothel, and its support system”.
Al Jazeera reported earlier this year that $400m is spent on
prostitution in the Philippines each year, a large chunk of that from the
pockets of Australian sex tourists.
A website promoting Balibago (balibago.com) makes it easy to see
why. It promotes young women as sexual slaves.
“In a city that never sleeps, these women are desperate to show
you a good time and are known for their love of recreational sex,” the website
declares.
“Praised for their tolerance to western culture, these girls are
hungry to meet you regardless of your age, weight, physical appearance,
interpersonal skills, wealth or social class.”
Another website explains how a typical night on Fields Avenue
might go and offers tips for visitors. It describes how to procure a lady for
the night.
Men there pay bar fines — an amount of money to a bar owner to
secure a prostitute for the night or longer. The money buys them sex and even
the “girlfriend experience”.
Margaret Simons said Australian men are looking for underage
women. That’s the reason they go. Others don’t ask the age of the prostitute,
but are equally complicit in keeping the sex trafficking industry thriving.
“Australians are also one of the groups most active in child sex
tourism, although in Angeles City, it seems, most of this is not “preferential”
but situational — men who have sex with prostitutes and simply don’t care about
their age,” she wrote.
Dr Norma agrees.
“This idea that western men don’t know the age of Asian women
because they look the same (as other Asian woman) is false,” she told news.com.au.
“Even in western counties, the average age of entry into
prostitution is 16, 15, 14. Men who seek to prostitute girls are looking for
younger girls. Any pimp will tell you ‘the younger the better’.”
The Philippines, sadly, is the not the only Asian country where
sex tourism has taken hold. It has been happening in Thailand for generations.
Disturbingly, it has also increased in Nepal following the deadly earthquake
that killed more than 9000 people in April this year.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF),
children who lost their families when entire villages were destroyed have been
trafficked into the sex industry.
Tomoo Hozumi, working with UNICEF in Nepal, said he feared a
surge in trafficking during the chaos of April and May and his fears were
realised.
“Loss of livelihoods and worsening living conditions may allow
traffickers to easily convince parents to give their children up for what they
are made to believe will be a better life,” he said.
“The traffickers promise education, meals and a better future.
But the reality is that many of those children could end up being horrendously
exploited and abused.”
Trafficking in the Philippines happens for similar reasons.
Dr Norma said much of the problem is generational — a young
girls’ mother is a prostitute and her daughter follows in her footsteps. It’s
mostly driven by poverty but she said Australian men can’t shy away from their
part in the problem.
“Poverty is one thing, but it’s also lax laws on foreign
ownership of businesses, there’s lax laws in relation to employing children and
having them on the bar plus corruption on top of that. Having said that,
Australian men are taking advantage of the whole thing.”
Categories: Releases
