THE Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed qualified trafficking and child exploitation charges before the Manila Regional Trial Court against two individuals arrested in an entrapment operation in Dasmariñas City, Cavite after selling an eight-day old baby online for P90,000.
Suspects Arjay Escalona Malabanan and Ma. Chariza Rivera Dizon were charged by the DOJ Task Force on Women and Children Against Trafficking in Persons headed by Deputy State Prosecutor Olivia Laroza Torevillas based on the complaint filed by the Philippine National Police-Women and Children Protection Center on May 17.
Malabanan was apprehended in Dasmariñas City on May 15 after he accepted P90,000 from a policewoman who pretended to be a buyer of the infant.
Dizon, meanwhile, was arrested after she was identified as the mother of the newborn baby that Malabanan tried to sell to the undercover cop.
The operation stemmed after the police received information about an online “black market” for couples looking to adopt newborn babies without undergoing the regular adoption process.
Malabanan, through his Facebook account “Kuy’s Jay,” initially transacted with the undercover police woman by sending a message which read: “Good day! Gusto niyo po magka-baby?”
“In the instant case, the act of respondents Malabanan and Dizon in selling the latter’s newborn child is an act of exploitation,” said the DOJ resolution signed by Assistant State Prosecutor Claire Eufracia Pagayanan.
“Evidence adduced sufficiently established the crime of qualified trafficking, namely, the respondents facilitated the adoption of the newborn baby, facilitation of the adoption was for a consideration of P90, 000, purpose was to facilitate illegal adoption, the trafficked victim is a child, and the act of trafficking was committed by or through the use of ICT or any computer system, and the transaction having been done through Facebook messenger platform,” it added.
It also said that the act of respondents in selling the newborn baby was a form of exploitation.
With this, Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla vowed to use all the department’s resources in going after those behind the online black market selling babies.
Remulla said the DOJ will go all out in prosecuting those behind the illegal scheme.
“Children are the most precious treasures of society meant to be fully protected by law, they are the best investments of today for a better tomorrow. We will never allow anyone to exploit them in any way,” Remulla said.
“Let us be the defenders of these vulnerable sector and innocents who desperately need us,” he added.
Last year, the United Nations Children Fund said the Philippines has one of the highest rates of child trafficking in the world, with an estimated 20,000 to 100,000 children trafficked yearly. It also said that a significant portions of the scheme was done online.
Most of the trafficked children, UNICEF added, are sold for sexual exploitation, forced labor or illegal adoption.
In 2022, the country’s Special Envoy to the UNICEF Nikki Teodoro said the Philippines has become “number one for child trafficking, and online pornography” after cases of child exploitation rose by over 280 percent.
