UNDERREPORTING is hindering the government’s efforts to run after those preying on minors, including online sexual abuse and exploitation, the Department of Justice said yesterday.
DOJ Assistant Secretary Nicholas Felix Ty said it is one of the issues they face as the government intensifies its drive against those victimizing minors.
“Ang underreporting ay isa sa mga pinakamalaking problema natin dito sa child safety at sa mga krimen na ang binibiktima ay ang mga bata (Underreporting is one of the major problems we have when it comes to reporting cases involving child safety and crimes targeting minors),” Sy, the officer-in-charge of the Inter-Agency Council against Trafficking, told the opening and launching of the Safer Internet Day 2025 at the DOJ.
Ty said the DOJ and IACAT can understand why minor victims and their families hesitate to report the crimes to authorities – out of fear, shame, lack of access to justice, or due to lack of knowledge.
He added that minors also sometimes do not know they are already being preyed upon by adults, especially in social media, because they don’t know their rights, or it is their relatives who are exploiting them.
Globe Telecoms Senior Director Carlo Bernardo Santos said the firm is closely working with government agencies to run after those who prey on minors online.
“In the case of Globe, we continue to do blocking of websites and domains such that we block them from our network. We blocked almost 4,000 I think domains and URLs as of last year lang, as of 2024,” Santos said at the same event.
But what is alarming, he added, is the influx of images generated by Artificial Intelligence.
“This is quite alarming from our perspective because AI is being leveraged for something that is not good. So, we are also starting to block that also as of last year,” Santos said.
“As long as it shows child sexual abuse or exploitation material, we block it,” he added.
REGISTRY OF SEX OFFENDERS
The National Coordination Center Against Online Sexual Abuse or Exploitation of Children and Child Sexual Abuse or Exploitation Materials (NCC-OSAEC-CSAEM) said it is working to establish the guidelines on Child Sex Offenders Registry and Blacklisted Aliens.
NCC-OSAEC-CSAEM Secretariat OIC Barbara Mae Pagdilao-Flores said they are ensuring the guidelines follow human rights principles and that they can gather data from different government agencies.
“Hopefully within the year we would be able to come up with not just the database but the guidelines on the child sex offenders’ registry and the blacklisted aliens,” she added.
But even without the guidelines yet, she said they are working to stem cases of sexual abuse targeting minors.
Last year, the DOJ-led IACAT, the Office of the Solicitor General and the Office of the Prosecutor General signed a memorandum of agreement to create a task force to enhance the effort to fight trafficking in persons, OSAEC and CSAEM.
IACAT has also launched a grassroots-level campaign dubbed “Barangay IACAT 2.0” aimed at empowering, informing and engaging communities to fight trafficking and child abuse and exploitation.
Last year, Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla warned Internet Service Providers that if they refuse to cooperate in tracking down human traffickers, particularly of minors, the government may go after and sue them for online sexual abuse and exploitation of children.
Under Republic Act 9775 or the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009, they are required to install software that will block access to or transmittal of any form of child pornography in the internet.
This as the country retained its Tier 1 ranking in the 2024 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report released by the US State Department.
Countries on Tier 1 ranking — the highest ranking — are those that meet the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking, with the governments showing serious and sustained efforts to convict more human traffickers, identify victims and improve efforts to prevent more victims.
The Philippines has maintained its Tier 1 ranking since 2016.
