MANILA, Philippines - Three children, two of them siblings, were rescued from a cyberporn den run by their great-grandmother and her four granddaughters in Taguig City Saturday.
The five-year-old boy and his sister, two, are the children of one of the granddaughters, who was arrested along with the four other women in a raid on the family’s house on MRT Avenue in Lower Bicutan. The third child is a boy aged 11.
The cyberporn den was shut down by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Anti-Human Trafficking Division (AHTRAD) in cooperation with the Inter-Agency Council Against Human Trafficking, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the non-government group International Justice Mission.
The STAR withheld the suspects’ names to protect the victims’ privacy.
The children were sold to foreigners for sex and made to do live sex shows with the granddaughters on webcam for the benefit of foreign clients, the NBI said.
Their great-grandmother, 74, collects around P6,000 per transaction through money transfer, according to NBI-AHTRAD head agent Janet Francisco.
Authorities also seized from the five women evidence of online accounts, particularly for the user name “pretty.mirth,” used to sell the children and the shows; logbooks of transactions; pornographic materials and drug paraphernalia.
The women will face charges of human trafficking, child abuse, photo and video voyeurism and drug use. The NBI said shabu was confiscated from the siblings’ mother.
Based on its surveillance of the family’s house, the family had been running the operation since 2011, according to the NBI.
The FBI coordinated with the NBI after finding out that a producer of child pornography, “pretty.mirth,” was based in the Philippines.