Sex tourism has long been a scourge in the Philippines. But now there's a disturbing new trend in the trafficking of mostly young women and children: vulnerable victims are being lured online and tricked into the trade. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports. Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Next: a disturbing new trend in the trafficking of mostly young women and children into the sex trade.
Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from the Philippines on what police call cyber-trafficking. Sex tourism has long been a scourge in the Philippines, an industry that thrives on trafficked human beings and deep poverty in this nation of million. Recent studies have shown that anywhere from to more than thousand Filipinos are trafficked each year; 80 percent, four out of five, are under the age of The government, under international pressure, has stepped up enforcement.
Stings like this one to rescue young women are more common, as are arrests and convictions. But the sex trafficking industry, as always, seems a step ahead in the game. At the police cyber-crime center, officer Ivy Castillo explained one of the many ways that vulnerable young women are tricked into the trade. It has all the trappings of a glamorous fashion model agency, especially to a young rural Filipina girl. They're asked to submit pictures that seem innocuous, facial shots, ostensibly part of the selection process.
The next steps call for more revealing images, just the torso, not the face, they're assured, giving the false impression that it's unidentifiable. The young woman won't make the connection that computer software will, until it's too late. They have got her face from her previous, more innocent images, and have Photoshopped them with the nude ones.
In no time, they are shamed and blackmailed into working for the opaque criminal networks behind the trade. Cyber-pornography is easily one of our biggest problems. It's proliferated very quickly.
