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A serious problem which continues to plague the Philippines is the rampant s*x tourism that many foreigners visit the country to exploit.
It's kind of an open secret within our society that vacation hotspots and red-light districts in the country have businesses that cater to the s*x-trade.
However, a more sinister issue lies just beneath the 'regular' prostitution rings and escort jobs.
Many seedy areas in the Philippines are host to cybers*x dens that cater to a specific clientele - pedophiles.
These illegal operations abuse girls between the ages of 11 - 17, forcing them to commit lascivious acts or even worse - outright raped - for live webcam shows.
Sometimes the girls are younger.
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All of these heinous acts were paid for by the online voyeuristic perverts who live thousands of miles away - instructing the criminals on what they want to see done to these young girls.
In a report by the DailyMail, this business was exposed in a 2-year-long undercover investigation by Belgian journalist 'Peter Bridge.'
His true identity was hidden to protect him and his contacts.
In those two years, Bridge stayed in the Philipines under the guise of a pedophile s*x tourist - looking for where the supply of child pornography comes from in order to expose the operators and the clients who patronize them.
In his journey for the truth, Bridge worked with the US non-government organization the International Justice Mission (whose goal is to stop child abuse) as well as the Women and Children Protection Centre of the Philippine National Police.
He established contacts with the handlers and ringleaders of these cybers*x dens until they trusted him enough to bring him to these terrible places.
While undercover, he revealed a world many of us wished didn't exist. What he saw shook him to the very core.
In these dens, auctions are held through livestreams where Filipino girls as young as 11 are lined up for pedophiles to choose from to be abused on camera.
They instruct abusers on what to do and those unsatisfied with the 'show' often come the country to indulge in their sick fantasies themelves.
Bride recalls in detail how his investigation happened.
He arrived in the slums of Iligan City where he was taken to a house where he was introduced to a group of girls.
In his interview with the MailOnline: "They gave me a selection of girls to choose from, between the ages of 11 and 17.
"I could choose any girls I wanted. I told them I was interested in having six girls, two every night - 15 and 17, 11, 13 and then younger. They agreed."
He took the girls over to a hotel, setup with hidden cameras by his allies.
In next few hours he interviewed them one-by-one to find out as much as he can about their lives, how they're treated and their family lives.
"I found out that some of the older girls were already recruiting younger girls into the industry," he said.
"Girls as young as 12 work independently recruiting friends. It is contact with the predators that turns them into really educated abusers."
"They learn how to receive the money, how to do these things unnoticed, how to make contacts. So they are really raised to abuse by the predators. They come from the US, Europe, Australia, Canada and Korea."
"There was a girl who was 15. She wants to become a school teacher. Her sister is 13."
"They called me and the sister was sitting there with an eight-year-old girl on her lap and she just asked me 'what do you want me to do with her?'"
"Doing this sort of work is traumatising. But for these girls it's just normal. They have been raised in a sea of abuse. And they don't know that it is abuse anymore."
Bridge also managed to access the accounts of these criminal organizations.
"I could see the client list there, it was a group of about 200 people."
"I saw a British guy, he was a veteran, he knew the group very well. He was an instructor, giving instructions while the abuse was happening."
"There was a couple with a child, she was about 11 years old, and he was telling her what to do. Telling her she had to smile while she was doing it [s*x acts], stuff like that."
"But this was just one group. There are many, many more."
Last year, 139 British nationals were being investigated for such crimes.
However, that's not the full extent of how bad this problem has become.
According to Interpol and the FBI, an estimated 750,000 paedophiles are online at any one time watching child porn.
It's no surprise that poverty and desperation have a hand in these cyber-related crimes. Shockingly, as revealed in the investigation, even the parents themselves sell their children to these dens.
In November 2016, detectives raided one of these dens in Iligan and rescued 11 girls. One of the victims was just seven years old.
Five suspects - three men and two women - were arrested in the raid.
The Philippine National Police confirmed: "The suspects, caught in the act of recruiting and using children for online trafficking, pornography and s*xual exploitation, were later identified as Jeffryl Aque, Lany Buco, Jefford Dominguez, Kissy Pepito, and Cindy Omisol."
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Lany Buco
Jeffryl Aque
Kissy Pepito
Cindy Omisol
Jefford Dominguez
Bridge, for his part, was forced into hiding after he received death threats upon releasing his reports to the proper authorities.
This was, however, a small victory against a multi-billion dollar industry - one that could take years to completely dismantle.
But Bridge isn't fazed by this mountainous challenge and won't stop until the exploitation of these minors has been eradicated.
"The problem is huge and it's under reported," he said
"And the descent into this s*xual hell, as I call it, is spreading. It's like a virus. It's not difficult for the suppliers to find children," he added.
He plans on releasing a documentary on this awful industry titled 'Children of the Cam’. ‘
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