Columban Father Shay Cullen, who has lived in the Philippines since 1969, explained the phenomenon to Fides, the Vatican’s missionary news agency.
“Under the pretext of saving or taking care of children, traffickers kidnap them and sell them to pedophiles,” Cullen said. “Or they earn large sums of money by providing the children for illegal adoptions. Even worse, they introduce them into the world of prostitution, making them slaves of sexual exploitation.”
Cullen said hungry and homeless children “are the main victims of jackals who seize them for child abuse or human trafficking.”
“It is a horrible prospect, but it is extremely realistic in the case of natural disasters,” he said. “These children are in need of immediate attention, to be saved from the clutches of traffickers and pedophiles.”
Decades ago, Cullen helped found PREDA — People’s Recovery, Empowerment Development Assistance Foundation — a human rights social development organization that works with the most vulnerable, including women and children. He said that PREDA has sent social workers to central Philippines, where the Nov. 8 typhoon had its greatest impact, to help protect children.
Meanwhile, Assumptionist Sister Anna Carmela Pesongco, president of Assumption College in Makati, said sisters from various orders are debriefing survivors of the typhoon to find out how traumatized they are, what they need and to facilitate finding their relatives.
She said counselors are particularly concerned for the children, “so that they find a home in the midst of all this because the kids need a certain sense of security ... that they know people can welcome them and offer them, not just food, but a home. All these are simple things, but they’re very important.”
Pesongco said they also help the survivors strengthen their faith.
“We pray for them, all these people that we don’t even know their names, and reassure them that there is a God,” said Pesongco. “In all the disasters that we go through, it’s the strengthening of their faith that will make them go on, that will make them find meaning in their pains and their sorrows and a hope that really, beyond all this, God . . . continues to be a loving God.