Columban Fr Shay Cullen wins 2016 Hugh O’Flaherty Humanitarian Award

Fr Shay Cullen

Sarah Mac Donald, 26 August 2016. CatholicIreland.net 

Columban missionary has uncovered and exposed widespread child sexual abuse and human trafficking involving children as young as 9 years abused by US personnel and sex tourists including local men.

Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty (1898 - 1963) 

from the website of the Hugh O'Flaherty Memorial Society.

Well known Irish Columban missionary Fr Shay Cullen has been selected as this year’s winner of the Hugh O’Flaherty Humanitarian Award. Fr Cullen has worked tirelessly over his lifetime in the Philippines battling for the rights of children to be respected and trying to stem the depredations of child traffickers, paedophiles and the sex industry.

The award was set up in honour of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish prelate, who was based in the Vatican from 1938 until 1960, and who courageously helped save the lives of 6,500 Jews and Allied soldiers from the Nazis via the Rome Escape Line.

In 1974, Fr Cullen set up the PREDA Foundation to help child victims and trafficked women who were being exploited in the sex trade that flourished alongside the huge United States Naval Base on Subic Bay in Olongapo City and at the US Clarke airbase in Angeles City. He uncovered and exposed widespread child sexual abuse and human trafficking involving children as young as 9 years abused by US personnel and sex tourists including local men. Believing that poverty, violence and child abuse are barriers to peace and give rise to extremism, he strives to eliminate child abuse and promote respect for children’s rights.

He works for peace by working to change the unjust economic political and social structures and attitudes that allow such abuse. His mission for justice and peace is ecumenical; open to people of all faiths. It is based on taking a stand for human rights and protecting the dignity of every person, in particular exploited women and children.

Announcing the Hugh O’Flaherty Memorial Committee’s decision, chairperson Jerry O’Grady said, “Fr Shay has given his life to protecting the human rights of oppressed and exploited children and has fearlessly challenged those who were not prepared to shoulder their responsibilities, including local vested interests, local and national government in the Philippines and the USA Government.”

Fr Cullen said the award was a recognition of the children PREDA has rescued and “those human rights workers who, like Monsignor Hugh [O’Flaherty], continue to work for the unjustly imprisoned, the refugees trying to escape from Isis and war and those risking their lives to help them escape.”

This year’s award will be presented to Fr Shay Cullen by Cllr Brendan Cronin, Mayor of Killarney on Saturday evening November 5th 2016 at a ceremony in the Killarney Avenue Hotel.

Preda Handicrafts

Fr Shay and Preda has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He has received the Ireland Meteor Award, Irish Personality of the year award, German City of Weimar and Italian city of Ferreira Human Rights awards and is an internationally recognised human rights and child rights advocacy organisation for social justice, peace, dialogue and human dignity.

The People’s Recovery Empowerment and Development Assistance (PREDA) Foundation is an active social development organisation today with 54 professional Filipino paid employees implementing projects that save children from sexual abusers, human traffickers and from life in the brothels and sex bars frequented by Filipino men and foreigners of all nationalities. It provides residential care with therapy education, empowerment and legal action for the children in two centres one for abused girls in Subic, Zambales and one for the boys rescued from jails and detention centres situated in Nagbayan, Castelljos, Zambales.

Preda social workers save children from jails and detention centres and give them a new life of dignity and self-esteem. The Preda boy’s home offers protection and therapeutic homes and services for the child victims and operates a therapeutic community for boys saved from jails, ages 7 to 15 years of age. They are victims of abuse and neglect in government jails and detention centres called Bahay Pagasa.

The Preda boy’s home in Catellijos, Zambales is an open home community and family in a farm setting without fences or walls. Children are free to choose to stay or leave. Most choose to stay. They receive full support, therapy and education at the Bukang Liwayway home. There is an average of 35 children there with a full staff of 15 therapists and social workers and qualified male nurses.

Hundreds of children have been rescued from sex bars and clubs and sex abusers of all kinds: paedophiles, child rapists, cybersex bars, abusive parents and relatives. There are as many an average of 44 girls victims’ of sexual abuse and commercial exploitation 8 to 17 years-old in the Girls home in Subic, Zambales.

The Preda Girls Home in Subic provides a therapeutic home in a natural environment for children raped, sexually and physically exploited and the therapeutic life style gives full therapy, recovery, healing and educational support and family reconciliation and reintegration with supportive relatives when possible.

An Awareness and Reporting System has been activated. A hot phone line alerts Preda to a child in need and Preda rescue team is sent to rescue the child with the help of the government social worker and police if needed.

For more information see: www.preda.org and predainfo@preda.org

Fr Michael Sinnott

The first Hugh O'Flaherty International Humanitarian Award was given in 2009. The second recipient, in 2010, was Columban Fr Michael Sinnott. On 11 October 2009 he was kidnapped just outside the gate of the Columban house in Pagadian City in western Mindanao. He was released, unharmed, on 12 November that year. He was 79 at the time. He is now retired and in good health at St Columban's, Dalgan Park, Navan, County Meath, Ireland.

'Child Protection is Our Primary Duty'

One of the best known Columbans is Father Shay Cullen, from the class after me, who has been fighting for abused children and women here in the Philippines, and elsewhere, since the early 1970s.

He was featured in The Irish Times the other day in an article by David McNeill, Every day without compromise.

There are a number of points in the article that I would take issue with but what cannot be denied is Father Shay's total commitment as a priest to something that most prefer not to look at. He has lobbied in a number of countries, with some success, to get parliaments to pass laws that enable countries to bring to trial their own citizens accused of abusing children elsewhere.

In his weekly column, which is published in a number of papers throughout the world and may be freely used by anyone, Father Cullen has regularly written about the way that children are often thrown into prison and left there to languish. Often their only 'crime' is poverty.

This Columban priest is trying to ensure that the Philippines won't have need for a Ryan Report 50 years from now. In the light of the impact of that report on the Irish people and the Irish church right now, he is a beacon of hope not only in the Philippines but in his native Ireland, where he is well known.

Father Shay writes a weekly column, Reflections. Here is his latest.

Child Protection is Our Primary Duty

Fr Shay Cullens's columns are published in The Manila Times,in publications in Ireland, the UK, Hong Kong, and online.

Every incident of the abduction and trafficking of children which is rampant in Southeast Asia and in particular, the Philippines causes me to feel angry and more determined to do all I can together with the courageous Filipinos I work with. We can only eliminate the evil by writing, campaigning, and building awareness that will change public opinion and hopefully ignite national shame and commitment to stop it. Politicians in the Philippines have failed to pass the anti-child pornography bill and so hundreds, if not thousands, of children will continue to suffer as a result.

Our efforts are having an impact because our website that promotes children's rights was attacked by a hacker last week who tried to stop people visiting it. But with computer experts we were able to defeat that attacker. Abusers don't want you to know the truth. Consider the following: One million children are brought into the sex trade every year worldwide according to the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF). The International Labor Organization (ILO) states the figure as closer to 1.8 million. This means it is growing annually. Other sources say a global estimate of 8 million is more realistic as, of this, 80 to 90 percent are girls.

They are victims of criminal activity, recruited and paid for in remote impoverished villages. They are usually run-away street children or victims of sexual or physical abuse in the home and are picked up on the city streets by pimps and traffickers and sold to sex bars and clubs. They are the impoverished slum-dogs of our generation.

Preda Foundation is based in the Philippines and has campaigned against the enslavement of children and women since its founding in 1974. Presently, thousands of Europeans, North Americans, Australian and Asian ‘sex-tourists’ make Southeast Asia and, in particular, the Philippines, a prime destination for such human rights abuses. They create a demand for commercially-sexually exploited children (CSEC) that is satisfied by the Filipino sex Mafia, criminals, and men and women who recruit and supply minors to the sex industry.

Poverty is the main cause of vulnerable semi-illiterate children. As many as 80,000 to 100,000 Filipino children are trafficked into the sex industry yearly. This huge number is due to the extensive poverty in the Philippines. The huge population of children is rapidly growing and consists of about 34 million, while the total population of the Philippines is about 87 million. Out of every 100 children, 42 are impoverished, that is 14 million hungry children uneducated and easily exploited.

Factors that favor the Philippines as a destination for ‘sex-tourists’ include the low cost of living, the prevalence of English as a commonly-spoken language, the mimicry of the American lifestyle, cheap regional flights, widespread internet promotion of cyber-sex, lack of anti-prostitution laws, no specific anti-child-pornography laws (though there is one currently in congress), low or non-implementation of child protection laws and a lack of enforced anti-trafficking laws. Other weaknesses that allow the sexual exploitation of children are the culture of impunity for foreigners, a male machismo and false sense of entitlement to abuse, ascendancy and dominance.

The foreign ‘sex-tourist’ or foreign resident is emboldened by a culture of trusting and unsuspecting Filipino hospitality. The excessive official government protection given to tourists, the failure of the rule of law, bribery in the justice system and summary deportation instead of trial for suspected child abusers and rapists encourage this abuse and exploitation.

'Cyber-sex' is the use of children in live performances over the internet for paying customers. Now it is one of the most difficult crimes for the police to eliminate. But with a strong anti-child pornography law, much could be done to slow it down and bring some of the criminals to justice. The failure of the Philippine Congress to pass the law is another abuse by omission, against children by allowing them to be exploited with impunity. All of us in many nations have to do all we can to help the children. END

Visit http://www.preda.org/ for more related articles.

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Contact Fr Shay Cullen at the Preda Center, Upper Kalaklan, 2200 Olongapo City, Philippines. Email: preda@info.com.ph

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PREDA Information Office, PREDA Foundation, Inc.

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http://www.preda.org/