Airdate: Children of the Sex Trade
Two young sisters in the Philippines help former Australian police and Special Forces officers rescue underage girls from sex bars.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under Programming
On Thursday night ABC screens the documentary Children of the Sex Trade, in which two young sisters in the Philippines, Michelle (16) and Marisol (19), help former Australian police and Special Forces officers rescue underage girls from sex bars.
The girls, both abused by foreign men as children, had also worked in Subic Bay’s sex bars. They now work at PREDA, a human rights foundation set up in 1974 by Fr. Shay Cullen, an Irish Catholic priest.
They help three former Australian Federal Police officers, who have volunteered with PREDA, to investigate the Australian man who allegedly sexually abused Michelle, the younger sister when she was fourteen. They are joined by John Curtis, a former Special Forces officer and the founder of Grey Man, an organisation that rescued children from brothels in Asia. John leads the sting operation to rescue young girls from two Subic Bay sex bars catering exclusively to foreign men.
Director and producer Luigi Acquisto has had a strong interest in the issue of trafficking and child rights for many years. This has been reflected in two previous documentaries; Trafficked (2006) and sequel Trafficked – The Reckoning (2011).
9:30pm Thursday ABC.
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3 Responses
Hello Collin,
I have tried to match your comments with what was broadcast, but can’t see any connection. The show is still on ABC iView so if you watch it again you might reconsider them.
But if I have read your comments too harshly, like an investigator perhaps rather than a layperson, then I apologise for not getting the vibe of it all.
Luv.
One of the supposed former AFP detectives
I think the investigators didnt give much thought about the danger they were placing these girls in. They were supposed to be former detectives from the AFP.
The girls trusted them to protect them, and swore affidivats. Wasnt it explained to them that eventually the bar owners and others involved would eventully get access to those affidavits, through their solicitors, and find out who they were? Anyone with any real knowledge about what it is like over there, and with any regard for the welfare of those girls, would not have put them in that dangerous position.
After they had done as much as they could do there, the investigators all waltzed off back to Australia, or wherever they ame from, leaving the girls there in the lurch, being threatened and having to go into hiding.
Its just like they were abused again for the purpose of making this documentary.
Very important issue.