BOUND. An 18-year old woman was arrested with her live-in partner and his mother for their alleged cyber pornography business. (CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA)
Sweetie 2.0 to be launched next year; 5 rescued kids in Cordova turned over to DSWD
Dutch children’s rights organization Terre des Hommes is developing an advanced version of Sweetie, a computer-generated image posing as a 10-year-old Filipino girl in chat rooms, as part of the fight against online child abuse.
Alwin de Leon, Terre des Hommes Philippines country director, said Sweetie 2.0 will be launched next year not to cause the arrest of more child offenders but to reduce the demand for minor victims of abuse online.
“We have to deal with the demand. As long as there is demand, there will be supply. The main thrust of Sweetie 2.0 is to stop the crime before it actually takes place. It is one way to scare offenders and keep them from child pornography in the first place,” de Leon said during the “Ako Para sa Bata” international conference organized by the Child Protection Network last week.
Sweetie 2.0 is a chat robot that acts like she is following orders from child offenders online, doing sex acts for them while extracting their identities. The earlier version of Sweetie brought about the arrest of 1,000 child offenders.
“It will be able to detect you as a person, all information coming from Skype, email, even Facebook can be retrieved. It can scan public chatrooms and will detect or zoom in to individuals searching for minor sex victims,” said de Leon.
Such information will be sent to the international police. The chat robot can also take real time screen shots of the conversations. De Leon said repetitive “warning pop-ups” will be shown to everyone who wants to chat with Sweetie 2.0 for sexual play.
“Many people are just curious and they go to a chat room, wanting to try to communicate with minors. This is to tell them that they should think twice or thrice before entering or to let them know that they are well-monitored,” said de Leon.
RESCUED
Five children were rescued last Saturday in barangay Cogon, Cordova from an 18-year-old mother who used her camera phone to take sex videos for male customers in the US.
Emma Patalinghug, children’s welfare specialist of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), said the five kids are under their custody.
As of yesterday, no visitors were allowed to see the children. No immediate relatives went to the DSWD to claim the children.
“Of course, we will follow the interventions which will be done after establishing relationship (with them). The incident is too fresh for them,” Patalinghug said.
A 10-year-old girl was rescued from her aunt, 18-year-old Jaimie, while four other kids, aged 12 and below, were rescued from the mother of Jaimie’s live-in partner.
Both Jaimie and the mother of her live-in partner were arrested while the boyfriend claimed he did not know anything about the cyber pornography business.
FOCUS
During the “Ako Para sa Bata” conference last week, de Leon of Terre des Hommes said Cebu is among the provinces that they are focused on because of the heavy influx of tourists here.
“Some foreigners might be coming here to see the kids they have communicated with online,” he said.
Terre des Homes has been partnering with non-government organizations in the Philippines to fight the rampant online child abuse.
“We are here to spread the information about Sweetie 2.0, to prevent further offenders in victimizing minors online. We have to discourage them if we want to diminish the demand,” he said. De Leon was among the seven signatories who committed, at the end of the conference, to protect minors from online offenders.