Despite the spread of COVID-19, ongoing lockdowns and severe economic downturns, we are grateful that the work of the PREDA Foundation successfully continued during 2020, and with the help and support of all our benefactors, is ready to continue in the year ahead.
PREDA Foundation, fair-trade. Photo: PREDA Foundation
Perhaps the most important achievement for 2020 was freedom from COVID-19 for all the children and staff of the PREDA Foundation. The protective measures implemented and strictly maintained made this possible.
During the year as many as 100 children were saved from abusive situations and helped to recover at the five PREDA Homes. A very pleasing record of healing and empowerment! Forty-one girls were rescued and saved from sex abusers, human traffickers and sex slavery and, at present, there are 43 children in the homes for girls, the youngest only three years old. They were welcomed, given affirmation, support and all their personal needs from when they arrived.
One shocking story concerns Grace who at 13 years of age was raped by her biological father while her mother held her down! A horrific heinous crime! She was warned not to tell anyone, but courageously she told her sister who told a neighbour. Then it was reported to the police and she was rescued and referred to the PREDA Home. She is now safe and has begun to heal and recover from the trauma she experienced. With the other children, Grace joined many activities and volunteered to take Emotional Release Therapy. She cried and shouted out her pain and anger at her abusive parents. Gratefully, these children can slowly emerge from their fear and trauma and begin to smile again.
Legal action by the healing and empowered children in PREDA Homes has been very successful in 2020 despite the lockdown and closure of the courts for several months. Assisted by PREDA, children succeeded in winning 16 convictions against rapists and traffickers. In one major case, a young trafficker and pimp, who sold two young girls to a foreign paedophile to be abused many times, received two life sentences in Angeles City. But the U.S. national was able to escape. Most of the convicted received life sentences preventing them from further crimes.
Many more cases filed by PREDA children are waiting to be resolved by the prosecutors and others are held up in the judicial system waiting for a hearing, some since 2014. For the first time in our history, children participated in court hearings online, a more child-friendly way than appearing in the courtroom in the presence of their abusers.
The PREDA Foundation has two homes for male Children in Conflict with the Law (CICL), one in Zambales and one in Cebu. PREDA rescues boys from filthy and inhuman government detention centres. These children frequently suffer abuse and even torture in the hands of older inmates and prison guards. In 2020, PREDA rescued more than thirty boys in Zambales and brought them to the PREDA Home to start a new life. In Cebu, fifteen boys were rescued and are recovering in the PREDA New Dawn Home in Liloan.
In PREDA children, some as young as ten years old, told their stories of torture and abuse in Government detention centres. PREDA reported these stories to the Philippine Commission on Human Rights and, with help from international supporters, the Philippine Commission on Human Rights was encouraged to open an investigation. This investigation confirmed the torture and new measures are in place to monitor and prevent future cases.
In Olongapo City PREDA contributed to the drafting of a new anti-trafficking ordinance and conducted the rescue of 18 trafficked women, among them four minors, at a beach resort in Barangay Barretto. The minors were referred to the PREDA Home for care and healing.
In 2020, the PREDA Foundation continued and strengthened lobbying with other Non-Government Organisations to block changing the child protection law to reduce the age of criminal liability to 12 years old and succeeded in maintaining it at 15 years of age.
In the face of the pandemic we campaigned for the release of children from detention centres and as many as 350 children were released by the authorities to their parents. Some of these were rescued by PREDA social workers. However, many more minors, with cases pending, remain in jails.
On December 4, 2020, the PREDA Foundation turned over six laptops and installed a full CCTV system in the St Francis Learning Centre in Subic town for the use of indigenous Aeta children of Zambales.
The learning centre is an excellent boarding and day school run by the Franciscan Sisters exclusively for indigenous children to give them a peaceful environment for learning without the discrimination, bullying and racist remarks that some lowland children inflict on the indigenous children. The laptops were donated by Paul Gorrie of the Navigator Network.
PREDA has also worked with 361 Aeta subsistence farmers in Zambales and provided them with relief food packages of rice and mixed groceries four times in 2020. Similar food relief packages, candies and toys for children were distributed to 320 poor families in Olongapo City area three times in 2020. PREDA gave additional support to Aeta families by purchasing organically produced mangoes from them at higher fair-trade prices.
PREDA wishes to thank all who participated in these projects over the past year by generous financial and spiritual support. We are eternally grateful.
Columban Fr Shay Cullen SSC has been a missionary in the Philippines since 1969 and is the founder of PREDA (People’s Recovery, Empowerment, Development Assistance Foundation).
Listen to "A great outcome in the face of a pandemic"
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