The children, born to young prostitutes, will never know their dads. They stopped through like thousands of other Australian men do, looking for cheap sex with young Asian women. They found it, but when the women fell pregnant, the men fled. Others don’t even know their children exist.
It’s no surprise the offspring of Australians are growing up in Angeles City, the entertainment capital of the Philippines. It’s practically a home away from home for many Australians, with hotel names like the Boomerang, the Swagman, the Eureka and the Walkabout.
They attract hordes of Australian men, thirsty for a drink and something else: A young woman for the night.
Described as “blow row” and a “supermarket of sex”, the red light district 85km north west of Manila is a hotbed of debauchery and fantasies fulfilled. Money changes hands quickly and sex is a commodity.
Nights out on the infamous Fields Avenue are sold as innocent fun for tourists. But beneath it all is an undercurrent of sadness and heartbreak and crime. It’s sex tourism targeted at and propagated by lonely, rich Australian men, and the consequences are long lasting for families left behind.
Journalist Margaret Simons toured Balibago recently. She wrote in The Monthly that she was one of the only western women in a city of tens of thousands of people.
More concerning still was her discovery that Australian men were fathering children to prostitutes and leaving them behind, either with knowledge of their birth or otherwise.
“Some of the fathers paid to support their children, then stopped. Some never paid at all. Some don’t even know they have children,” she wrote.
On her visit, she met Kevin, 10, who wants to be a pilot, and Francine, 7, who she says wants to be a teacher. Kevin’s father, she said, was a paedophile in his 50s who groomed his victim from Australia using social media.
“Kevin lives in a 9-metre-square shed patched together with scraps of building refuse,” she wrote.
She also met Judith, 19, who recently gave birth to three-month-old Jaden. His father picked her up in a bar and, according to the Monthly, doesn’t know he has a son.
The story paints a picture of a poverty perpetuated by Australian men and a sex industry dominated by them.
“In the front bar of the Walkabout Hotel on Fields Avenue, you sit elbow-to-elbow with middle-aged, board-short-wearing Australian men who could have been plucked from any suburban shopping mall,” Simons said.
“More of them are on the street, surrounded by women, moving like lords of creation.”
Tourism figures support what she saw first hand. Of the almost five million foreign tourists who enter the Philippines each year, Australians are the third biggest spenders. They’re not buying T-shirts and fridge magnets.
Dr Caroline Norma visited the Philippines in 1998, where she worked with an outreach program going bar-to-bar. She told underage women they had other choices and prostitution wasn’t the only way.
Seventeen years later, she says little has changed, and that Australian men are the biggest problem.
“Australian men were everywhere then,” she said.
Dr Norma, who teaches global and social studies at RMIT University, says Australian men are “taking advantage” of a sex industry driven by poverty and corruption.
“I did an internship with a women’s organisation and we did outreach to bars in 1998. By that stage, Australian men were everywhere, even as bar owners,” she said.
“Back then I was surprised because Australia didn’t have a military presence in the Philippines like America. There were Americans over there but that was slightly more understandable.”
She said she was not surprised to learn Australian men are still flocking to the Philippines because the attraction to Asian women in prostitution is stronger than ever.
“Prostitution of Asian women has become almost the model for prostitution in Australia,” she said.
“Rates of Asian women in Australian brothels are about 50 per cent. The research that’s been done in Australia all points towards increasing numbers of Asian women in Australian brothels.”
Margaret Simons wrote that in Angeles City, “the entire town — with a population of about 350,000 — is a brothel, and its support system”.
$400m is spent on prostitution in the Philippines each year, a large chunk of that from the pockets of Australian sex tourists.
A website promoting Balibago (balibago.com) makes it easy to see why. It promotes young women as sexual slaves.
“In a city that never sleeps, these women are desperate to show you a good time and are known for their love of recreational sex,” the website declares.
“Praised for their tolerance to western culture, these girls are hungry to meet you regardless of your age, weight, physical appearance, interpersonal skills, wealth or social class.”
Another website explains how a typical night on Fields Avenue might go and offers tips for visitors. It describes how to procure a lady for the night.
Men there pay bar fines — an amount of money to a bar owner to secure a prostitute for the night or longer. The money buys them sex and even the “girlfriend experience”.
Margaret Simons said Australian men are looking for underage women. That’s the reason they go. Others don’t ask the age of the prostitute, but are equally complicit in keeping the sex trafficking industry thriving.
“Australians are also one of the groups most active in child sex tourism, although in Angeles City, it seems, most of this is not “preferential” but situational — men who have sex with prostitutes and simply don’t care about their age,” she wrote.
Dr Norma agrees.
“This idea that western men don’t know the age of Asian women because they look the same as other Asian woman is false,” she said.
“Even in western counties, the average age of entry into prostitution is 16, 15, 14. Men who seek to prostitute girls are looking for younger girls. Any pimp will tell you ‘the younger the better’.”
The Philippines, sadly, is the not the only Asian country where sex tourism has taken hold. It has been happening in Thailand for generations. Disturbingly, it has also increased in Nepal following the deadly earthquake that killed more than 9000 people in April this year.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), children who lost their families when entire villages were destroyed have been trafficked into the sex industry.
Tomoo Hozumi, working with UNICEF in Nepal, said he feared a surge in trafficking during the chaos of April and May and his fears were realised.
“Loss of livelihoods and worsening living conditions may allow traffickers to easily convince parents to give their children up for what they are made to believe will be a better life,” he said.
“The traffickers promise education, meals and a better future. But the reality is that many of those children could end up being horrendously exploited and abused.”
Trafficking in the Philippines happens for similar reasons.
Dr Norma said much of the problem is generational — a young girls’ mother is a prostitute and her daughter follows in her footsteps. It’s mostly driven by poverty but she said Australian men can’t shy away from their part in the problem.
“Poverty is one thing, but it’s also lax laws on foreign ownership of businesses, there’s lax laws in relation to employing children and having them on the bar plus corruption on top of that. Having said that, Australian men are taking advantage of the whole thing.”
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