The financial sector's role in protecting children from online abuse

Point of view

- By ERIC FAVILA and ERIN CANINO

On Nov. 1, 2024, the Paris Assizes Court sentenced a 59-year-old French citizen to 25 years for complicity in the trafficking, rape and sexual assault of hundreds of minors.

Between 2012 and 2021, this former Disney and Pixar graphic artist had paid over 50,000 euros to dozens of Filipino recipients to live-stream the sexual abuse and torture of Filipino girls aged five to 10 years old.

This is only one offender among thousands.

The Online Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children (OSAEC) is a commercial crime and a multimillion-dollar industry in the Philippines.

The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) found that suspicious transaction reports identifying OSAEC-related remittances amounted to P1.56 billion between 2020-2022, and that number only includes reported transactions.

For relatively low value payments, the demand-side offenders, usually men in primarily Western countries, pay for and direct the sexual abuse of children online.

Offenders and traffickers use anonymous chat rooms, popular messenger services and social media sites to "meet" each other and coordinate the sale of live-streamed abuse and exchange child sexual abuse or exploitation materials (CSAEM).