Two Australians and a New Zealander have been arrested after a raid on a suspected brothel as the Philippines stepped up a campaign against trafficking of women and children for sex, police say.
Investigators said they have yet to establish whether detained Australians Barry Burston, 69, and Raymond Anderson, 57, and Michael Watt, 59, from New Zealand, owned, operated or were customers at the suspected brothel.
Police raided the night club in the northern city of Angeles late on Thursday and found 42 alleged sex workers, including a 17-year-old girl that had earlier been reported missing by an aunt, chief investigator Samuel Pagdilao said on Friday.
"They (detained suspects) are being investigated by our women and children's protection section. We should be filing cases against them shortly," said Chief Superintendent Pagdilao, head of the police criminal investigation division.
Prostitution is illegal in the Philippines, Asia's Roman Catholic outpost, but the sex trade flourishes openly in many urban areas including Manila and Angeles, which until 1992 had hosted a US military base.
Police said they raided the Angeles club after an aunt alleged the 17-year-old girl was being held against her will and was being forced by one of the women suspects to serve a customer looking for paid sex.
The girl had left home a week earlier to look for a job but later contacted the aunt by phone alleging one of the women suspects was forcing her to sell sex to pay for her club uniform, Pagdilao said.
President Benigno Aquino has been stepping up efforts to curb human trafficking, which the US State Department said remains a serious problem in the impoverished former American colony.
Earlier this month, a lower court in the south sentenced two Swedish men to life in prison after their arrest in 2009 for operating a cybersex shop where 17 adult Filipinas performed naked on web cameras for paying internet clients.
Trafficking in people aged below 18 is punishableby life in prison, while trafficking in adults is punishable by up to 20 years in jail under a 2003 Philippine law.
Paying a trafficked person for sex is punishable by community service at the first offence, with a year-long prison term for repeat offenders.
Front page
RSS Feed