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Philippines’ generation of sex tourism children

As sex tourists depart Balibago, they leave behind a growing number of children conceived in illicit exchanges.

Monday evening at 'Dolls House' Go-Go bar, one of the largest establishments on Fields Avenue. The Fields Avenue red light strip originally emerged to service the Clark US Air Force Base, which closed in 1991. Angeles City is now a centre for international sex tourism.
By Dave Tacon
Published On 12 Mar 2015

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Correction, 6/7/2015: An earlier version of this article cited a former US ambassador to the Philippines as saying that 40 percent of all visitors to the country are sex tourists. The former ambassador later apologised for his remarks and admitted that he did not have any data to back them up. 

Angeles City, Philippines – Weekends are busy on Fields Avenue in Balibago. Young women greet meandering men and invite them into the bars that line the street. Known as the “supermarket of sex”, Angeles City’s red light district has fast become a top destination for sex tourism.

Male travellers from Asia, Australia, the US, Europe and the Middle East constitute the bulk of the arrivals at Clark Airport, a former US military airbase. From there, many flock to the bars and clubs of Fields Avenue – and to the impoverished young women who work there.

Acquiring their company for the night is straightforward. For a small fee, the men obtain what is known as an “early work release” that permits them to take the woman of their choice back to their hotel.

It is a trade that thrives in the Philippines, where there are an estimated half-a-million sex workers, almost a fifth of whom are minors. Although illegal in the predominantly Catholic country, an estimated $400m is spent on prostitution there each year.

But when the sex tourists depart, they sometimes leave more behind than they’d arrived with. A large number of children have been conceived in such exchanges and while some foreign nationals provide support for and, in some instances, even marry the mother of their child, many more children never even meet their biological father and are left to live in poverty.
Fiona, 7, Tristan, 5, and their mother Jennifer 32, at their home in the Hardian 3 slum. Jennifer met Tristan's father, Jason, an Australian now living in the US, while she was working at Dolls House Go-Go bar on Fields Ave. He visited Tristan when he was one month old. Tristan receives occasional financial support from Jason, a manager at an Ikea store in California.
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Peter, 8, and his mother Grace, 35, with a picture of Peter's Australian father, Max. The picture was taken during one of Max's visits to the Philippines. Grace met Max when she was 24 and he was 78, while she was working in a bar in Angeles City's red light district. Unlike many children of sex tourists, Peter's father signed the boy's birth certificate, helped him obtain an Australian passport and bought them the house in which they now live. Grace and Peter have not heard or received financial support from Peter's father in four months. Grace hopes to obtain welfare payments from the Australian government.
Peter, and some of his classmates outside the Learn Yearn Nurture School for Young near his home in Balibago. Four of the 50 students at this private primary school have Australian fathers.
Peter and his mother are struggling to get by on around $100 a month by renting out a room in the house that the father bought for them. Compared to other children born to foreign fathers, Peter is fortunate.
The bars' workers, who are from impoverished rural areas, earn money by tourists buying 'lady drinks' and providing sex to customers who are mainly from South Korea, Australia, and the US. Direct flights to Clark Airport cater to the trade with flights arriving on Thursday and Friday, departing on Sunday and Monday.
Sometimes long-term relationships or marriage result from liaisons between prostitutes and foreign nationals, but this is a rarity.
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Francine, 7, sits in her family's home in the Hadrian 3 slum as her grandfather washes vegetables. Francine, whose father is Australian, lives with her mother, her five half-siblings, her aunt and her aunt's two children and her grandfather in a 70sq m home. Francine has never met her father who ended all contact with her mother shortly after she informed him that she was pregnant. Her father met her mother while she was working at a bar in the red light district.
Robert, 18 months, watches television with his mother, Mylene, 37. Mylene used to recruit girls from Manila for work in Angles City's red light district and met Robert's father, a US citizen, while at Owl's Nest, a Go-Go bar on Fields Avenue. After a 20-month relationship with the 55-year-old, a three-time divorcee who lives in the Philippines on a tourist visa, he left Mylene for another woman. Although the father signed Robert's birth certificate his new girlfriend convinced him not to get his son a US passport. He occasionally sends money to Mylene and his son.
Renz, 8, (right) whose father is believed to be Norwegian, and his mother Nelcy, 30, with his two half-brothers at their home in the Hadrian 3 slum. Nelcy says Renz's father, Frank, who is in his 60s and lives in the Philippines with his Filipina wife, was a regular at the Dirty Dog Go-Go bar where she used to work. After she became pregnant, she was unable to contact Frank. At one point Nelcy saw Frank on the street after her child was born and approached him. He refused to believe he was father to her child. 'Sometimes he's bullied by other kids because he's different,' says Nelcy about Renz. 'But he always fights back.'
Azumi, 2, and her mother Angelica, 25, at the accommodation provided to them by Renew, a charity that helps Filipina women who leave the sex trade. Angelica claims Azumi's father is a German national named Ralf, 50, who is the owner of Camelot bar on Fields Avenue. Ralf has been confronted by both Angelica and a representative from Renew, but he denies that Azumi is his daughter and also refuses to take a paternity test.

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