They were groomed, abused, and sold online. Now the children tell their story. By Patricia Evangelista. In this first of a series, Rappler focuses on survivors of online child sexual exploitation. It is a hidden, underreported crime, made easier by predators needing little more than an internet connection to exploit minors in vulnerable communities. The young women in the stories below have survived years of abuse and trauma. They call themselves advocates and refuse to define themselves as victims. They speak in the hope that by telling their stories, fewer children across the country will be forced to endure what they had to go through.

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Manila CNN Philippines Life — A friend was scrolling through a porn website when he stumbled upon a disturbing discovery. My friend could not bear to click the link, so it is unknown what kinds of videos turn up when the suggestion is clicked. This is the devastating reality we live in. Children as young as 12 to 17 years old are forced by parents or guardians into prostitution to make money. Sometimes, the children voluntarily enter the trade themselves.
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Sex tourism has long been a scourge in the Philippines. But now there's a disturbing new trend in the trafficking of mostly young women and children: vulnerable victims are being lured online and tricked into the trade. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports. Next: a disturbing new trend in the trafficking of mostly young women and children into the sex trade. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from the Philippines on what police call cyber-trafficking. Sex tourism has long been a scourge in the Philippines, an industry that thrives on trafficked human beings and deep poverty in this nation of million. Recent studies have shown that anywhere from to more than thousand Filipinos are trafficked each year; 80 percent, four out of five, are under the age of
By Ed Wight For Mailonline. These chilling images show a paedophile beauty pageant of Filipino girls as young as 11 are lined up in a cybersex den for perverts to choose one to be abused on a webcam. The girls are forced to smile as they are raped on camera as voyeuristic paedophiles instruct abusers what to do with them. Scroll down for video. Chilling: A pot-bellied paedophile poses with a year-old girl he met and selected to have sex with. He watched her perform sex acts on a webcam and travelled to the Philippines to abuse her. Paedophile pageant: Girls aged just 11, 17, 15, 14 and 12, all work in Ilican City's brothels. In one photo, an overweight pervert leers at the camera as he grasps a year-old girl in one hand and a shot glass in the other. And in another a suspected British paedophile is pictured sat bare-chested in front of his computer watching a Filipino girl aged 13 in a cybersex show. The sickening abuse was exposed in an undercover investigation by Belgian journalist Peter Bridge - whose name has been changed to protect his identity.