Outsourcing cybersex

Girls acting out the sexual fantasies of online voyeurs around the world are part of a worrying offshoot to the Philippines' booming outsourcing industry, authorities tell the AFP.

Cybersex dens are a growing problem in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation that has long struggled to curb child prostitution, according to law enforcers and social workers.

They say cyber pimps are offering cheap services via the Internet in a seedy mutation of the country's sunshine outsource industry in which call centre work and other back-office operations are done for companies in richer countries.

In one recent police raid on a house in Olangapo city in the northern Philippines, five girls aged 14-18 and three women were found performing sex acts in front of web cameras for clients sitting at computers overseas.

"It's a lot like working for a call centre. We do shifts and we chat. They can also make us do anything, as long as they pay," said one of the girls picked up in the raid who used the working nickname of Rainbow.

Migdonio Congzon of the National Bureau of Investigation said the country needed a law that directly addressed outsourced cybersex, because the current ones on child prostitution were not specific enough to deal with the Internet age.

Source: The Straits Times/ANN
Published Dec 14 2010