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Bringing Back the US Navy to Subic?
First Published: TBA Publication Date: 4th January 1994 Author's Name: Father Shay Cullen SSC If the US navy returns to Subic as the SBMA plans we will return to the past. Let us recall what it was like for thousands caught in the degrading web of of child prostitution. Beth is not her real name. But at 11 years old she was already a tough Filipino street child used to living rough, sleeping on the pavements or in doorways and occasionally when the police were trying to catch her in a small rickety hovel on the fringe of a garbage dump. Here the floor was soft to the foot as the layer of dirty soil covered a mound of filth and plastic bags. When it rained it became a soggy, squelching mess that oozed a black slime. That was the time when Beth and her little gang of street children left their hideout and looked for somewhere else to sleep. It was a time of danger. They usually begged for a living along Magsaysay drive that once notorious commercial sex district of Olongapo city that began at the gates of the then U.S. Naval base and ran for a kilometer of flashing neon lights and the thumping screaming anger of Hard Rock bands. Every night hundreds of U.S. Marines and sailors shouted at each other in foul language as they went from club to club gulping bottles of beer and picking out young bikini clad women and then shouting at them too as they took them to cheap hotels for a few hours of abuse. Some of the youngsters were only fifteen or sixteen and even younger. Olongapo was a city where they came from Vietnam to quench their hatred and their anger. It was here that they found they could conquer and crush without remorse or retaliation, they could dominate and subdue the weak and the vulnerable. Their failures of the battlefield were assuaged in drug induced amnesia and the haze of drunken orgies. Beth was born in Olongapo. Unwanted and unloved at home she took to the streets, joined a gang and was on her own. The one thing she learned quickly was that there were new clothes, lots of food, and a handful of money if she made friends with an American serviceman from the base. Many had apartments out in Olongapo. It was Beth's gang-mate Terry who told her about Larry Venaska early in 1992. He had a rented apartment at 28 Jones St. After giving the children money he invited them over for handouts and TV. He gave them food and money and told them that they owed him and then he lured them onto the bed to watch TV. There he sexually abused them in obscene ways. Afterwards they ran from the apartment shocked, hurt and frightened. It was months later that they told social workers what had happened to them. Many other children, some as young as eight and boys too had been subjected to every kind of sexual abuse by Venaska and they too told their story. Despite efforts to bring him to trial he disappeared from the base and there was no further cooperation from the American authorities. It is reality of the lives of these children that show the enormous loss of innocence and childhood for so many . The commercial sex industry collapsed almost overnight when the Base closed and put an end to the outrageous abuse of women and children. With the demand gone the supply evaporated .So many thought that the nightmare was over, that an era had passed for ever that there was a new beginning. From the heap of shame and exploitation Filipino dignity would truly rise and many who loved their country were determined never again to allow foreign troops to despoil our women and children or drag so many into that neocolonial dependence and subservience of a dehumanizing industry. With the departure of the navy there was great hope for a moral regeneration and spiritual renewal that would rise from the pain of the past to a spiritual life where there would respect for the rights of all. It was a time when national pride could reassert itself and the Philippines would move on from this sordid abuse of women and children to a economic life that would bring work with dignity and pride. Slow as it was in coming- more promises than reality, there was always hope. The recent news report that the SBMA is negotiating with the US navy to allow them access and port visits to Subic once again for oil, supplies and "rest and recreation" for the troops brings back the pain-filled images of the past and fears that there is no better future. It says we cannot live without the US navy and the sex industry. It is a terrible blow to national pride a decent into the black hole of the past and sex-slavery fro the future. Once again the brothel keepers will rush to welcome them, offer them impoverished women and children and extinguish hopes of a rebirth of dignity. Surely the national leadership will not approve and allow it to happen.They must know where to draw the line and will stand firm against the return of the brothel industry to Olongapo.
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