What progress is being made on behalf of "children in conflict with the law?"

    Poverty, absence of parental guidance and violence in the home produce children that roam the  streets and become involved in drug abuse, gang activities, and crime.

Here is an interesting article regarding responses by governmental and non-governmental organizations to the challenges involved in helping children in conflict with the law. While there is an increasing number of "Bahay Pag-asa" youth centers being opened, there are only two Lasallian Bahay Pag-asa centers - one associated with the University of Saint La Salle in Bacolod City and the other associated with De La Salle University, Dasmariñas. These two youth centers are unique in their connection with the De La Salle Brothers of the Philippines and the greater Lasallian educational mission. Our centers have particular emphases on education (both for academic advancement and for livelihood training), spiritual formation and development in the Catholic tradition, and an extended commitment of the staff to helping residents and former residents realize their full potential as citizens and as "sons of God." We believe that this holistic approach to rehabilitation helps heal the wounds of past abuse and wrongdoing and provides a positive direction based on the uplifting of the human spirit. 

Children in Conflict with the Law

Lasallian Teamwork Helps Bahay Pag-asa!

It's a wonderful thing to know that friends, far away, are working to help you. So we, at Bahay Pag-asa, want to send our thanks to "Sue, Patty, Sarah and Josh" at Saint Mary's College of California for helping to set up our library catalog. Our January volunteers (Margaret, Cody, Jaime, Shane and Frankie) will be bringing / shipping over 750 new books for our library. You can even see what they're bringing by checking our online catalog at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/BahayPag-Asa. Margaret Brown-Salazar (librarian at SMC) will then work with the student volunteers and our own residents to evaluate our existing library at BPYC and add what is still useful to our new catalog. As Lasallian education becomes more and more a global effort, its exciting to see this kind of trans-oceanic teamwork and forging of new partnerships (friendships, really). The boys at Pag-asa are just amazed that people are doing all of this to help them re-direct their lives and make hope happen here.

A Dangerous World for Children in Conflict with the Law

A common form of torture used against crime suspects, including minors.

(Photo courtesy of Amnesty International)

At Bahay Pag-asa, we hear many stories from the young people entrusted to our care.  One would be tempted not to believe some of these tales of mistreatment, but this excerpt from an Amnesty International Report ("Above the Law: Police Torture in the Philippines") confirms much of what we are told by our residents.  This is why we are now working with future police officers to provide education about the Juvenile Justice Reform Act and its amendment (RA 9344 and RA 10630) as well as giving them an experience of meeting "children in conflict with the law" in a setting that demonstrates the promise of rehabilitation and presents an image of CICLs not as criminals but as potential good and productive citizens.  And, at the same time, we have to recognize the trauma that has been experienced by some of our boys and exercise patience, gentleness and compassion while helping them along the road to wholeness and recognition of their worth, responsibilities and potential.  We also recognize that the problems presented here are not peculiar to the Philippines - the mistreatment of children in conflict with the law is widespread.

Many victims of torture and ill-treatment interviewed by Amnesty International in November 2013 were children who invariably came from underprivileged backgrounds.

The Philippines is a State party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Under the CRC, State parties are required to ensure protection and care necessary for the well-being of a child137 (defined as being below the age of 18138), including the provision of separate detention facilities for children.139 State parties are encouraged to establish a minimum age for criminal liability and, whenever appropriate and desirable, to create measures for dealing with children suspected of committing a crime without resorting to judicial proceedings.140 The Convention also prohibits torture and other ill-treatment of children.141

THE JUVENILE JUSTICE WELFARE ACT OF 2006 (JJWA) Section 21 of the JJWA provides for the following safeguards when detaining a child. It states that law enforcement officers must:  Inform the child in simple and understandable language of the reasons for being placed under custody and of his/her rights under the law;   Properly identify themselves;   Avoid using vulgar or profane words, and from sexually harassing or abusing, or making sexual advances on a child;  Avoid displaying or using any firearm, weapon, handcuffs or other instruments of force or restraint unless absolutely necessary;   Avoid violence or unnecessary force;   Immediately, but not later than eight hours after apprehension, turn over custody of the child to the Social Welfare and Development Office or other accredited NGOs and notify the child’s parents/guardians and the Public Attorney’s Office; and  Take the child to a medical and health officer for thorough physical and medical examination.

It further provides that:  Where detention is necessary, law enforcement officers must secure the child in quarters separate from adults

In the Philippines, the minimum age of criminal responsibility is 15 years and one day.142 Under the Juvenile Justice Welfare Act of 2006 (Republic Act No. 9344), children aged 15 years and younger are exempt from criminal liability and, if arrested, must shortly thereafter be released to their parents/guardian, or to a duly registered non-governmental or religious organization, a barangay official (elected village-community leader) or to a social worker.143 Children aged above 15 but below 18 are also exempt from criminal liability unless they can demonstrate “discernment” (the mental capacity to understand the difference between right and wrong and its consequences). In such cases, the child would be required to undertake a so-called “diversion programme” which, depending on the gravity of the criminal offence, may be developed and implemented by either the law enforcement officer, barangay official (elected village-community council), a local social worker or the court144 at any stage of the investigation or judicial proceeding.145 A “diversion programme” may include a written or oral reprimand or citation, fine, payment of the cost of proceedings, and/or institutional care and custody in the hands of NGOs providing services to children.146

In cases where diversion is not possible and the case goes to court, the JJWA provides for trained prosecutors to handle the case. Prosecutors are obliged to investigate allegations of torture or other ill-treatment of a child during arrest or detention.147 Cases specifically involving children are heard before especially designated family courts.148  However, many of these safeguards are not respected in practice. Amnesty International documented cases where children were not informed of the suspected offences for which they were arrested, were not immediately transferred to the care of a social worker, and were detained with adult detainees in crowded detention cells. They also suffered torture or other ill-treatment at the hands of the police.

Amnesty International researchers met several children under the custody of NGOs providing child care services.  In April 2013, Melvin (not his real name), aged 16, was arrested for stealing from a house in Metro Manila.149 A neighbour allegedly saw him and reported him to the police. Melvin initially went into hiding but eventually turned himself in.  Melvin told Amnesty International that while he was detained at the police station, a police officer took him out of his cell, beat him and punched him in the stomach, and kicked him as he was lying on the floor. He was told he was being punished for an earlier incident in which he was mistakenly implicated in an argument with another child detainee. Melvin said the police officer also hit him with a plastic baton while walking him towards the detention cell for adults. Once inside the cell, the officer ordered him to hang from the bars of the cell so that his feet could not touch the floor.  He was then returned to the children’s cell.

“My hands were not tied, but I was told to hold on to the bars and hang from them, just stay like that. He told me that if I fell off, I would have to do 1,000 push-ups... I held on to the bars like that for about 90 minutes. My arms were hurting.”  Melvin said the same police officer made him and his fellow child detainees do 1,000 push-ups several times as a punishment for minor misdemeanors such as his cell not being considered clean.  Although Melvin said that his parents complained to the police and the Department of Social Welfare and Development about the abuse he suffered, there was no follow-up.

Johnson (not his real name) was arrested for theft in 2012. He was 17 years old, but already on his fifth arrest on theft-related charges.150 He told Amnesty International that he and a companion sneaked into a house in Metro Manila at dawn and stole some valuables. The owner of the house chased and caught them.  Johnson said three police officers arrived and allowed bystanders to beat both of them, as well as beating the two themselves. “Many of them kicked me. I tried to hide my face. I sustained a swelling and suffered bruises. It took one week for the bruises to heal. The police also hit my jaw and I lost consciousness.”  Johnson was then taken to a police station where he said he was ordered to clean a toilet. While doing so, a police officer came and punched him on the stomach several times. Johnson described to Amnesty International what happened next: “They brought me inside the cell and forced me to hang from the bars for about 30 minutes. My hands were holding on to the bars while my feet were also hanging. It was difficult and tiring. The police threatened that if I fell, they would beat me up. I was so scared, I made sure I didn’t fall.”

Johnson told Amnesty International that a police officer entered the cell and hit him with a rifle. Another officer, whom the police called “chief,” placed a sword on his side, asking him if the blade would cut through his body. Then, using a pistol cartridge, the same officer hit Johnson’s fingers so hard that two of his fingers turned black with blood clots and then placed bullets between Johnson’s fingers and pressed them together. “It hurt a lot. It felt like my fingers would break. I thought I was going to die then. I had bruises on my chest, back, sides and thighs. The bruises lasted for a week and turned violet.” However, the nurse who examined him did not look at the bruises beneath his clothes after the police told her members of the public had beaten him.  “I didn’t think of complaining because no one would believe me,” Johnson said. “But what the police did to me was wrong. I cannot forget what happened to me. Each time I recall what happened, I get furious... I can still remember their faces.”

Julius (not his real name) was 16 when he was arrested in 2012 accused of stealing the earrings of a barangay captain (head of the elected village-community council).151 He told Amnesty International that when the police saw him, they said, “You’re here again, we should have killed you the first time.” But Julius insisted it was the first time he was ever arrested. Four police officers then placed three bullets in between his fingers and squeezed the fingers together fiercely. “It was very painful. There were marks on my fingers even after they took the bullets out,” he said. “They beat me with a truncheon on my soles. It was many times, I lost count.”  When asked if he filed a complaint, Julius said: “I wanted to file a complaint because I know what they were doing is wrong but I fear that they will kill me.” He added, “It’s better to be jailed at once than be interviewed by the police, because the police will kill you.”  Being forced to assume stressful bodily positions such as hanging from the bars in the cell for long periods is expressly recognized as a physical form of torture under the ATA, along with systematic beatings and being hit with a hard object. The ATA imposes the highest penalty of up to 40 years’ imprisonment on those convicted of torturing children.

Amnesty International also met a child suspect in the custody of a child-care institution in Zambales province. Jonathan (not his real name), a construction worker, was 17 when he was arrested in September 2012 in Metro Manila.152 Onlookers caught him and another friend robbing two women in a crowded street at night. Jonathan said his friend enticed him to commit the crime to raise money to buy drugs.  Jonathan told Amnesty International that several people beat them up, punched them and hit them with a scooter. One person stabbed his right thigh with a sharp object. The beatings only stopped when one tanod (community peace and security officer) took him and his friend to the police station.  Inside the police station, Jonathan said that a police officer poked him with a sharpened pencil in the chest. He said that four policemen punched him in the stomach, on the sides and in the ribs, despite having been informed by the tanod that Jonathan was only 17 and therefore a child. They continued hitting him as they brought Jonathan and his friend to a jail in Metro Manila. Jonathan told Amnesty International that police officers punched them in different parts of their bodies and dared them to grab their guns so the police could shoot them. Jonathan said he heard one of the policemen say, “Let’s kill them”. He thinks that the police did not kill them only because it would have been witnessed by a tanod.  At the jail later that night, a man in white t-shirt and jeans wearing a gun, who seemed to be a person of official authority, grabbed Jonathan and his companion by the backs of their necks and banged their heads together. Then Jonathan and his friend were questioned separately. Jonathan was forced to “confess” that he had stabbed one of the women they robbed.

The police then took Jonathan and his friend to a hospital where the woman was being treated. A man, whom Jonathan assumed to be the father of the victim, punched him in front of the police officer. The police then took them to another hospital for medical examination. On the way, the police officers continued hitting them. At the hospital, Jonathan said they could not say anything to the doctor because the three policemen who beat them up were in the same room.  After the medical examination, the police took them to another police station where three policemen placed bullets in between their fingers and forcibly squeezed their hands. Then, apparently satisfied with the immediate punishment, the police officers made them promise never to repeat the robbery, and took them to separate rooms to be interviewed.  Jonathan said that after that night, both he and his friend cried in pain. He saw that his companion had bruises covering his body and his eyes were red. “I really can’t forget the beatings we suffered at the hands of the policemen... I feel like crying whenever I remember that. I used to want to be a policeman when I grow up, but seeing how they operate, I have now given up on that dream. I can’t forget what they did to me. I will never forget.”

Jonathan and his companions were taken to the prosecutor for questioning on the third day following their arrest. “The prosecutor asked us to tell if the police did anything to us. But I could not say anything as I was really scared of them. The policemen were standing beside me. Every time the prosecutor asked, I would look at the policemen on the side, who would stare at us, and then I would keep quiet.”  Jonathan added that he was also taken to the Public Attorney’s Office and the Department of Social Welfare and Development but was advised to confess to the crime so he could go home sooner.  “I really wanted to complain, but I could not recall the faces of those who beat us. I looked for them at the hearings, but have not seen them there,” he said. 

Are We Needed?

A Saturday morning class at Bahay Pag-asa

Some people have asked us this question.  If, as a result of laws passed in the Philippines, municipalities and regions are required to set up centers for youth in conflict with the law, then what is the need for non-governmental organization (NGOs) to do the same.  Can this effort be left in the hand of governmental agencies.

The answer to that question became painfully obvious recently when the conditions at one government-run center for street kids and abandoned or abused children were exposed by visitors from an NGO.  The story made headlines here:

Nathaniel R. Melican
Philippine Daily Inquirer
5:45 AM | Sunday, November 16th, 2014

MANILA, Philippines—Officials running a local government facility in Manila that is supposed to shelter and nurture street children have come under fire for acts of negligence and maltreatment so severe that shocked observers likened the place to a “concentration camp.”

To stress just how bad things are at the Manila Reception and Action Center (RAC), welfare advocates wrote City Hall for the third time last month. This time, they enclosed a photo of “Frederico,” one of the wards, showing the boy lying on the pavement, reduced to skin and bones.

Frederico’s appalling condition showed the kind of care—or the lack of it—that children like him had been receiving at the RAC, according to Catherine Scerri, deputy director of Bahay Tuluyan, a nongovernment organization promoting children’s rights.

It was Scerri who took Frederico’s photo on Oct. 12 during a visit to the center, which is located on Villegas Street in Ermita, a five-minute walk from City Hall.

“We don’t know much about his identity,” Scerri said of the boy, who had since been transferred to another youth center with Bahay Tuluyan’s help. When examined up close, the emaciated child sported rashes and a “black eye,” she recalled.

Based on the scant details she had gathered, Frederico was found abandoned in Paco and brought to the center on March 8. After seven months, for reasons still unclear, the RAC staff members have yet to determine his real name, age and address. They cited the lack of funds for medical treatment to explain the boy’s pitiful state, she said.

“It can definitely be described as a prison. (My colleagues) have compared it to a concentration camp. It is supposed to rehabilitate street children but it is not a child-friendly place,” Scerri told the Inquirer in an interview on Thursday.

Operated by the Manila Social Welfare Department (MSWD), the RAC was established about 30 years ago as a place where the police or village watchmen can bring child vagrants and beggars. It occupies a cluster of buildings built in the 1930s.

In February, a month before Frederico arrived at the RAC, the Manila-based NGO sent the first of a series of letters to Mayor Joseph Estrada and MSWD chief Shiela Marie Lacuna-Pangan, raising its concerns.

The letter, signed by BT Executive Director Lily Flordelis, called on the officials to improve the conditions at the RAC—or just close the place down if they could not do it.

Aside from poor health and nutrition, violence—bred by overcrowding and strained resources—has been part of the children’s daily diet of misery. “Many children we have spoken to complained that they were physically abused, assaulted and even tortured by the RAC staff,” Flordelis said.

These incidents largely went unreported to higher authorities, she said. If ever documented in cases where the victim had to undergo a medical examination, the resulting reports were “very superficial” because the examination was done “in the presence of the same officials who had beaten up the child, thereby inhibiting (full) disclosure” of the injuries.

In the interview, Scerri also noted that “bullying” was apparently being tolerated at the center.

During an earlier visit, she said, she caught “two boys carrying a younger boy by his wrists and ankles. I was alarmed so I intervened after the workers there didn’t do anything. When I talked to the young boy, who was about 10 years old, he was terrified because he almost got beaten up.”

Bahay Tuluyan also noted how RAC personnel had failed to notify the children’s parents and guardians weeks or months after the minors arrived there.

“The center officials said the place can accommodate about 100 people, but on any given day there can be as many 400 there. Recently I saw about 160 boys sharing a room just about five-by-six meters wide. They have nothing in there but a bucket—for those who need to pee,” Scerri said.

Sought for comment, Estrada said he had “reprimanded the head of the MSWD (Pangan) and the RAC for this.”

“They said they did not mean to neglect the child (Frederico) and that this is an isolated case. I have ordered the MSWD to improve the treatment of children there. This won’t be repeated. If it happens again, heads will roll,” the mayor, adding that he found the boy’s photo disturbing.

He vowed to pour in more funds for the center. “Hopefully next year we can improve RAC and its facilities; we expect (the city government) to be debt-free by then. We don’t see a need to shut down RAC’s operations. The services there will improve.”

Pangan and RAC officials, led by acting chief Gloria Antonio, did not respond to Inquirer requests for an interview.

Scerri said Estrada made the same pledge when she and other Bahay Tuluyan officers finally had a meeting with him on Nov. 6 and 10. “He promised us that there will be more funding and even new buildings (for the center) in 2015.”

“We have been campaigning for improvements since 2008 but we’ve seen very little (progress). So we are hoping the government will show sincerity. We want to see a clear action plan.” A third meeting with Estrada is set on Nov. 26.

As to Frederico, she said, “we received news that he’s already doing fine and has started to put on weight. But there are still many things needed to be done for him. We still don’t have a complete diagnosis of his condition.”

“His case may be considered ‘isolated,’ but we have strongly established that the problems at the RAC are systemic. The children may actually be safer and more able to fend for themselves out in the streets than inside the center, where they only end up traumatized.”

We have learned that bureaucracy-mired organizations are often ill-equipped to handle the emergency needs of children in danger from poverty, starvation, illness and the violence experienced by children who find themselves in convict with the law.  Centers for these children must be able to act quickly and set realistic limits to the numbers of residents they can care for.  If government-run centers simply admit every child brought to their door and there is no corresponding increase in staff, nutrition, medical care, and other resources, then shelters for the street kids will begin to look like "concentration camps" and centers for children in conflict with the law will begin to look like jails.

At Bahay Pag-asa Bacolod, we are careful in our admissions programs because we want to maintain a safe and family-like atmosphere for the children and youth in our care.  As a private, Lasallian, non-profit organization, we operate as a fulfillment of our mission to provide a "human and Christian education for the young, especially the poor" rather than simply fulfilling a government mandate.  We are able to direct donations quickly and directly toward helping feed, house, educate and care for the children in our center.  Our experience is that the children entrusted to us grow up healthy and advance in their education.  They master academic skills and they take courses that enable them to seek employment for skilled workers.  They experience the Gospel as "action" more than "preaching" as we work every day to model compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and love.  We are not the solution to the entire problem but we are part of the solution - and a very important part because we are developing a program that can serve as a model for future centers for children in conflict with the law.
We know that we are needed and we hope to work with governmental agencies to help find the best programs and placements for the children who find themselves in danger or without hope.  We are needed.

A Challenge from Pope Francis

Francis X. Rocca   Catholic News Service   |  Oct. 23, 2014The Francis Chronicles

Pope Francis called for abolition of the death penalty as well as life imprisonment, and denounced what he called a "penal populism" that promises to solve society's problems by punishing crime instead of pursuing social justice.

"It is impossible to imagine that states today cannot make use of another means than capital punishment to defend peoples' lives from an unjust aggressor," the pope said Thursday in a meeting with representatives of the International Association of Penal Law.

"All Christians and people of good will are thus called today to struggle not only for abolition of the death penalty, whether it be legal or illegal and in all its forms, but also to improve prison conditions, out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their liberty. And this, I connect with life imprisonment," he said. "Life imprisonment is a hidden death penalty."

The pope noted that the Vatican recently eliminated the death penalty from its own penal code.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, cited by Pope Francis in his talk, "the traditional teaching of the church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor," but modern advances in protecting society from dangerous criminals mean that "cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."

The pope said that, although a number of countries have formally abolished capital punishment, "the death penalty, illegally and to a varying extent, is applied all over the planet," because "extrajudicial executions" are often disguised as "clashes with offenders or presented as the undesired consequences of the reasonable, necessary and proportionate use of force to apply the law."

The pope denounced the detention of prisoners without trial, who he said account for more than 50 percent of all incarcerated people in some countries. He said maximum security prisons can be a form of torture, since their "principal characteristic is none other than external isolation," which can lead to "psychic and physical sufferings such as paranoia, anxiety, depression and weight loss and significantly increase the chance of suicide."

He also rebuked unspecified governments involved in kidnapping people for "illegal transportation to detention centers in which torture is practiced."

The pope said criminal penalties should not apply to children, and should be waived or limited for the elderly, who "on the basis of their very errors can offer lessons to the rest of society. We don't learn only from the virtues of saints but also from the failings and errors of sinners."

Pope Francis said contemporary societies overuse criminal punishment, partially out of a primitive tendency to offer up "sacrificial victims, accused of the disgraces that strike the community."

The pope said some politicians and members of the media promote "violence and revenge, public and private, not only against those responsible for crimes, but also against those under suspicion, justified or not."

He denounced a growing tendency to think that the "most varied social problems can be resolved through public punishment ... that by means of that punishment we can obtain benefits that would require the implementation of another type of social policy, economic policy and policy of social inclusion."

Happy Halloween from Bahay Pag-asa!

Bahay Pag-asa residents had their first ever Halloween Party yesterday complete with a costume contest, scary movies, a lesson on the history of Halloween, and even home-made caramel apples!
Since we did not have pumpkins available the boys carved jack-o-lanterns out of green papayas and banana tree bark.  Somehow it all worked out.

It was a fitting celebration for the boys since they had just (one week before) won first place in performance (drama and dance) at the Symposium of Child's Rights held at the Bacolod Girls' Home.  They were asked to repeat their performance at a second workshop held at Bacolod's New Government Center.  And they are being asked to bring their talents again to the Regional Center at the beginning of December.

We expect two or three new residents this week and we look forward to the graduation of two of our residents from Therapeutic Massage Program at the University of Saint La Salle.

Bulletin Board Makeover!

Our educational makeover continued this last weekend with a multi-pronged bulletin board makeover courtesy of the education students from the University of Saint La Salle (USLS).  Morning and afternoon groups quickly transformed our faded and outdated boards into colorful, engaging and informative displays.

Brothers Mark, Cliff (seen above) and Edgar joined their collegiate classmates in implementing these whirlwind improvements.  

While all of this was going on Br. Mark and volunteer students involved the residents with activities that included discussion, music, signing (for the hearing impaired) and dance!  This is what Lasallian collaboration looks like!