"You want to buy a show?", a 12-year old girl in the Philippines asks a foreigner, who says yes and she earns an equivalent of US$3.00. The girl's name is Kim and much of her childhood was spent in poverty, but she's not the only one. According to a statistic by the Asian Development Bank, 21.6% of the population lives under the national poverty line. Unfortunately, in the Philippines, being poor can also expose you as prime prey for lurking criminals.

A lack of economic opportunities and limited possibilities lead parents to explore unconventional alternatives to a better life. In the case of Kim, it was her neighbour, AJ who gave her parents the hope of a better life. He promised to put Kim in school and even offered her a job to help pay her siblings' school fees if she moved with him to Manila. Kim's parents only saw a possible prospective and no potential danger, allowing her to leave.

At first, nothing seemed alarming. In fact, Kim led a much more comfortable life than she had expected. AJ put her in school and treated her well. Little did she know, that was all about to change.

A few months after Kim's arrival, AJ took a nude photo of her. The nude photo turned into posing naked in front of a webcam, as well as sexual abuse by AJ himself. These horrible images were then streamed over the internet to paedophiles all over the globe. Kim, who was forced to live-stream sexual acts and became one of millions affected by cybersex trafficking.

Cybersex trafficking or Online Sexual Exploitation of Children (OSEC) was the leading form of cybercrime in 2014. In recent years, the Philippines has come to be known as the top global source for child pornography with an estimated 80% of Filipino children at the risk of online sexual abuse. Eight in 10 victims rescued from online sexual exploitation are minors, with some of them as young as two months old, said International Justice Mission (IJM) a human rights group handling cases of online sexual exploitation of children in the Philippines. As of January 2017, IJM has recorded a total of 57 cases of cybersex involving children. Three of these cases involved babies barely a year old.

The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act enacted by Philippines in 2003 defines a child as "a person below eighteen (18) years of age or one who is over eighteen (18) but is unable to fully take care of or protect himself/herself from abuse, neglect, cruelty, exploitation, or discrimination because of a physical or mental disability or condition."

According to the Republic Act, Pornography is considered as, "Any representation, through publication, exhibition, cinematography, indecent shows, information technology, or by whatever means, of a person engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities or any representation of the sexual parts of a person for primarily sexual purposes."

"Child pornography is a billion-dollar industry, and Filipino children are the ones being traded and exploited online." Unicef Country Representative Lotta Sylwander said.

As cited by the US Department of state in 2005, factors contributing to human trafficking in the Philippines were "endemic poverty, high rates of unemployment, a cultural propensity towards migration, a weak rule-of-law environment, and sex tourism."

The Philippines has one of the fastest-growing populations in Southeast Asia. From having fifty million inhabitants in 1980, the Philippines today is home to around ninety million people with 11 million living in Manila only. According to the United Nations development program UNDP, overpopulation and poverty often go hand-in-hand.

Patty Pasion, a Reporter and Multimedia Journalist at Rappler - an online news website based in the Philippines says: "Poverty and poor education are the main reasons for child pornography in the Philippines. The lack of education has pushed households to poverty. Due to poverty and lack of skills to find jobs, parents feel compelled to find easy ways to earn money for the family. Child pornography is one of such easy ways because it does not require any education level for the job."

Poverty, illiteracy and unemployment seem to be the three components of a vicious cycle that consequently affect each other. Poor financial means limit access to educational facilities whereby reducing the chances of employment, forcing people to consider other illegal means of income.

"There are even times that the parents themselves are the ones prying their children because of the need for money. They are able to do this because there is this notion that as long as the child is not physically touched, he/she is okay or remains a virgin or intact. However, we have to emphasize that in every market there is both demand and supply. Demand comes from child pornographers, mostly foreigners, who prey on the children." says Patty.

In the Philippines, child sex abusers are mostly foreigners – mainly Japanese, Chinese, Korean, American, Australian, European and North American. While people involved in trafficking children include syndicates, foreign gangs, relatives and friends of the victim, and also recruitment agencies. According to an ECPAT (End Child Prostitution and Trafficking) study, there is anecdotal evidence that some lower-level officials such as customs officers, border guards, immigration officials and local police have received bribes from traffickers or have otherwise facilitated trafficking.

Despite the enactment of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003, arrest and criminal prosecution of traffickers was limited, in part because corruption was identified as a pervasive problem among police and justice system actors.

In 2009 and 2010, government complicity in human trafficking was highlighted as a key factor contributing to the recurrence of the problem. Not only did some government officials reportedly partner with traffickers and organized trafficking syndicates, but police officers allegedly conducted indiscriminate raids on commercial sex establishments to extort money from managers, clients, and sex workers.

For 12 years, the implementation of Republic Act 7610 or the Special Protection of Children Against Abuse, Exploitation, and Discrimination Act was limited due to poor budget allocation. The 31 laws related to child protection also had no funding in 2012.

The sex tourism industry in the Philippines also plays a part in propagating the sexual exploitation of children and is believed to account as the fourth largest source of gross national product in the nation. It is estimated that 60,000 to 100,000 children are prostitutes with the country being rated 4 out of 9 nations with the highest number of child prostitutes. The primary Filipino locations for child-sex prostitution are Las Pinas, Ermita, Manila, Ilocos Norte, San Pablo City, Cebu City, Tagbilaran, Puerto Galera, Angeles City, Sabang, and Boracay. In a prevailing sex culture with children already involved in its transactions, the sexualization of minors has inevitably become normalized in the Filipino culture.

Another important factor contributing to the Philippines becoming an epicentre of child pornography production is the accessibility to the internet, where swarms of children inside internet cafés are the norm. In a study conducted by Stairway Foundation in 2009 amongst 755 school children in the Philippines aged 10-11 years old, it was found out that 70% of the respondents access the net on a regular basis, and 66% of them accessed the internet through internet cafés unsupervised. In an updated 2012 survey, we found out that 89% of 10-17 year old accessed the internet, with 43% accessing from Internet Cafes, and 27% at home.

The advent of the Dark Web has not only facilitated the production and distribution of child pornography but has considerably increased the clientele of paedophiles and predators now catered to all around the world.

The Dark Web is a product of a technology created by the US military researchers in the 1990s, allowing intelligence operatives to exchange information anonymously. They called it 'Tor', which stands for 'The Onion Router'. A software that is still required to access the Dark Web. Much like its name, The Onion Router allows untraceable online activity and hidden websites, of which Tor hosts approximately 30,000. As part of their strategy for secrecy, they released Tor into the public domain for anyone to use. Their reasons were simple: the more people using the system, the harder it would be to separate the government's own messages from the general noise.

Tor spread widely and today, is a critical part of the so-called 'dark web'. The Dark Web makes 96% of the content of the World Wide Web that exists on overlay networks. It is described by Niels Olof Bouvin, an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University as a, "Decentralized network containing parts that are not readily accessible and are difficult, not impossible, to surveil."

The anonymity provided by the Dark Web has attracted a huge range of people. Journalists, whistle-blowers as well as criminals. "If you make a tool that can protect political dissidence in a country so that they can communicate freely with one another, then terrible people can use that tool too. The opposite of that would be that there would be no security for anyone, and that's a very dark path too." says Bouvin.

Researcher Dr Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth analysed traffic to sites using Tor's technology over a six-month period, in an attempt to understand what kind of sites were most visited. The results showed that more than 80% of the "dark net" internet traffic is generated by visits to websites offering child-abuse material. "Before we did this study, it was certainly my view that the dark net is a good thing, but it's hampering the rights of children and creating a place where paedophiles can act with impunity," Owen said.

It is important to remember that the digital world did not necessarily create the crime of child sexual abuse, but it changed it significantly in two ways:

It has facilitated existing 'common' forms and created completely new forms. These impacts are set out in a recent study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) which shows that new Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) can increase access to victims and to child sexual abuse material, increase profits for criminal enterprises, reduce risk of identification and prosecution for perpetrators, provide social affirmation for offenders and increase levels of harm for victims. As a result, there is now greater opportunity for such 'common' forms of crime against children and greater potential for harm.

As of 2017, the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report states that the Philippines has maintained its Tier 1 status, which means it continues to "fully meet" the minimum standards "for the elimination of human trafficking" under the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.

However, Kim had to go through the unimaginable pain of selling her body online as well as offline for three excruciating years. Looking back at her ordeal, she says: "It was like he had a total grasp on me and it was so difficult to break away."

It all changed when on one night, AJ brought Kim to a hotel with the intention of selling her to another stranger but upon opening the hotel door, found himself face to face with law enforcement.

AJ was arrested and Kim was free.

As Kim was taken to a protective shelter with other survivors of cybersex trafficking, she was grateful to finally escape the life of abuse. "…it was though a great weight suddenly disappeared from my chest. I felt a sense of freedom."

Kim was one of the lucky few saved just in time from a life of abuse and exploitation. However, there are still thousands of children caught in the horrific cybersex circle with no escape.

Prevention, through enforcement and delivery of basic social services, is still seen as the best way to end sex trafficking. But while the trade continues and more women and girls are exploited, Plan International urged the government to assist victims by providing employment skills training and support for psychological rehabilitation.

Blas F. Ople Policy Center and Training Institute president Susan Ople said cracking down on cybersex dens has been difficult for authorities because the exploitation usually happens inside inconspicuous homes.

What the government needs to boost is the awareness of the community to help identify suspicious activities in their area. "We are also appealing to the Department of Information and Communications Technology, Department of the Interior and Local Government, the National Bureau of Investigation, and the police to join forces and embark on an awareness-raising campaign so that communities, wherever they are, would take note of the serious problem," said Ople.

Child pornography may as well be a social problem that persists incumbent on various contributing factors, however, the internet - specifically the anonymity of the Dark Web plays a significant role in enabling abusers to create a demand for pedophilic content and a consequent supply by traffickers. What is not considered is the transactional product - the children and the innocence that is lost at the hands of digitization - never to be gained back.