If enacted, the legislation will “help to curtail child abuse sex tourism and protect children in countries like the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia where child protection laws are weak or not enforced” - Columban missionary, Fr Shay Cullen.
The aim of the Sex Offenders Amendment Bill is to limit or prevent sex offenders and paedophiles with Irish passports from travelling to countries with lax or no child protection laws.
Columban priest Fr Shay Cullen receives the 2017 Martin Buber Award in the Netherlands.
Fr Shay Cullen’s novel ‘Ricky and Julie – a story of courage and survival in the Philippines’ is about the lives of street children targeted and hunted by the deadly Davao Death Squad.
Fr Shay Cullen addressed TDs and Senators in Leinster House last week and commended them for enacting the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, which criminalises the man who solicits sex.
State-sanctioned executions of people suspected of being drug users or dealers in the Philippines have reached a high of about 8,000 since 30 June 2016.
2017 Martin Buber Award recognises missionary’s work, through the PREDA Foundation, helping children and women targeted by paedophiles and sex traffickers.
Last year’s winner was PREDA founder and Dublin-born Columban missionary to the Philippines Fr Shay Cullen, who has led a campaign defending oppressed and exploited women and children in the Philippines for almost 50 years.
“It seems the male-dominated culture and religious mores are created by paedophiles to satisfy their sexual demands and desires. Such cultural and religious practices have to be outlawed and the laws implemented.”
Prize will be presented to Irish Columban missionary on behalf of the Preda Foundation on 4 May in the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in Germany.
Fr Shay Cullen describes Hugh O’Flaherty International Humanitarian Award as “a statement that all life is precious ... and each has invaluable dignity and every one is worth saving”.
Columban missionary has uncovered and exposed widespread child sexual abuse and human trafficking involving children as young as 9 years abused by US personnel and sex tourists including local men.
Róisín Seoighe entered song competition after viewing ‘Kids Behind Bars’ which gives an insight into the plight of vulnerable and destitute children in the Philippines.
“It was an amazing experience and I met so many remarkable Irish missionaries doing incredible work" - former RTE journalist Charlie Bird.
Report on the work of Irish missionaries in the Philippines and Korea helping the marginalised and most disadvantaged.
Fr Shay Cullen’s Preda Foundation celebrates its 40th anniversary.
"I have been through ferocious typhoons during my 44 years in the Philippines but have never experienced anything like this."
