Monetizing Trauma

Eight in ten Filipino children have experienced some form of violence.

Valerie Gilbert Ulep, a senior research fellow at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, dropped that statistic during a forum right last Wednesday. Eight in ten. This is a systemic public health crisis, as it means the abuse is not just an isolated tragedy happening in the dark corners of Manila. It is sitting in our own barangays, hiding behind closed doors in Jaro and La Paz, and everywhere else.

For decades, journalism has treated child abuse like a police blotter entry. We chase the episodic shock value. The crying mother. The battered kid. It costs something to admit this out loud, but legacy media has historically fed on the very trauma we claim to expose. We win awards for poverty porn.

Broadcast journalist Kara David said it plainly at the same forum: “Children first, story second.” She talked about her 2024 documentary on child sexual abuse in Maguindanao. Her team consulted the Department of Social Welfare and Development and a child psychiatrist from the Philippine General Hospital. They actively chose not to interview the young victims. They hired actors instead.

That kind of restraint costs a newsroom time and money. It means walking away from the raw, viral soundbite that guarantees ratings. The real success of that documentary was not that it became a finalist at the Cannes TV Awards. It was that a mother found the courage to file a legal case against her child’s abuser despite immense pressure from her tribal council.

But here is the gaping hole in our current reality. Legacy newsrooms are bound by the Council for the Welfare of Children’s guidelines. We are subject to laws such as RA 7610 and RA 9344. Meanwhile, a vlogger with a smartphone can shove a ring light into a distressed child’s face under the guise of “charity,” monetize the trauma on Facebook, and cash out.

David warned that anyone using social media is technically part of the media. The 2022 Anti-Online Sexual Abuse or Exploitation of Children Act — RA 11930 — extends protections to digital spaces, but enforcement against popular influencers remains dangerously lax. Platforms and local authorities let it slide because unregulated virality is highly profitable.

Regulating this local influencer economy is not free. If we want local government units to actually identify these digital risk factors, the Iloilo City government has to fund grassroots interventions. You want to stop the commodification of trauma? It requires a dedicated budget line item — something like PHP 5,000,000 annually — diverted from visible infrastructure projects into digital monitoring and specialized social workers for the local welfare office. The tech platforms themselves have to hire local moderators who actually understand Hiligaynon context to flag exploitative content.

Ulep noted that evidence should not remain in academic journals. It has to force action. It costs money and political capital to look at the ugly things and hold the people profiting off them accountable. It is much cheaper to just keep scrolling.