Finding Ruby | The Trick | 1

"Piece by piece, the layers of protection around Ruby are pulled away. It is into this space that the message arrives on Facebook."

It all begins with a greeting from an unknown woman over Facebook, offering sixteen year-old Ruby a job in a computer shop. 

Full of hopes and expectations of a better life, and wanting to escape from the pain of her very recent past, Ruby journeys across the sea to the city of Pampanga and directly into her worst nightmare. 

Far from her quiet mountain home, Ruby finds herself trapped alongside a group of other girls inside an urban online sex trafficking den, where she will be given no choice but to perform acts she never could have imagined in front of a screen. 

Ruby realizes, too late, that it was all a trick. 

Issues this episode explores:

• What exactly is the Online Sexual Exploitation of Children? 
• Why is our instinct to turn away from this crime?

Show website: fightofmy.life

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CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains descriptions of sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised. 

Please seek help if you need to.

To speak to a trained crisis supporter at Lifeline (24-hours): 131 114
To report a crime to the Australian Federal Police: 1800 333 000
For emergency assistance: 000

FOR THE PHILIPPINES:
If you have suspicions about the occurrence of online sexual exploitation of children in your community, immediately report to: www.1343actionline.ph

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Finding Ruby is a production of Cadence Productions.

Show written and edited by Nikki Florence Thompson and Rich Thompson. 
Additional production by Lydia Bowden, Anthea Godsmark, and Brendan Ridley. 
Sound design and mix by Rich Thompson and Brendan Ridley. 
Graphic design and social media by Sayaka Miyashita, Carla Moran, and Alyssa Sheridan. 
Director of photography is Brad Conomy. 
Matt Tooker is the executive producer.

Show Music
- "Homeland" by Searching for Light, featuring Jenna Carlie. 

Transcript

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(bright music)- [Announcer] Cadence productions.- [Rich] Before we begin a warning, this podcast contains descriptions of sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised.(fast drum roll)- [Announcer] March, 2013, The Siaghs the Philippines.(spooky music)- [Rich] A message lights up the screen. It's like a beacon.(phone chiming) Hello. And then seconds later,(phone chiming) would you like a job? The words are almost luminous. They seem to expand into that small space and fill it with new energy. Ruby sits alone in the quiet dark of her two room home nestled in the mountains. Her only company the breeze rustling through the bamboo walls. She's been alone for two years now, since around the time she turned 14. So for Ruby, this message feels like a spark of recognition, of connection. Would you like a job? It isn't just a question. Not in Ruby's mind. Not after everything that has taken place. No, it's a signpost. It feels, she thinks then, like nothing short of a Godsend.(phone chimes) In the following weeks Ruby chats more with the stranger on the other end of the screen. The woman is polite, helpful, friendly even. The job is for a computer shop she tells Ruby. This is good Ruby thinks because she excelled in her computer class at school. This is something she knows she can do.(phone chirping) The woman promises her room and board in exchange for her labor and Ruby, gaining courage, makes her own requests. If possible, she asks, may she work at night so she can have time free to study in the day.(phone chirps) The woman agrees and to prove she means what she says she transfers some money to Ruby, to pay for the fare to take her halfway across the Philippines to the city of Pampanga where she will begin her new life. Though the plans continue to grow over the next few months, Ruby doesn't tell anyone else about her ongoing conversation. Not her friends, definitely not her siblings. She keeps her excitement and her nerves tightly buckled inside her. She doesn't want anyone to try to talk her out of it, or worse, to reprimand her for it. The fresh scar on her arm reminds her that this is a real possibility. Ruby comes to think of this woman as a friend, as someone who sees her value and potential. When so much has been lost, when so much has been damaged in Ruby's life over the last few years, this woman seems to offer a way out. This Ruby believes is her open door. Her second chance. The opportunity to leave the mountains of grief, loneliness, and pain behind her. But of course, the woman on the other side of the chat box is not who she says she is. She's called Nadine. Nadine and her husband, Pedro, were pioneers. One might even call them entrepreneurs of a crime that would later be named OSAC, o s a c, the online sexual exploitation of children. One of the fastest growing major crimes on our planet today, a crime, they were slowly but surely pulling Ruby into. With every keystroke. Ruby was unwittingly becoming their next victim.- [Ruby] That was actually, I could say, the darkest moment of my life actually. They were padlocked inside the house. I couldn't imagine how a girl could live in a place like that.♪ Far in the distance. ♪♪ There's a promise. ♪- [Man] That is a typical story that they can think of a time in their life when they could never have imagined getting sexually involved in images of children.♪ I put it on the alter though it was mine. ♪They detected that yeah, a crime is being committed in this place. There are victims that need to be rescued and perpetrators that need to be brought to justice.♪ We're all waiting in the in between. ♪- [Rich] From Cadence productions, this is finding Ruby, a true story of loss and trauma at the hands of one of the world's fastest growing crimes, but also a story of triumph, of rescue and resilience.- [Woman 1] She was shaking, but there's so much conviction. There's so much strength and courage.- [Woman 2] I was thinking that their lives were ruined that they were destroyed. But now I know I was wrong, cause (laughter) they've been redeemed.- [Woman 1] I know that there are kids who are actually waiting for us to rescue them. It empowers me more.- [Rich] This is the story of 16 year old Ruby thrown into the fight of her life and of those who have chosen to come alongside her and make it the fight of their lives too. Episode one, the trick.- [Ruby] I grew up being a farmer. I mean, my parents were both farmers. Farming was the only source of living that we had.- [Rich] Ruby's story begins slowly, uneventfully. For the first 12 years of her life, the mountains shelter her, despite the poverty around her, she feels safe. She's the youngest in a long train of siblings. Ten children rise in an ascending line above her and the gap between her and the eldest is vast. The family has two homes when Ruby is growing up. One in the town where her older siblings live and study and work to help contribute to costs and one in the country about an hour and a half's walk away. This is where Ruby lives shoulder to shoulder with her parents. The two room country house is small and simple, built with her father's hands. The walls are bamboo and the roof is thatched, but it is cool with the breeze and warm with the presence of her parents. It is home. She loves the rich green all around her and the sound the birds make all day long, always with something to say. It is a half hour walk to the small mountain school. Ruby discovers here that she loves learning. Not only this, but she's good at it.- [Ruby] My teachers sent me actually to some spelling bee contest. So I got to be with other kids from other school. Slowly or little by little I learned to socialize with other people. That's when I started to actually to be more playful and more outgoing.- [Rich] The pattern of Ruby's life is a steady peaceful one. In the mornings her parents wake early and make coffee together before they head out to the farm. Work is hard for them. Ruby knows this.- [Ruby] There are days that they would bring me to the farm, but they wouldn't actually allow me to do the farming job because I was too young for that. But I was actually exposed the things that they do, how hard it is to put food on our table.- [Rich] Ruby is close to her father. He's gentle with her and they share a close bond.- [Ruby] My father loved me so much that I didn't even have a memory of him even raising his voice. I don't have a memory of him being mad toward me.- [Rich] Farm life by its very nature, affords unexpected moments of lightness. One day as they are walking home, they come across a very steep hill that they need to walk down. Ruby asks her father for a piggyback ride. Eager to help his daughter he kneels down so she can better reach his back, but he forgets one thing. He is still wearing his bolo knife, a large farming tool. It looks like a machete. He's wearing it around his waist. As he bends down the knife pushes into the ground. Before he realizes that, he's overbalanced and he starts to tumble.- [Ruby] My father rolled down the hill and instead of helping him, I laughed so very loud and ran after him. And I didn't even realize that it was it dangerous for my father. I just, at that moment, I just saw the funny side of my father. I just ran after him. And that made our way home even faster.(laughter)- [Rich] During this time in her life, Ruby dreams, often of what she will be when she is older.- [Ruby] Since I was a dreamer, I really had a lot of who I want to be when I was a younger or while growing up. So there was a time that I wanted to be a nurse because I wanted to take care sick people. There were times that I also wanted to be a Polish woman. There were also times that I want to be a teacher. So I had a lot of things that I really wanted to do when I was growing up.- [Rich] Lying beside her mother and father together in the one room in the warmth of the small home. Ruby's big dreams seem not only possible, but as far as she can see, entirely achievable. But of course Ruby could not have seen or imagined what was coming next.(crowd talking) I was recently camping with my family at one of those campgrounds where there's a ton of activities for children, one of those activities was a jumping pillow. This might be an Australian thing. It's basically a giant jumping castle. The size of say half a basketball court, but with no walls, it's surrounded by sand. It's a little dangerous, but a lot of fun for the kids. Anyway, I was standing there watching on wishing I was a kid when I got talking to another dad. We ended up having a great conversation, chatting for a long time, about all manner of things. Then I started talking about how I was working on this podcast. I told him how it was a passion project of the creative agency that I help run, Cadence, and how one of our clients, International Justice Mission, or IJM as their known, had given me a backstage pass of sorts, to tell the story. He asked me about IJM and I got to chat about their work. How they're a global organization dedicated to protecting the world's most vulnerable from violence and exploitation. I told him some of the details of Ruby's story and how I had traveled to the Philippines to retrace her steps. And in the process met undercover investigators, police officers, lawyers, and social workers. Again, he seemed really interested. The conversation was going really well. Until, that is, I told him what OSEC was. He put his hands up in the air, shook his head, literally turned away and said,'Oh, that's too heavy for me, mate. I don't want to think about anything like that.' So we moved on, but I've thought about that moment a lot since. Perhaps as you listen, you've already heard of this four letter acronym, perhaps you have read of it or caught word of its horror. But perhaps this term is relatively new for you. Like it was for some of us when we started exploring it. You might have the same initial reaction as that dad, by the jumping pillow, it might feel like something simply too dark for you to put your mind to. And you'd rather not. I think that's a really natural reaction and it's totally understandable. But what does that reaction multiplied by millions of people mean? In some ways we're not just turning away from the topic of OSEC, we're actually turning away from those caught up in it. We're leaving them to solve this problem, but they're kids. On the flip side, when we turn into it, when we start paying attention, change can happen. How do I know this? Because that's exactly what happened back in 1833, when slavery was officially abolished in the UK. It didn't start with an act of parliament. It started with the people becoming aware of what was actually happening. Here's Jim Martin, a 15 year veteran with International Justice Mission.- [Jim] One of the key things that helped that happen, one of the sort of keystones of that whole process was this lithograph that was created of the map of a slave ship, of the hold of a slave ship, that laid out what it actually looked like for these human beings to be packed in like cargo and for six weeks or two months, carried across the middle passage at the cost of 40% of their lives often. So people were confronted with this actual image that they probably couldn't get out of their heads. And some of them probably regretted seeing actually right, because they couldn't get it out of their heads. But this is actually one of the important steps to awareness raising. Cause like an idea is one thing, but an idea that brings with it, some emotional cargo of empathy is actually where change begins to happen, where reality becomes unacceptable.- [Rich] The thing is, one of the reasons OSEC has grown so much is because of its mostly hidden nature. Rather than traditional trafficking OSEC takes place in private spaces, homes, computers, and yes in easily pocketable devices like phones. The crime of OSEC is flourishing in the darkness. And perhaps you, by listening now, can play even a small part in bringing light into it. What's the odd saying, sunlight is the best disinfectant. I have spent countless hours talking with Ruby and her social worker. For Ruby, now in her mid twenties, there is power and healing in speaking up and telling her story, bringing it into the light.- [Ruby] Before I'm so shy and afraid to face people. But then when I realized that this is not something that I should hide from people so that other victims or more victims could be prevented.- [Rich] When I started on the journey of this podcast, I honestly had no idea it would go where it has. It turns out that this story is packed full of twists and turns, moments of incredible bravery in triumph, of grit and determination in the pursuit of justice. We've shaped this story into a six part series that I hope you're going to love. And just a little note here, the story is also packed full of highly sensitive information, criminals and victims, investigators and informants. Because of this, we've had to change the names of a lot of the people featured in this story, including Ruby's. But Ruby is a name she gave herself after coming through this ordeal, after surviving OSAC. In the most basic sense, OSAC is a very modern form of human trafficking. It involves the live streamed directed abuse of children. Men from countries like the UK, USA, Canada, Europe and I'm ashamed to say Australia, pay to see children, boys and girls, sexually abused in real time, all from the comfort of their home.- [John] Yeah I mean just the reality is that you have millions of individuals, primarily men in our world who want to see children being sexually abused. They want to direct it in real time using technology.- [Rich] That's John Tenago, executive director of the center and online sexual exploitation of children established in 2020.- [John] And because the demand set offenders are paying for it. And on the other side in places like the Philippines, you have individuals who are willing to exploit children for profit to make money. Then that's why you have online sexual exploitation of children.- [Rich] As I said, it's a really modern form of human trafficking. Now, if you're like me, when you think of fighting back against human trafficking, you might think of this.- [Liam] I dunno who you are. I dunno what you want. If you are looking for a ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you. I will not pursue you, but if you don't, I will look for you. I will find you and I will kill you.- [Rich] It's quite something to watch Liam Nason systematically and quickly take down a human trafficking syndicate in the movie Taken if only were that straightforward. OSEC is stealthy. It takes time, energy, and expertise to seek it out and expose it.- [John] You've seen improvements, significant improvements, in combating that crime, but still it's a lot easier to get away with because it's online. Offenders can use anonymous identifying information on social media platforms. They can use encrypted platforms. And so not withstanding the best efforts of the government. It's just a hard crime to detect and report quickly.- [Rich] Unlike traditional trafficking customers no longer need to physically walk into a brothel. Just a swipe of the screen, brings it to the couch or the bedroom. It is almost, one could imagine, like it isn't even happening in the real world, except it really is.- [Ruby] I am angry. An image, it's not just an image. There's a child, a real child in that image. And....- [Rich] In Manila, I was given the opportunity to sit down and chat with police Colonel Sheila Potinto, former chief of the women and children protection centers Anti-trafficking and Persons division. Colonel Sheila is tough. She has hunted down and put behind bars, hundreds of perpetrators of this crime. And despite doing this day in and day out, the reality of this quote unquote virtual crime still deeply impacts her.- [Shelia] Actually, I usually don't watch the images or the videos because I cannot actually comprehend how a sane human being can actually satisfy himself with a child or a life being destroyed. It is just so inhuman.- [Rich] It's important to state that this is not happening only on the dark web. Most of it is happening on the social platforms that we use every day. Another disturbing difference to traditional trafficking that we need to mention upfront is that OSEC is what they call a preferential crime. What that means is that rather than arriving at a location, like say a brothel or a bar and taking what they are offered, customers are given choice in who they want to abuse and what they want to do. They essentially become directors of their own perversion in the form of shows.- [Caleb] In more traditional child sex trafficking the victims tend to be a little bit older. In OSEC, I mean, nearly half of the victims are under the age of 12.- [Rich] That's Caleb Carroll, director of National Investigations and Law Enforcement development for IJM Philippines.- [Caleb] In OSAC extremely preferential. They will order and look for the kind of child, the kind of abuse and custom order it to their preference in liking as a sexually motivated offender.- [Rich] That Facebook message, would you like a job? The message that would go on to completely upend Ruby's life came in 2013 when the crime of OSEC was in its infancy. Primarily for that reason, Ruby's story is not a typical example of this crime. It's a blend of both traditional trafficking and OSEC. More on this in a future episode. Let's return now to Ruby's story. Before that message arrived in the moment where everything started to change.- [Announcer] October 2008 Messiahs, the Philippines.- [Rich] The unraveling of Ruby's life begins with a shout. It is Ruby's brother. Something has gone wrong with her father,(motorcycle running) but first Ruby is confused. It's only when she sees it for herself, that she understands the reason for the terror in her older brother's voice.- [Ruby] I saw my father riding a motorcycle, but he looked like he was lifeless already. He's not moving, his eyes were closed. And then the motorcycle actually stopped in front of our house. And then I saw my father in that state. And then my brother yelled at my mother that my father had a stroke.- [Rich] Ruby's mother panics. Her eyes are wide with fright and her movements are agitated. Ruby has never seen her like this before. Ruby's brother says they must go to the hospital now. Ruby begs to go with them. She wants to be there by her father's side, but her mother tells her she cannot, they don't have the money to pay for transport for them all to go. Stay in the house she tells Ruby, wait.

It is only 10: 25:46

00 AM and Ruby doesn't know what to do. Early in the afternoon she lies down at last and succumbs to sleep.- [Ruby] Just like around one, two in the afternoon when one of my sisters were like gently shaking me and I heard them crying.- [Rich] Ruby takes a moment to come to reorient herself. She cannot take in what her sister is saying. She seems to be telling her that her father has gone, but the words do not register. They do not make sense. Ruby asks again what happened.(horn beeping) At last, her siblings bring Ruby to the hospital, but she cries only because they're crying, not because she's found her in tears yet. In the hospital, she spots her father. He is covered from head to toe in a white sheet. She runs toward him and instantly embraces him.- [Ruby] He was still warm when I was embracing him. So I thought he was still alive. It's just that he's sick. But when the funeral people arrive to get his dead body, that's when I realized that he's dead already. And that's when I started crying.- [Rich] And that's when the river of sorrow begins. Other than Ruby, her father's sudden death is hardest of all on her mother. She does not forget about her husband, not in her mind, not in her body, either. She longs for him. Four months after her father leaves them, grief finds physical expression in her mother's body. She becomes very sick. She's diagnosed with diabetes and hypertension. And soon after that, she's diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The doctor gives her less than a year to live. At just 13 years old Ruby becomes her mother's nurse while her siblings work to provide for them and the continual weight of new medical expenses. Ruby cares for her mother in hospital, as she undergoes treatment and surgery.(machines beeping) As long as she is at the hospital, Ruby cannot attend school. In her absence her grades once so good begin to slip. It is a little falling down the side of a mountain. When her mother dies Ruby does not know where to go next. She has many siblings to stay with, but by now they have their own families, their own lives, their own burdens. She does not want to intrude to be yet another weight on their shoulders. She feels too lost to fit in. So she returns to the only place she's ever felt safe to the house in the country, a one and a half hour walk from the town. But this time she returns alone.- [Ruby] Actually it was very lonely, rich. And at that point of time, future was blunt for me. It's like a blank space because I don't know where to have this strength. I mean, I lost all of my inspiration. I was always wanting to have a successful future cause of my parents, but I lost them. So future was like a blank space for me. I don't know what to do anymore. I don't have this desire even. It's just like I just existed, but I don't know what for. I don't know what's my purpose.- [Rich] One of Ruby's elders sisters visits weekly to check in on her. Initially Ruby is grateful for the support, but one day the atmosphere shifts. When she enters the house Ruby's sister does not look pleased. Something has happened. No, rather something has been said. There are rumors being passed around, rumors about Ruby, about her behavior. Ruby tells her sister that the rumors have no substance. They are just smoke. But her sisters don't believe her. Without warning her sister grabs an electric cable and she swings it like a whip and it makes contact with Ruby's flash.- [Ruby] Aside from physically hurt I was also hurt by that fact that they trust other people than me. So that's how I started to have this hatred towards them.- [Rich] This type of violent discipline would become a new pattern in Ruby's life. Her sisters have taken on the role of raising her and they feel that this is the best way to do it.- [Ruby] For me, it's very harsh of them and very nonsense. When she beats me up, I actually don't cry. Even if I am physically hurt. It's really hard for my tears to come out of my eyes, but deep inside, my anger would pile up. And when I'm alone, that's when I really cried a lot.- [Rich] For two years, Ruby lives like this alone. Piece by piece, the layers of protection around her had been pulled away. Sickness and death, poverty and calamity had left her standing exposed and vulnerable. It was into this space that the message arrived on Facebook messenger.(phone chiming)(typing)- [Ruby] When that person started talking to me in Facebook. It's like an answered prayer for me, if I would say. I was praying for a chance or a way to live the province or our house. So I entertained her and I saw her as my escape route. And I didn't have anyone to talk with about it. So I kept it by myself because I was actually afraid that they would tell my plans to my siblings and I will be beaten again.- [Rich] The woman on the other end tells her exactly what to do and where to go to reach her destination. And so Ruby steps boldly forward into her future. Believing it can't possibly be any worse than her past. Shortly after graduation Ruby leaves the shelter of the mountains behind her and begins the two and a half day journey to Pampanga. She's just 16 years old with no one to accompany her. So she has a lot of time to think. While the bus rumbles over the uneven streets, she wonders what it will be like at her new job, what she will do, where she will sleep. But she thinks too of her family at home.- [Ruby] I was also very worried that my siblings will be or how my siblings will react with that after they'll find out. I was crying the whole time and I was just comforting myself with the fact that I won't be with my siblings anymore. And they won't be able to hurt me any longer.- [Rich] The bus and then the ship push her onward. When Ruby finally arrives at the depo at Pampanga after her long trip, she's beyond tired. Rather than the lady, there is an unfamiliar man there to meet her.- [Ruby] He was quiet so it was very awkward for me to talk to him first because he was very quiet and I didn't know him. He just told me that in the terminal, he just asked me, are you B? And then I said, yes. Oh, so this person sent me to pick you up. And actually the girl that I was talking on messenger already told me that there will be person who will pick me up from the terminal. So I went with that guy.- [Rich] The two drive in awkward silence for 45 minutes through a criss cross of unfamiliar streets. Ruby does not recognize anything nor does she think it's possible to remember the way they have taken. It's a maze. Rather than the mountain she's familiar with this city is an entirely different place. Noisy, busy, even the sky looks different, closer, less clear. She is painfully aware that she knows not a soul here. The silent stranger is her one and only link to well, anything. When they arrive, the woman is still nowhere to be seen. The house is plain and large from the outside. There is no greenery around it. No glimpses of life. You will meet your boss tomorrow the man tells her. So it is best if you get some sleep now. He says it more like a command, stern and final, than a suggestion. They step out of the car and move toward the front door together. There's a padlock on the door that he pauses to open. Ruby enters after the man and steps into a hallway. She watches as several young women and a young girl of around eight or nine years old emerge from a side room partially naked. Where are their clothes, she thinks. Why are they half undressed? The house is dark and has a strange musty smell. And she does not know yet where she will sleep or what she will eat. But suddenly none of this matters. In an instant Ruby is no longer lost. She knows exactly where she is.- [Ruby] Oh my goodness. For me, it was like, what? You know, it was like a bomb exploding in my head. I was tricked.- [Rich] On the next episode of finding Ruby.- [Ruby] She actually looked like she would give me any time. She doesn't care at all. If I get killed there, no one would really know.♪ Far in the distance. ♪♪ There's a promise. ♪- [Rich] Finding Ruby is a project of Cadence, a creative agency for good in Sydney, Australia.♪ We're all waiting in the in between. ♪♪ We're all seeking an omen. ♪This podcast is written and edited by Nikki Florence Thompson and me, Rich Thompson. Sound design and mix by me and Brendan Ridley. The show website where you can dive in deeper into each episode can be found findingruby.com. Our theme song is Homeland by Searching For Light, a special thanks to Lydia Bowden, Evelyn Pingle, Meryl Sarco, Lanny Alano, and all the team at IJN in the Philippines for opening the doors to us. And of course a big thanks to Ruby for telling her story. And finally, a big thanks to you for choosing to come on this journey with us. We'd be really grateful if you would take a moment to rate and review the podcast so that other people can find it two. We'll see you on the next episode.