1. The trade
2. The operator
3. 'Baby Love'
4. She's not alone
5. Nothing changes
6. Objects of affection
'Baby Love'
In a dimly-lit joint called the Yellow Teeth Bar, a cocoa-skinned dancer presses her back to a wall amid the pale green shadows of the stage.
Her hand covers burn scars on her face but uncovers her body,
giving the cold-staring bar patrons what they came to see: more
skin.
When the disco music stops, she steps off the short stage, slips into a blouse and skirt, then slinks to a table near the corner.
She asks a patron if he wants to pay her bar fine -- 1,500 pesos -- to spend from then until sunrise with her. For the equivalent of $37 paid to the "mama-san" bar manager, anything goes.
At first she says she's 18, then admits it's a lie she tells to keep her job.
She's really 15, a runaway, subsisting by having sex with Americans and other foreign tourists who flood the bars.
A regular customer calls her "Baby Love," but she says her real name is Jane Acierio.
Until early June, Jane danced next door at the Fox Hole Club, where Philippine Adventure Tours makes its first stop in the Philippines.
It wasn't Jane's plan to live like this, but after a rough childhood she's just trying to survive.
"I make myself strong always. I don't care what people say to me. I'm just doing my job," she said, sitting in an all-night cafe and talking about her short life. "I'm a religious person. I know how to communicate with God and I know what God's love is, very much. God helps you if you help yourself also. Now, I have no choice."
Jane holds a hand over her chin while she talks, self-conscious about the dark patch of scorched skin she got as an infant.
"When I was six months old, my mother was reading comics," she explained. "She fell asleep and forgot to put out a lamp near my head." The beard-like burns were her first scars -- but not the worst ones, Jane says.
Growing up in the rural town of San Felipe, she was sexually abused by an uncle almost every time they were alone together, she says.
"When I was 6 years old to 12 years old, I lost my virginity to him," she said slowly. "He touched me for six years. I'm afraid because he always said he'd kill me if I tell."
Three years ago, Jane finally convinced him that she might tell if he did not stop. The abuse ended, but still she was terrified when she was alone in the house or he was around, she says.
Jane starts to cry, bowing her head so her long hair covers most of her face. She only stops sobbing when the subject is changed to education.
Until this spring, she was in the equivalent of ninth grade.
"I like reading my books, all studies, all subjects, especially biology and math," she said, rubbing her hand across the scars on her chin. "My friends, classmates and teachers always told me even though I have these (burns), I'm an intelligent person."
She has always wanted to be a doctor. But she set the dream aside in February, when she and a friend ran away from home and went to Manila.
"It's because I want to be independent," she said. "Because somebody will damage my life, my future especially my future."
She and her friend got jobs as maids, cooking and cleaning for a family in Quezon City. They didn't make enough money to survive, so after only a short time the girls decided to go back home.
"I went back to my parents. They did not accept me anymore," she said. "They did not know what was happening to me."
She went to Olongapo, where her older sister lives. Somebody told her she could make easy money working in the bars in nearby Subic.
She started working at the Fox Hole Club.
Its walls are covered with U.S. military insignia and fluorescent cartoons of soldiers ogling scantily-clad women. Men stake out positions along the walls of the club, while bikini-clad dancers try to get their attention from inside a pen decorated with a giant, wooden phallus.
After shift changes, dancers snuggle up to the men who show the most interest, pawing their chests and thighs, then asking them to buy "ladies' drinks" for them at inflated prices. If the men show interest, they are asked to pay a bar fine for the woman's company until the next morning.
Jane remembers an American named Peter who paid her first bar fine -- 600 pesos or $15.
"He said, 'Oh, you're so young, so fresh,' " Jane said. "After he touched me, my (private parts) hurt. I told him, 'Are you using a condom?' And he said no."
After that, there was an American named Gordon visiting from Hong Kong, a Taiwanese guy named Jim, an American named Steve and others who were less memorable.
She fondly remembers a man named Gustavo from Miami, who spent a month in town on business.
She tells most of her clients to call her "Lovely" Morales, and social workers from the PREDA Foundation say she's also known as Ruth Trapsi. But Gustavo had his own pet name for her.
"He cares for me a lot, tells me he loves me very much," Jane said. "And he calls me always, 'my Baby Love.' "
Jane is sad because someone told Gustavo he could get in trouble for hanging out with an underage girl and he stopped coming to see her.
At the Fox Hole Club, the $15-a-night bar fines weren't enough for Jane to survive, so in June she moved next door to the Yellow Teeth Bar.
When she's not sleeping in a tourist's hotel room, Jane stays in a room in the back of the bar. She says she gets to keep about 1,100 pesos -- $27 -- per week after saloon owners take their share of the bar fines and deduct for food, water and other expenses.
"The guys always are asking me, 'You're so young, why are you working this type of job?' I don't tell them the truth," she said. "If they ask what my age is, I always say 19 or 18."
Jane says she's not the youngest person dancing at the Subic bars.
She says her 14-year-old friend, Verna, also dances and goes out on bar fine "dates" although so far she has held onto her virginity. Jane says Verna has turned down offers of as much as 100,000 pesos -- $2,500 -- for sex.
Human rights groups say children also work in sex bars in Manila, Pasay and Cebu.
In Angeles City, about a two-hour drive east of Subic, a 16-year-old girl named Marife works in a bar on Fields Avenue. The bar is pictured on the Internet site for Ventura-based Philippine Adventure Tours.
Marife, who asked that her full name and the name of the bar not be used, said she does not enjoy her job, dancing on stage in a glow-in-the-dark bikini and cozying up to the men.
"Of course I don't like that job, but I want to work because I want to help my family," Marife said. "Working in a bar is not difficult, but it's very dangerous."
Some bar girls tell stories about tourists coming to the Philippines to have unprotected or sadistic sex.
Marife said she goes out with men on bar fines but so far has remained a virgin. Her aunt, Maria, works as the "lady-keeper" for the bar, keeping an eye out for the dancers and trying to screen out the bad guys.
As Marife sways in front of a mirror on stage, the sound system blares a pop song from a band called Midnight Oil. The lyric asks: "How can we dance when our earth is turning?"
In the middle of the bar, two middle-aged men wearing business suits sit at a booth staring at the dancers. They're approached by two dancers, who within minutes have draped themselves on top of the men, pulled up their bikini tops and pressed their chests against the men's faces.
Sitting a few feet away, Maria -- who also asked that her last name not be used -- explains why she thought the bar life would be good for her niece.
"Otherwise she would stay around the house doing nothing," she said. "I want her to learn the value of life, the value of money."
The bars in Angeles City are glitzier than those in Olongapo, with dozens of neon signs that make Fields Avenue and side streets look like a low-budget Las Vegas strip.
An Oxnard company called T.S.M. Publishing -- the initials stand for Travel and the Single Male -- promotes some Angeles City bars through a risqué Internet site that gives travel information to bachelors looking for love.
Company owner Martin Bruce Cassirer said he has reviewed hiring practices at those clubs to make sure they don't employ underage girls, and screens his Web site so no club members even mention underage girls in message postings.
Cassirer said responsible businessmen also want to fight child prostitution in the Philippines because it gives them a bad name and leads to overreactions to shut down the nightlife scene.
"I know this may ruin your story (yes, sex does sell newspapers as well as Internet sites)," Cassirer wrote in response to a reporter's questions. "But we and the bars of Angeles stand with you. Underage girls do not belong in the bars but how to enforce this perfectly is still a mystery to all."
In Angeles City, the City Council passed an ordinance requiring bar girls to show birth certificates before getting jobs. It is easy to fake the paperwork and the ordinance is sometimes worthless, activists said.
Angeles City tried to outlaw bar fines, too, but saloon owners just created a new type of "escort fee" that was not covered under the ordinance, said Angeles City Councilor Pineda, who has relatives in Oxnard.
In Olongapo, Mayor Kate Gordon bowed to pressure from human rights groups and ordered the city's sex bars closed. Many just moved across the city limits into neighboring Subic, Cullen said.
Pineda hopes the situation will change one day, but says it may take decades because the Philippine economy is severely depressed.
"I can't just get angry with the operators. The women are hooked into prostitution because of poverty, and the government can't provide other opportunities," Pineda said. "You can't just close the bars. If only the government had a comprehensive plan for women."