Both the girl and Edwards, 44 years her senior, were naked.

Local police had arrived at the hotel following complaints from guests in the next room that Edwards was seen inviting minors into his room. After smashing down the door and finding Edwards in bed with the young girl, he was charged with rape. These charges were dropped, however, amid claims that he had paid the parents of the girl not to proceed with the case.

But his legal difficulties were not over. During a search of his home in Angeles City, police discovered over 200 videotapes of Edwards having sex with different girls. Beside the videotapes were boxes of photographs of naked girls.

Edwards fled Angeles and relocated to the island resort of Puerto Galera.

Dublin-born priest Fr Shay Cullen, founder of the Preda Foundation for children, was not prepared to let him escape, though, and launched a campaign to have the Essex-born teacher re-arrested. Police eventually closed in on him and Edwards was brought to trial three weeks ago.

At the trial against Edwards, the prosecution argued that the videotapes found in his home clearly showed him engaging in various sexual acts with girls under the age of 18. On 11 September last, however, the case against Edwards collapsed. The girls shown in the tapes could not be produced in court. Therefore the prosecution was unable to prove that they were minors.

For Cullen, it was just another example of the difficulties in bringing alleged paedophiles to justice.

"These tapes could have been over a year old . . . how could we track down the child now?" he told the Sunday Tribune. "Without the child in court, we couldn't prove beyond doubt that she was a child, even though it was very obvious from looking at the tape that she was."

Preda has since filed a petition to the Immigration Commissioner to have Edwards declared an undesirable alien and deported back to Britain where, due to anti-paedophile legislation stating that a person can be charged in British courts for offences that occurred abroad involving minors . . .

Edwards may yet face further charges.

While the case against Edwards failed in the Philippines, even getting a suspected paedophile to court is a minor victory for Cullen. The Irish priest has led the campaign against child abuse in the Philippines for over three decades but has seen countless attempts to bring suspects before the courts end in failure. Cullen is in no doubt of what their biggest obstacle is . . .

corruption.

"The biggest problem facing the successful prosecution of the traffickers and paedophiles, especially the foreigners, is the incompetence and corruption of some prosecutors and the inability of the government to protect the child witnesses, " he says.

According to Cullen, there are layers of officials protecting the foreign paedophiles who have flocked to the Philippines in their thousands in recent years. Bar owners, who are often themselves from Europe, Australia or America, employ young girls in their bars to satisfy the desires of the paedophiles. The bar owners pay off local mafia bosses, who in turn pay off police officers and local prosecutors. In many cases, local governors are also paid by criminal gangs to turn a blind eye to underage prostitution.

Cullen alleges that certain senators are not out of reach for the gangs, asking why else would some senators have recently voted against proposed child protection legislation.

Local government officials are notorious for arranging for a payment of 'compensation', from the paedophile to the child's family. The result of such a pay-off, known as areglo, is that no charges are brought against the paedophile.

The Filipino senate is now probing the issue of foreign paedophiles relocating to the Philippines. At a senate hearing two weeks ago, which was attended by the Sunday Tribune, Senator Jamby Madrigal, who is leading the investigation, questioned officers from the National Bureau of Investigations (NBI) in relation to deportation orders not being executed.

Deportation orders The hearing was specifically focusing on the case of German bar owner Harmut 'Harry' Joost, who is now subject to two deportation orders but who remains living in the city of Olongapo.

According to Filipino police documents, Joost is alleged to have been behind a complex plot of kidnap and extortion against a German man and his Filipino wife who were due to give testimony against a paedophile ring.

Joost allegedly forced the couple to sign ownership of their properties over to him under the threat of violence. It is alleged that he then organised for an eight-year-old girl at the centre of a paedophile trial to be adopted by a couple in the US, so as to get her out of the Philippines. The child was repatriated to the Philippines only after the intervention of the Preda organisation.

An investigation by the NBI subsequently found that one NBI officer, David Golla, had been an accomplice in the kidnapping.

At the senate hearing, Madrigal questioned NBI officials as to what action had been taken against the officer in question.

She was visibly shocked to be told that the officer had since been moved to the section of the department dealing with the protection of women and children.

Also at the senate hearing on 11 September, Emmanuel Noblaza, Joost's legal representative, informed the committee that his client would not tolerate being slandered by being labelled a paedophile.

Madrigal was not impressed:

even though westerners can bribe police and prosecutors, her senate committee would not be intimidated, she snapped.

Joost is a close associate of several other men who have been charged with paedophiliarelated offences. His bar in Olongapo is located near a hotel owned by Dutchman Alex Wilson.

Wilson employed a Filipino woman in one of his hotels in Olongapo, and allegedly threatened to fire her unless he was allowed to have relations with her daughter, a 15-year-old by the name of 'Irish'.

When Wilson took Irish to a rented property in Angeles City last August, her mother contacted Preda, which immediately went to the house where the young girl was being kept.

Irish was discovered in the bedroom of the house and Wilson was charged with abusing a minor. However, the prosecution failed to file charges within the specified time and Wilson managed to sell his hotel and flee the Philippines. He is now believed to be living in Malaysia.

Malicious allegations Cullen's work has come at a price. His deviant adversaries have done everything over the years to try and prevent his investigations into child abuse.

In one year alone, as many as 17 malicious accusations, ranging from slander to rape, were made against his co-workers at the Preda organisation as well as against the priest himself.

All complaints have been found to be false.

"They will stop at nothing and attack anyone who opposes them, " says Cullen.

Few of the cases that the Irish priest has been involved in could have been more satisfying than the pursuit of a conviction against Michael Clarke, a British sex tour operator.

Clarke promoted the prostitution and sale of Filipino children in tours entitled 'Paradise Express'.

Following probes conducted by Preda in the mid-1990s, Clarke was arrested and charged with advertising children for the purposes of prostitution. In 1996, he was sentenced to a minimum of 14 years in prison for his activities. This turned out to be a death sentence . . . he contracted TB in prison and died six years into his jail term.

Clarke was the first sex tour operator to be convicted under the Child Protection Code, but since then convictions against western sex pests have ceased.

Despite recently drafting new legislation on the issue, the Filipino authorities have failed to land a single conviction against any of the thousands of western paedophiles operating in the country.

Senator Madrigal has warned that, until the authorities are seen to clamp down on foreign paedophiles in the Philippines, the situation is only going to get worse.

While officials appearing before the senate point to successes against Filipino pimps, Madrigal insists that the only way to tackle the sexual abuse of children is to target the foreign paedophiles who view the Philippines as a safe haven.

Speaking at the senate hearing two weeks ago, her message was a stark one.

"We must get a foreigner, " she warned.