Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Rex Gatchalian has assured that agency social workers will journey with the rescued children from the New Life Baptist Church of Mexico Pampanga, Inc. (NLBCMPI) until they are healed from trauma.
Gatchalian said the 160 rescued children are now under the care of the DSWD’s Field Office 3 – Central Luzon as cases of abuse have been documented against the NLBCMPI, a social welfare and development agency (SWDA).
According to the DSWD chief, a number of the children were distraught and recounted stories of abuse they experienced in the NLBCMPI facility, making their recovery a paramount concern for the agency.
“I managed to speak to around four or five of them. The ones I spoke to were clearly distraught. They were talking about their harrowing experience inside that private care facility, what they underwent in the past couple of months. But suffice to say, they’re in our hands now. Our social workers are with the kids, and our psychometricians are actually doing the trauma and post-stress debriefing. We’ll make sure that they get through difficult times together with our social workers,” Gatchalian said in a television interview.
Gatchalian explained that NLBCMPI was first issued a license and registration by the agency in 2018, and renewed in 2022. During these periods, regular monitoring revealed no incidents of abuse, until a visit by the DSWD’s Standards Bureau (SB) team on August 10 as part of routine monitoring.
“If you can recall, when I joined the Department in 2023, one of the things that I stumbled on were agencies like this that weren’t following the standard. It was the case of Gentle Hands that we shut down as well. After that, we tightened the monitoring mechanism by making sure that our field offices visit foundations like this on a quarterly basis. So, we got word of this because our staffers were there last August 10, they were doing their monitoring and at that time, what caught us as peculiar was that the kids were trying to talk to the staff of DSWD directly—they wanted to call attention to themselves,” Gatchalian said.
The DSWD chief was also quick to answer whether there was reason to doubt the allegations of abuse by some of the children.
“There were 160 kids, and my first instinct was to talk to the bigger bunch which was housed in one of our facilities. At that instance, they were telling this set of kids, saying, ‘No, the stories are not true. No, the kids who are complaining were regular rule breakers.’ But after that, I decided to speak to five of the eight kids who reported abuse. And five of them were narrating in great detail the maltreatment stories. And based on our social workers and psychologists, there is no reason to doubt the eight kids. And whether one, two, or three—the mere fact that a child got hurt or was maltreated—that’s enough for us to take severe strong actions against this agency,” Gatchalian said.
He explained that investigations are ongoing against Pastor Jeremy Ferguson, director of the NLBCMPI, who was accused by the children of committing physical and verbal abuses against them. Ferguson is an American national married to a Filipina.
The DSWD chief noted that aside from the pastor, the children also mentioned another staff member in recounting their experience of abuse.
“One of the staffers’ names keeps on cropping up from the eight kids who narrated harrowing stories. So, we’re looking into more characters and more suspects, and appropriate cases will be filed accordingly,” Gatchalian said.
The Department is also reviewing the case files of the children to determine the best placement where they can live in peace and harmony. DSWD’s Field Office 3 is facilitating the reintegration of children who are ready to return to their families based on positive parental capability assessment reports.
Children who still need intervention will be moved by the Department to any of the 76 age-appropriate centers and residential care facilities managed by the DSWD.
Under its regulatory functions, the DSWD issues registration and licensing permits for SWDAs. Once registered, the Department conducts regular monitoring visits to ensure that programs and services provided meet quality care standards.
Gatchalian stressed that the DSWD will continue strengthening its monitoring to ensure that the cases of child abuse involving NLBCMPI will not be repeated in other SWDAs.
