BAGUIO (PHILIPPINES)
Rappler [Pasig, Manila, Philippines]
February 4, 2025
By Mari-An C. Santos
In a country where abuse and neglect remain grim realities for too many children, places like the Sunflower center offer something rare: another chance
Jun was 9 years old when he arrived at a boys’ shelter in Baguio City in 2012, his body marked with burns and scars from years of abuse inflicted by his stepfather, who had also been accused of sexually assaulting his younger sister.
When authorities intervened, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) moved the siblings from a Cordillera province to the city for their safety. His sister was taken to the DSWD’s shelter and Jun, to the halfway home for boys.
After he spoke with social workers and counselors, he opened up about his experiences and showed them marks on his young skin that had yet to heal.
Once, he recalled, he was put in charge of breakfast. It was very early, so while he waited for the food to cook, with sleep still in his eyes, he went back to lie in bed. He said he was awakened by his stepfather, raging mad at the burnt food, and before he knew it, he felt searing pain as the hot pan made contact with his stomach.
After hearing this, staff members of the halfway home worked with the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in Baguio to file a case against Jun’s stepfather in 2013.
The case, filed in their home province in the Cordillera against his stepfather for allegedly sexually abusing Jun’s sister, was dismissed in 2014, but he was convicted of harming Jun and sent to prison.
For Jun, justice was not just a courtroom decision. It was found in years of therapy, in the shelter that took him in, in the life he rebuilt. Now in his twenties, he has a job, a future, and soon, a child of his own.
His story serves as a reminder that the right care at the right time can mean the difference between a life shaped by trauma and one rebuilt despite it. The scars remain, but they no longer tell the whole story.
Refuge for boys
Jun is just one of the many who have been given care at the Saint Louis University’s Sunflower Centennial Halfway Home for Boys since it opened in 2011. The facility provides shelter, education, medical care, and psychological support for boys ages 5 to 17 from all over Luzon who have suffered abuse, abandonment, or neglect.
The halfway home supports the boys’ reintegration into society by providing life skills training, educational assistance, spiritual formation, recreational activities, and, if necessary, case management. It has so far handled 82 cases.
“We want to give them the best conditions as they recover, considering what they went through,” said Father Geraldo Costa of the Congregatio Immaculati Cordis Mariae (CICM), its founder.
The shelter is one of the sub-units of the university’s Sunflower Child and Youth Wellness Center (SCYWC). When it was established in 2003, there was no intervention center in Northern Luzon, and it was the first psychotherapeutic center in Baguio City.
Costa, a child psychotherapist, has spent years studying how to help children who have been victims of different forms of abuse toward recovery.
In 2000, he presented a study about the needs of children in special situations in the Philippines to the CICM-Philippines provincial superior, who then approved a project to assist shelters and institutions working with children who needed psychosocial assistance.
Initially, SLU psychology faculty members and senior students worked with children in the care of the DSWD’s centers in Baguio and Benguet.
It started with a small playroom – just a space for children from indigent families who needed psychological help. But from that modest beginning grew something much larger.
The Sunflower Child and Youth Wellness Center’s Psychotherapeutic Clinic took root, expanding into a full-fledged facility offering psychological assessments and therapy for children in crisis. More than a clinic, it became a bridge, working closely with families and caregivers to provide the kind of care that didn’t just treat trauma but aimed to heal it.
Distance complicates healing, according to Jennifer Garcia, head of the Sunflower Child and Youth Wellness Center. She has seen it firsthand – children left behind in the Philippines while one or both parents work overseas. The center bridges that gap, bringing families together online to provide the psychological support these children need.
At the halfway home, healing goes beyond therapy sessions. There, boys take part in programs at the Sunflower Pedagogical and Developmental Center, where music, dance, and visual arts workshops help them regain confidence.
Academic tutoring and psychological assessments guide their progress. More than just activities, these programs are designed to rebuild, to nurture, to remind these children that their futures are still theirs to shape.
“We are a community investing in better development for very young children to teens,” said Father Costa.
Another chance
From January to October 2024, authorities in the Cordillera recorded 281 cases of violence against children – a drop from 354 during the same period in 2023.
The numbers, however, don’t tell the whole story. They exclude cases filed under Violence Against Women and Children, trafficking, or rape. And behind the statistics are the unreported cases, buried under fear, stigma, and silence.
Sexual abuse accounted for 71% of cases handled by Women and Child Protection Units across the Philippines in 2023, followed by physical abuse at 11% and neglect at 5%, according to the Child Protection Network.
The United Nations Children’s Fund said 59% of Filipino children experienced abuse in 2022, with cases rising steadily from 2021 to 2024.
The Sunflower team said they observed the rise in cases of children in special situations. Considering this, the team of well-trained psychologists and other childcare professionals is helping contribute to the needs of future generations.
Costa said, “We wish all children, without exception, will develop and grow towards the light and be as beautiful as they can be… just like a sunflower!”
In a country where abuse and neglect remain grim realities for too many children, places like the Sunflower center offer something rare: another chance.
For the boys who pass through the halfway home’s doors, healing comes in different forms – through therapy, through art, through the simple act of being seen and heard. And for some, like Jun, it means stepping into the world once again, not as victims, but as survivors ready to build lives of their own.