Shay Cullen

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Shay Cullen (* 1943 in Dublin ) is an Irish Father of the Mission Society of St. Columban .

Life

Shay Cullen was sent to the Philippines as a missionary in 1969 after completing his training at an Irish college . His first assignment was in 1969 in Olongapo, in the immediate vicinity of the American military base on Subic Bay . In 1974 he and others founded the PREDA ( Peoples Recovery, Empowerment and Development Assistance Foundation ) foundation to help victims of torture and abuse under the Marcos regime and the military base. Through his work, he became a co-developer of the screaming therapy that is still used today for sexually abused children. The uncovering of numerous human rights violations, corruption cases and child trafficking rings is his merit. For years he was a fighter against sex tourism and child prostitution, initiator of a campaign for the dissolution and conversion of the military bases, internationally known speaker, media commentator, author of numerous poems and songs.

Cullen also works as a journalist, with weekly columns in The Sunday Times (Manila), articles in the Philippine Daily Inquirer and other newspapers, and on the Preda Foundation website. He was a delegate at the conference on the draft of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Helsinki in 1989 and has already been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times . a. 2001 and 2003 by parliamentarians from Canada, Great Britain and Germany.

Services

Due to his experience in the Philippines, Cullen played a key role in the development of the script for the crime scene episode Manila ( episode 383 ) from 1998, which thematized the fate of Filipino street children, sex tourism and child abuse. As a result of the experiences during the filming, members of the Cologne Tatort team around the two main actors Dietmar Bär and Klaus J. Behrendt founded the Tatort Association to financially support Father Shay Cullen and his child rights work in the Philippines . In addition, with the PREDA and the principle of fair trade, he created important income opportunities for former street children and the Filipino natives, the Aeta .

The PREDA Foundation's aid program is the contact point for girls who have been freed from prostitution and the clutches of pedosexual perpetrators. Cullen attracted international attention in 1996 when he brought a German perpetrator to court and cared for his victims, two Filipino girls, with psychological and pastoral care.

The second focus of PREDA is helping so-called prison children. Cullen and his team have succeeded in getting a large number of boys aged 15 and younger who are locked up in detention centers in inhumane conditions to be released from prisons. These minors then have a future opportunity in their own PREDA house, in which around 35 boys live and are cared for.

Cullen's aid program is supported by international organizations, including the Catholic aid organization missio in Aachen. The partnership between missio and PREDA started in the 1990s with campaigns against sex tourism and child prostitution . Since then, numerous aid programs have been funded with donations from Germany.

Honors (selection)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Sex Tourism: The Suffering of Filipino Girls , accessed March 1, 2019.
  2. PREDA Foundation: German report of RTL, children behind bars rescued by Father Shay Cullen (Youtube video) , accessed on March 1, 2019.
  3. ↑ The Guardian Angel Campaign - Against Sex Tourism and Child Prostitution , accessed on March 1, 2019.
  4. Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.menschenrechtspreis.de
  5. Prix ​​Caritas for Humanity is going to Switzerland for the first time , accessed on May 12, 2017.
  6. 2017 Prize Winner: Father Shay Cullen , accessed May 12, 2017.