More and more men are finding brides on the Internet. But the women are often naive - and may end up being lured in to a criminal world, writes Shane Hegarty
The media loved the story of Chris Sexton, a 64-year-old Co Clare farmer who had not only set up a Filipino bride-seeking service, East Meets West, but also become its first customer. An elderly bachelor finding himself a 22-year-old foreign bride was seen as having a comic spin. He didn't expect to be his first customer, but the young woman seemed to have taken a shine to him. It wasn't love at first sight for him, but it appears to have been for her. Is he planning to will her the farm? He is not.
Mail-order brides are prominent elsewhere. Coronation Street is running a storyline in which Fred Elliott, the soap opera's ageing, lovelorn butcher, has found himself a Thai bride. Except she's a con artist from the market. Last week the BBC aired a documentary about a US singles-club DJ, Ray, bringing his new Russian fiancée and her young daughter home from Moscow. The programme has been criticised for not following the story beyond their wedding, but there was much to suggest the marriage will not have the happy end the bride hoped for.
On the Web, agencies are found in seconds, with thousands of women pictured, mostly from Asia and Eastern Europe. Some prefer to call themselves matchmaking agencies or pen-pal clubs; others are less subtle, such as the Mail Order Bride Warehouse. It has been estimated that 100,000-150,000 mail-order marriages take place each year in an industry said to be worth €14 billion. Over the past decade there has been an explosion of agencies, with some less scrupulous than others in what's an unregulated area. There is such concern that a bill will soon go before the US Congress in an attempt to regulate it. The US is the chief importer of Filipino mail-order brides, followed by Australia. Irishmen will soon join the thousands from the West who make the journey every year. Many will have corresponded with several women at the same time, choosing one when they visit. Because of the cost of travelling around the country's 700 islands and other difficulties, the women are sometimes gathered together to make it easier.
Arlene Ami, a Canadian-Filipino film-maker, filmed the process for her documentary Say I Do. In one scene she interviews the owner of an agency as he doctors pictures - changes hair colour, air-brushes skin - before putting them online. "The term 'mail-order brides' is really a Western one," she says. "It's not widely used in the Philippines, where they usually more innocently refer to it as 'pen pals'." The women's prime motivator is economic. In the Philippines 70 per cent of the population lives in poverty. The Filipino government encourages emigration, as returned money bolsters the economy. It has become the world's largest exporter of workers, the majority of them women, and it is often those without qualifications who turn to mail-order-bride agencies.
Ami found that many of the women and their families had quite naive expectations, with romantic ideas about marrying a foreigner. "One woman expressed how fearful she was but said that her fate was in God's hands. Religion comes in to play here, and even if they hear of negative experiences they are willing to take the risk that it won't happen to them."
They do not discuss the physical realities of speedy unions. "The topic of sex is not something that came up from their point of view, because this is a very conservative culture. It's not a framework through which they look at themselves."
The men tend to be middle-aged and previously unsuccessful with women. Agencies put a gloss on this by saying that age is less of hindrance for these women or that they are not so bothered by a bit of flab. Foreign women are also often promoted as being traditional or even submissive. One agency describes Russian women as unpretentious and down to earth and says their views of relationships "have not yet been ruined by unreasonable expectations" - iother words they have not yet been polluted by feminism.
"Filipinos are predominantly Catholic, which means that a lot of them would hold traditional values, and this is promoted through the websites," says Ami. "There is no divorce in the Philippines, which is another quality that appeals to the men. If the women are happy or not, they still tend not to leave." Agencies often claim that the unions have a high survival rate, although that could have much to do with the power imbalance that comes from the man having the cultural knowledge and financial control.
As in Ireland, Canada's grooms tend to come from rural areas. For the women they marry the new environment can be a jolt. "There's a real culture shock for these women, because in the Philippines they live with extended families, and it can be a real shock to live in regions of the country where there won't be a neighbour for miles," says Ami. "I'm not sure what the Irish winters are like, but the Canadian winter is pretty harsh, and to come from a tropical country to an area like this can be very difficult."
East Meets West, in common with other agencies, says the women are acting entirely of their own accord. One of its founders, Bhebie Carpendale, a Filipina who has been living in Ireland for 20 years, insists that great care will be taken. "I know personally that all the parents allow them to be a member, because we are from the same area in the Philippines. Because I am here in Ireland I will keep an eye on who is the man that the girl will be marrying. This is not exploitation, and we are not making money at all." Whereas Internet agencies often charge for each e-mail that men send to the women they are advertising, membership of East Meets West costs €50. Members then fund their own trips to the Philippines.
Carpendale says the agency is only helping people who are in need. That does not wash with critics. "This notion of volunteerism suggests choices. But it's a question of what choices they really have," says Mary Kelly of the National Women's Council of Ireland. "The suggestion that choice is at work does not stand up when you look at the socio-economic context that they come from." The reality, she says, is that First World men are exploiting Third World women. "It puts them in a vulnerable position, physically as well as economically. They are taking huge risks. It is a very dangerous scenario, as is anything that is treating women as a commodity to be moved around in any way. There aren't any checks and balances around safety and protection. It's highly exploitative of women who move out of their own context, away from their families and countries."
East Meets West describes itself as a matchmaking agency, but the mail-order-bride industry abroad has been linked to the growing world markets in sex trafficking and sex tourism. According to Amnesty International, the industry has been used as a cover to lure vulnerable women into the sex industry. In 2002, as minister for justice, John O'Donoghue included mail-order brides among "the scope, criminality and degeneracy of the appalling crime of trafficking".
Legally, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform says that marrying an Irish citizen does not give a person an automatic right to reside in the State. Brides, or prospective ones, will need to apply for visas before entering the country, and the frequency of sham marriages for immigration purposes means that any prior relationship might be examined. It will also want to clarify that the women are legally responsible adults making informed decisions. And although the spouse of an Irish citizen was once entitled to citizenship after three years, this is now at the discretion of the Minister.
Meanwhile, there has been disgust within the Irish Filipino community both with the new agency and with what was seen as inappropriate reporting of the story. That has not stopped Irishmen from taking advantage, however. Since Chris Sexton's story broke,Bhebie Carpendale has been receiving calls from all over the country - "so many that I couldn't even cope," she says. Already two Irishmen are preparing to fly to the Philippines in November.
