Australian convicted for livestreaming sexual abuse of Filipino children
Conviction
A 68-year-old Australian man has been convicted for ordering and directing the sexual abuse of children in the Philippines via livestream.
This month, an Australian court sentenced the offender to 15 years, three months and 19 days’ imprisonment with a 10-year non-parole period.
This case led Philippine authorities, with support from IJM, to rescue 15 children and arrest five young women in August 2020.
“Online child sex abuse is a truly transnational crime and this operation shows Australians are part of the problem as well as the solution,” said Steve Baird, CEO of International Justice Mission Australia.
“It’s shameful and unacceptable that an Australian perpetrator is involved in such unspeakable abuse of young Filipino children.”
The suspect's abuse of the Filipino children—including a girl police believe to have been just three years old—occurred on at least 55 occasions between March 2018 and January 2020. According to the public prosecutor, he paid less than $40 for each of these instances of abuse.
Livestreamed abuse is neither passive nor less harmful than if the sex offender had abused them in the Philippines, because real children were still abused in real time. Furthermore, “he did not just watch children being hurt – he ordered specific abuse to happen and preyed on the economic vulnerability of the people involved,” Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commander Central Erica Merrin said.
Since 2011, IJM has
- supported 268 law enforcement operations in the Philippines
- helped bring 976 victims and at-risk individuals to safety, 756 of them being children and the others being mostly teens and young adults
- helped convict 146 traffickers or facilitators in the Philippines
Of the 563 victims rescued and 121 suspects arrested and/or charged through the PICACC collaboration since its inception in February 2019, 165 of victims (29.3%) and 43 of the suspects (35.5%) were a direct result of AFP referrals. This indicates Australians - and Western sex offenders - are fuelling the online sex abuse of children in the Philippines in a significant way.
“This is happening in our backyard,” Mr Baird said. “We applaud the unwavering efforts of Australian police in partnering with Philippine and other law enforcement, and IJM, to shut down this crime".
The international community must do more to combat this international crime. Learn how IJM is taking action.