A 57-year-old Australian man from Victoria has been sentenced to 15 months in jail for the production of child sex abuse materials during multiple visits to the Philippines.
The man, from the seaside town of Mornington, south of Melbourne, was arrested by detectives at his home in September. The joint anti child exploitation team found he possessed more than 2,700 child exploitation images.
He had also taken nude photos of a young girl and two teenage girls during trips to the Philippines between 2012 and 2015, police said.
Victoria police said the “landmark” child exploitation case was the first to be heard by a Victorian court relating to charges of producing child exploitation material outside Australia.
The man, who was not named, pleaded guilty at the Melbourne county court and was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment. He will be released after serving 15 months, with an 18-month community corrections order for possessing child exploitation material.
He may also have to pay $1,500, police said.
Australian federal police have liaison officers embedded with Filipino investigators in an attempt to track down predators who travel to the Philippines to exploit children. The local child abuse industry is believed to be worth US$1bn.
In a separate case, Peter Scully, a 52-year-old Australian, is accused by Philippine police of raping and trafficking two girls. He has pleaded not guilty and the case against him is ongoing.
Filipino police now warn that a new form of child exploitation is occurring in the Philippines, in which minors are made to perform sexual acts in front of a webcam for predators abroad. Offenders do not need to travel to the country, making it harder to build a case against them.
Tens of thousands of children are believed to be involved in live-streaming child abuse, the United Nations warns. Det Supt Paul Hopkins, the head of the Australian federal police team in Manila, described the size of the trade to the Guardian last month as “monstrous”.
