Philippine court convicts American for online sexual abuse of children

A Philippine court has convicted an American man for large-scale qualified trafficking in persons three years after he was arrested on allegations of sexually abusing children and selling footage of the abuse online.

David Timothy Deakin was sentenced to life imprisonment and ordered to pay a fine of P2 million by Judge Irineo Pangilinan, Jr. of the Pampanga Regional Trial Court, according to the International Justice Mission (IJM), a global anti-trafficking NGO.

The court also ordered Deakin to pay each of his victims P500,000 for moral damages and P100,000 as exemplary damages, IJM said.

The Department of Justice confirmed the conviction.

The promulgation of the verdict was done through videoconferencing, making Deakin the first foreigner to be convicted of trafficking offenses through online proceedings in the Philippines, the IJM said.

Agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) arrested Deakin in April 2017 in Angeles City, where he was found with hard drives containing child sexual exploitation materials, sex toys, and paraphernalia for drug use, the IJM recounted.

Eight of Deakin's victim's are under the care of IJM social workers. One of them was quoted by the NGO as saying: "Magandang balita po 'yan. Mabuti naman at wala na siyang mabibiktima. Salamat sa Diyos."

“Let this sentence be a message to OSEC (online sexual exploitation of children) criminals: this is a war you can't win. We at NBI-AHTRAD and NBI as a whole, are strongly pursuing those who abuse our children and exploit them through the internet. You will not get away with this," said Janet Francisco, chief of the NBI's anti-human trafficking division, in the IJM statement.

The sentencing coincides with the rise of internet-based sexual exploitation of children in the country amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The DOJ has seen a 264.63% increase in reports of OSEC connected to the Philippines in the last three months compared to figures from 2019.

An IJM study also found that the estimated prevalence rate of online sexual exploitation of children more than tripled within three years. --KBK, GMA News