Miriam: Video convicts Hayden Kho

MANILA, Philippines - Take it from Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, a former regional trial court judge: the video is enough to convict Dr. Hayden Kho. In a news conference Friday, Santiago said Kho cannot claim insanity or documenting the act for private viewing and collection as his defense on the videos now circulating showing him in sexual acts with different women, including actress Katrina Halili. "Insanity is very easy to raise but it is very difficult to prove. To prove insanity you have to prove that a person is so far removed from reality that he no longer has [a] clear grasp of reality as all the rest of the community sees it," the senator said. She said Kho appears to be recognizant of the reality and even appears in certain functions and poses for the media. "He has never appeared in public that indicated other signs of insanity so he cannot claim that overnight he became insane. That defense of insanity is not going to prove useful to him at all. He’s going to get convicted if that is his only defense," Santiago said. "Unless he can come up with another theory apart from the insanity theory, he has no defense. The video convicts him," Santiago added. She said Kho’s best available defense is mistaken identity. "But I don’t think so if you watch the video carefully that I haven’t done. I think that will be a very far-fetched defense." She added Kho could also not claim that the video was his private collection and stolen from him. "That is easy to say but very hard to prove. In the first place he will have to say that this is not a singular act, that he is a professional collector or hobbyist of sex videos. He must have had a very strong sex appeal to have been able lure so many women to do this sex videos with him," Santiago said. She said Kho’s next problem would be the court would compel him to show evidence that he was so attracted to the sex videos that he went to this trouble of making a collection. She said the court may ask Kho to show the other videos. The senator added the controversial doctor also has to prove that the video collection was stolen from him. "E talagang pervert siguro siya [Maybe he is really a pervert] because most people do not make sex video, isn’t that true? The definition of perversion is you do not comply with community standards of ethical behavior. The greater majority of Filipinos perhaps most of them do not make sex videos, why does he?" Santiago said. She said there is no specific crime for moral perversion but it is broken down into various crimes such as malicious mischief, acts of lasciviousness or violation of the laws prohibiting pornography. On Thursday, Kho apologized to the people affected by the leak of the sex videos, insisting however, that it was not he who caused the spread of the scandalous videos. Hailil, however, refused to accept Kho's apology. She said Kho must suffer the consequences for the scandal.l - GMANews.TV