CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—A court here on Tuesday sentenced an American to life imprisonment after finding him guilty of qualified human trafficking for selling sexually-oriented videos and photographs of children in 2017.
Judge Irineo Pangilinan Jr. of the Pampanga Regional Trial Court handed down the ruling online on Tuesday against David Anthony Deakin of Illinois.
Deakin is awaiting transfer to the national penitentiary in Muntinlupa City from the Pampanga provincial jail, where he has been detained for the last three years.
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation provided the information that led to Deakin’s arrest in Mabalacat City, the Associated Press said, quoting the National Bureau of Investigation official Janet Francisco.
Francisco headed an antihuman trafficking force that seized “the largest amount of digital evidence related to online sexual exploitation of children in the country so far.”
Her agents also found children’s underwear, toddler shoes, cameras, bondage cuffs, fetish ropes, meth pipes and stacks of hard drives and photo albums in Deakin’s two-bedroom apartment.
Deakin has been in the Philippines since 2000.
The International Justice Mission (IJM), a rights group based in Washington D.C., said its social workers had helped bring eight of Deakin’s victims to recovery.
Samson Inocencio Jr., who heads the IJM in the Philippines, said the justice system should continue protecting vulnerable children who are unsafe during the coronavirus lockdown. —REPORTS FROM TONETTE OREJAS AND AP