The pensioner from Brøndby, on the outskirts of Copenhagen, is on trial for ordering and paying for child sex shows in the Philippines over a five-year period, viewing them remotely over a live video link. According to prosecutors, at least one child was as young as three years old.
The 70-year-old suspect, who allegedly also gave instructions for how the filmed abuse would take place, has confessed to having paid for the live-streams, but denies the charges of rape and that any of the children were under the age of 12.
Speaking to the court on Wednesday, the man said he had ordered the shows to help the abused children with money for school and to buy clothes.
“I wanted to help, and the price was higher [for children than adults], so I told myself that they would get more money for themselves that way,” he was cited by Danish broadcaster DR as saying.
He was not able to answer the prosecutor’s question of why he didn’t just give the children money, without ordering the filmed abuse.
The suspect said that although he had begun watching sex shows exclusively featuring adults “because I was curious” and he “wanted to see how it affected me”, he had gradually switched to children in 2011.
“I had this [moral] view that you don’t do these things with children. I don’t know… It must have been because of the fact that it was happening on a screen,” he said.
The man has been detained since last year, after the FBI in the US tipped Danish police off.
Live-streamed sex abuse of children in the Philippines is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon among sexual predators. Last November, British pensioner Brian Lewis was sentenced to four years in prison for ordering the sexual abuse of children as young as four in the Philippines.
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