Big child webcam sex bust reveals rising abuse
The suspected pedophile could see people banging on his front door. But were they neighbors? Cops? One had letters on her jacket. As David Timothy Deakin googled “What is NBI?” from the laptop on his bed, the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation smashed their way into his cybersex den. Children’s underwear, toddler shoes, cameras, bondage cuffs, meth pipes and stacks of hard drives cluttered the stuffy, two-bedroom townhouse. Penciled on the wall, someone had scrawled. “My Mom and Dad love me.” In his computer were videos and images of young boys and girls engaged in sex acts. “Why is everyone asking about children coming into my house?” said Deakin, 53, bare-chested and slick with sweat, his breath sour and glasses foggy, his wrists bound with a zip tie. Deakin’s arrest on April 20 reveals one of the darkest corners of the internet, where pedophiles in the US, Europe and elsewhere pay facilitators in the Philippines to sexually abuse children, even babies, directing their moves through online livestreaming services. This relatively new crime, webcam sex tourism, is spreading rapidly. The United Nations describes “alarming growth of new forms of child sexual exploitation online.”
The FBI says it’s epidemic, and that at any given moment, 750,000 child predators are online. Almost every case stems from the Philippines, where good English speakers, increased internet connections and widespread international cash transfer systems combine with widespread poverty and easy access to vulnerable kids. There have been as many as three busts a week there this spring. The youngest victim ever, rescued a few weeks ago, was an infant, 2 months old. Most are under 12.
This spring The Associated Press watched a raid, rescue and launch of a major investigation that continues to play out on both sides of the world. “This should serve as a warning,” said NBI antihuman trafficking chief Janet Francisco, who led the case. “We will really put them in jail and they will die in jail.” Even as police burst in, Deakin was streaming illicit content through the anonymous Tor network. Agents said he had a webpage open to wipe his phone clean. They tied him up with an iPhone charging cord before he could hit the button.
AP and investigators asked him repeatedly why he had the obscene images stored on his computer. “There was no children in front of the cam in my house, not even dressed, as far as I know, not even with their frigging mothers as far as I know,” he said. But he said the images and videos may have slipped in when he downloaded massive files using BitTorrent, a data tool used legitimately by academics and artists, but also by child pornographers. FBI agents looking for abusers search BitTorrent to spot people sharing exploitive images.
Deakin said he grew up in Peoria, Illinois, in a splintered family. He was licensed as a roofing contractor in his 30s, seasonal work which left winters free; he used the time to study computers. He moved to the Philippines in 2000 for a job setting up internet service providers and installing Blackmagic livestreaming production programs. In recent years, Deakin said, he earned $30 an hour as a systems administrator. But his home was filled with junk, his refrigerator near empty. Stacks of used egg cartons fell from the shelves, and a half-eaten pot of cold rice sat on the stove. — AP