Benjamin Walter via Morgan Co Sheriff’s Office

An Alabama man who asked women to tape and stream the sexual abuse of Filipina children as young as five years old will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Benjamin Walter, 41, was dealt a 160-year sentence by a federal judge on Friday.

On Oct. 5, 2021, a federal jury convicted Walter of of four counts of producing and attempting to produce child pornography and one count each of receiving and distributing child pornography. The evidence shown to the jury at trial highlights the horrendous international market for sex crimes against children against children in the Philippines, solicited by and sent to buyers in the United States and around the world.

Prosecutors say Walter used messenger and webcam applications to seek women in the Philippines to “sexually abuse their own children and relatives.”

“Walter’s requests to these women, which spanned approximately three years, included directions to arrange for the gang rape of young children and to sexually assault several young children in other harmful ways,” the Department of Justice wrote in a press release.

Prosecutors say that Walter paid for these videos, images and live webcam shows through $25 to $50 transfers that he made through Moneygram, Western Union, and other means.

“In addition to the live webcam shows, Walter also sent and received emails to which the senders attached images and videos of young children engaged in sex acts with adult men,” the Justice Department said.

The details of Walter’s case, though horrendous, are far from unique.

North Carolina man Jacob Daylen Ross received 55-year sentence this past January for paying a Filipina woman to sexually abuse children over a video livestream. The development effectively amounted to a life sentence for the 47-year-old, in a case sparked by an informant telling a sheriff’s office Ross had been engaged in the online sexual exploitation of “numerous prepubescent children.”

Last November, Ohio man Charles Lee Frazier received a 27-year sentence for paying impoverished Filipina mothers for explicit pictures of them sexually abusing their children. The Justice Department said Frazier “discussed killing infants during sexual assaults.”

The problem has not gone unnoticed by U.S. diplomats.

In 2020, the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report found that child sex trafficking remains a “pervasive” problem in the Philippines.

“Law enforcement information indicates that the Philippines is one of the largest known sources of online sexual exploitation of children, in which traffickers sexually exploit children, individually and in groups, in live internet broadcasts in exchange for compensation wired through a money transfer agency by individuals most often in another country, including the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom,” the State Department found. “The traffickers are often parents or close relatives who operate in private residences or small cyber cafes and many child victims, girls and boys, are younger than 12 years.”

In a particularly high-profile case, investigators said that they found a particularly gruesome video on the computer of former reality TV star and conservative activist Josh Duggar, who was recently convicted of child pornography crimes.

Before his trial, an investigator testified during Duggar’s bail hearing that authorities found an infamous video depicting the sexual abuse of an 18-month-old girl, titled “Daisy’s Destruction.”

The video’s creator Peter Scully, dubbed the “World’s Worst Pedophile” and convicted of human trafficking, is an Australian who is now serving a life sentence in the Philippines, where he lived and abused his victims.

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