A 66-year-old man was sentenced to eight years in prison on Thursday for a series of online sexual assaults perpetrated on children in Norway and the Philippines.
The Bergen man was found guilty, among other things, of having sent money to a family in the Philippines in exchange for organising sex acts between children, some of whom were under the age of 14. The scenes were streamed live on Skype.
The 66-year-old lives off of disability benefits.
He “knew that the underage victims and their families were poor, and as such dependent on the money he paid for these sex acts,” the Bergen District Court found, Norwegian public broadcaster NRK reported.
According to NRK, the man abused 62 children in total, 20 of whom are in the Philippines.
The other 42 children involved in the case were duped by the man on various online chat services. According to the indictment, the 66-year-old pretended to be a young teen in order to gain his victims’ confidence and then pressured them into undressing and performing sexual acts in front of a webcam.
The convicted offender had previously served ten months in prison on other abuse charges.
His conviction is separate from the massive ‘Operation Dark Room’ case, In Norwegian police filed charges against 51 individuals involved in a grotesque online paedophilia ring.