Monk in Hong Kong busted for child porn

Monk gets 8 months for stash of child porn

A Buddhist monk who was caught in a British internet sting was sentenced yesterday to eight months in prison for possessing child pornography.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008A Buddhist monk who was caught in a British internet sting was sentenced yesterday to eight months in prison for possessing child pornography.

In jailing Chow Yee-cheong, 41, Deputy District Court Judge John Glass ruled the offense was serious and that the sexual exploitation of children was a global problem that had to be stamped out.

The judge rejected a submission by defense lawyer Herbert Leung Yiu-fai that Chow, who lived at the Chuk Lam Sim Yuen monastery in Tsuen Wan, had purchased the materials to satisfy his sexual needs and was remorseful and ashamed at what he had done.

A psychiatric report indicated Chow was not suffering from any psychological disorder, but recommended he should get counseling.

Leung said the Malaysian-born monk, who arrived in Hong Kong in 1993, was aware that his offense contradicted his religious beliefs, and that he would be expelled from the monastery.

Leung said no level-five - the most serious - material was found among the two optical discs Chow bought in Malaysia, or the 17 videos and 85 photos he downloaded from a commercial child abuse website. The total length of the video clips and optical discs was nearly seven hours. Glass accepted that most of the material was not explicit, and did not include violence. But he rejected Chow's claim he bought the pornography out of curiosity and had only viewed it once.

Glass said the children depicted in the videos and photos were very young and may have suffered some physical harm during the production.

Although Chow did not share, produce or reproduce the child pornography, he indirectly encouraged the exploitation of children by paying for the material, the judge said.

Glass said neither a community service order nor probation was appropriate, but after taking into consideration Chow's previously clear record and his guilty plea, he decided on an eight-month term.

Chow, who holds a master's degree in philosophy, was the first in Hong Kong to be prosecuted in an anti- child sex abuse operation triggered by a British police crackdown on a commercial child pornography website last year.

Local police, acting on intelligence from Interpol, raided Chow's room in the monastery on May 7.