A Buddhist monk from a Tsuen Wan monastery admitted in court yesterday that he held child pornography for his sexual needs, after police arrested him in an Interpol-led investigation of a British-based website.
The illegal materials - amounting to 413 minutes of video and 85 still pictures - were found on two video compact discs and a hard drive seized from the hall where Chow Yee Cheong, 41, lived at Chuk Lam Shin monastery.
Chow, a Chinese-Malaysian, pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography. He said he bought the discs for HK$50 each several years ago from his home country and downloaded the rest from the internet.
He had done so out of 'curiosity and sexual desire', he told police.
Chow obtained a master of philosophy before moving to Hong Kong in 1993 to practise his religion.
Police raided the hall on May 7 and found the materials on his desktop computer after information indicated he had subscribed to a commercial child-abuse website.