These chilling images show a paedophile beauty pageant of Filipino girls as young as 11 are lined up in a cybersex den for perverts to choose one to be abused on a webcam.

The girls are forced to smile as they are raped on camera as voyeuristic paedophiles instruct abusers what to do with them.

After watching the ‘show’ some predators travel to dirt-poor slums of Iligan, in the Philippines, and pay to sexually abuse them.

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Chilling: A pot-bellied paedophile poses with a 13-year-old girl he met and selected to have sex with. He watched her perform sex acts on a webcam and travelled to the Philippines to abuse her

Paedophile pageant: Girls aged just 11, 17, 15, 14 and 12, all work in Ilican City's brothels. Most come from impoverished backgrounds and earn €2 a night from the abuse, which goes a long way in the Philippines

In one photo, an overweight pervert leers at the camera as he grasps a 13-year-old girl in one hand and a shot glass in the other.

And in another a suspected British paedophile is pictured sat bare-chested in front of his computer watching a Filipino girl aged 13 in a cybersex show.

The sickening abuse was exposed in an undercover investigation by Belgian journalist Peter Bridge - whose name has been changed to protect his identity.

Bridge spent two years investigating suppliers of online child sex abuse in the Philippines and identifying their clients for a documentary, ‘Children of the Cam’.

Bridge worked with Women and Children Protection Centre of the Philippine National Police and US NGO the International Justice Mission, an American NGO to expose the sickening trade in child abuse.

Posing as a paedophile, he established contact with ringleaders, gaining their trust, and was invited into the child cybersex dens.

Vile: A suspected British paedophile chats over webcam. Journalist Peter Bridge - not his real name - came across many men like him in a two year investigation into the depraved multi-billion dollar industry

Horror: Bridge's investigation has led to a number of girls being rescued - but he says it is just the tip of the iceberg, and has vowed to continue to fight the industry - despite receiving death threats

Hotspot: The Philippines is the top destination for predators in search of webcam child sex tourism, with some even travelling to the country to pay between €8 and €30. Here, a cybersex supplier chats online

Recounting in sickening detail how the investigation played out, he revealed how, after arriving in Iligan City, he was taken to a house where he was introduced to a group of girls.

He told MailOnline: 'They gave me a selection of girls to choose from, between the ages of 11 and 17.

'I could choose any girls I wanted. I told them I was interested in having six girls, two every night - 15 and 17, 11, 13 and then younger. They agreed.'

The girls were later delivered to his hotel room where investigators wired the room with hidden cameras.

Over the next few hours he interviewed them to find out as much as he could about their conditions, families and treatment.

What he discovered was shocking.

'I found out that some of the older girls were already recruiting younger girls into the industry,’ he said.

'Girls as young as 12 work independently recruiting friends. It is contact with the predators that turns them into really educated abusers.

'They learn how to receive the money, how to do these things unnoticed, how to make contacts. So they are really raised to abuse by the predators. They come from the US, Europe, Australia, Canada and Korea.

'There was a girl who was 15. She wants to become a school teacher. Her sister is 13.

Children: Bridge met the girls who were sent to his room and interviewed them, collecting evidence against the pimps. Pictured: Underage girls in cybersex den just before police raid

Poverty: Iligan City is so poor that parents will sometimes hand over their daughters willingly, while older girls will begin recruiting and teaching younger girls to enter the disgusting trade

'They called me and the sister was sitting there with an eight-year-old girl on her lap and she just asked me 'what do you want me to do with her?'

'Doing this sort of work is traumatising. But for these girls it's just normal. They have been raised in a sea of abuse. And they don't know that it is abuse anymore.'

He added: 'I got access to the accounts of the group I had infiltrated.

'I could see the client list there, it was a group of about 200 people.

'I saw a British guy, he was a veteran, he knew the group very well. He was an instructor, giving instructions while the abuse was happening.

'There was a couple with a child, she was about 11 years old, and he was telling her what to do. Telling her she had to smile while she was doing it [sex acts], stuff like that.

'But this was just one group. There are many, many more.'

Crackdown: Two female suppliers were arrested in a police raid (left and right), the victim, 14, is in the middle. The young girls are lined up and paedophiles direct abusers on a webcam

Saved: A girl of seven wrapped in blanket is rescued form cybersex den. Journalist Bridge said some of the victims are even babies aged just one-year-old

Online child abuse is the leading cyber-related crime in the Philippines.

Poverty combined with the rise of cheap, high speed internet access has turned the country into the hub of a billion-dollar cyber sex industry with tens of thousands of girls being exposed to sexual abuse.

Last year, 139 Brits alone were being investigated for paying to watch Filipino children online.

Yet that number is just the tip of the iceberg.

Interpol and the FBI estimate that over 750,000 paedophiles are online at any one time looking at child porn or live streaming.

The girls who get lured, or forced, into performing cybersex come from impoverished backgrounds.

And some families are so poor it is often the parents themselves who supply their children to the cybersex dens.

Dens like the one Bridge was invited to.

The journalist, who was forced into hiding and received death threats when he handed his dossier to police there in September.

In November detectives raided an apartment in Iligan and rescued 11 girls, the youngest of which was just seven.

Five suspects, three men and two women, were arrested in the raid in which they also found illegal drugs.

Arrested: Lany Buco (left) and Jeffryl Aque (right) were both held in a raid where 11 girls were saved, the Women and Children Protection Centre, part of the Philippine National Police, confirmed

Caught: Kissy Pepito (left )and Cindy Omisol (right) were also taken into custody. Police in the Philippines said the suspects were 'caught in the act of recruiting and using children for online trafficking, pornography and sexual exploitation'

Fight: Jefford Dominguez was arrested in the same raid. All suspects remain under investigation by police, the statement said. But they face an uphill battle to stamp out the multi-billion dollar industry

The Women and Children Protection Centre, part of the Philippine National Police, confirmed: 'The suspects, caught in the act of recruiting and using children for online trafficking, pornography and sexual exploitation, were later identified as Jeffryl Aque, Lany Buco, Jefford Dominguez, Kissy Pepito, and Cindy Omisol.'

The suspects remain under investigation by police, the statement added.

But Bridge said police face an ‘uphill struggle’ to stamp out the multi-billion dollar trade in child sex abuse images.

He told MailOnline: 'Law enforcement is not getting a grip on this problem because it is so difficult to find people, predators, who are using live streaming. And the sector is professionalising fast.

'Without doing what I've been doing, you can't actually find these people.

‘You can track down payments through all these channels, and maybe you can find them on social media and adult websites, or whatever, but in order to get them in front of a judge you have to find evidence and that is very, very difficult.'

He went on: 'The problem is huge and it's under reported.

'The Philippines is the number one country in what is called webcam child sex tourism.

'And the descent into this sexual hell, as I call it, is spreading. It's like a virus. It's not difficult for the suppliers to find children.

Slavery: It is not just the cybersex industry young girls have to try and avoid - they can also be trafficked out of the country, but Bridge is determined to start fighting this appalling trade. Pictured: Iligan City after a flood

'Predators pay between €8 and €30 euros for the girls and boys as young as one. The child will get two euros.

'In a country where many people get paid less than €1 a day, even getting €2 means that they can eat more than one meal a day.'

Peter said he won’t stop until he has exposed the paedophiles and their suppliers to make children in the Philippines safe.