Adonis Losada, the jockey-sized comic who once dressed as a whacky old lady on a popular Spanish-language variety show, put on another over-the-top performance on Thursday — this time at trial, on accusations that he downloaded child pornography.
He spoke bluntly and defiantly, often waving his hands as he insisted he only went online looking for sex with men, not as a pervert with a fetish for toddlers and infants.
“No sir, I do not like it,” Losada cried in Spanish before weeping loudly, dramatically. “You have to enjoy that garbage. You have to be a very sick person to like that.”
Losada, the former actor who starred on the long-running Univision show Sábado Gigante, is charged with 51 counts of possessing child porn at his home in Miami Beach. He is already serving a 10-year prison term for similar crimes after losing at trial in Palm Beach County.
If he is convicted in Miami, the 52-year-old actor could face the rest of his life behind bars.
On the stand, Losada proudly told jurors about his role on the show, even telling them about his signature character — Doña Concha, a gray-haired grandma whose antics made audiences laugh for eight years.
But Miami-Dade prosecutors say Losada had a darker side away from the cameras.
Jurors heard that in 2009, he entered a disturbing chat room called “Baby Toddler Love,” where child pornographers trade illegal images of young children. Losada, speaking in Spanish through a translator, insisted he liked to enter many gay chat rooms but swore he did not understand English well and did not know the meaning of the chat room name.
When a man named Paul — actually an undercover detective — began messaging him, he played along only to try and “conquest” him.
“If he had told me he likes roaches and rats, I would have said that I like that, too,” Losada said. “I’ve encountered people on chats that say they like making love to dead bodies.”
But Losada was at a loss when confronted with evidence that he sent the undercover detective an illegal image.
“So this photo just magically appeared in the chat,” prosecutor Tom Haggerty asked.
“I have no idea,” Losada said.
At a Starbucks in Hallandale Beach, Losada later met with another undercover detective posing as Paul, who later showed him a book of child porn images. In undercover video shown to jurors, Losada is seen browsing the book inside the cop’s undercover car.
Losada swore he didn’t know the man was going to show him the images, and claimed he even considered calling the police on “Paul.”
And as for the dozens of images found on Losada’s computer at home?
One by one, the horrific images were shown to the jurors Thursday. The jurors mostly averted their gazes, some looking down as though shell-shocked, others appearing outraged by the abuse depicted in the images.
Losada suggested that other people who stayed at his Miami Beach apartment, maybe his roommate and lover, had access to the computer.
“I never have passwords,” Losada said. “Never.”
After closing arguments, Miami-Dade jurors are expected to deliberate on Friday.
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