British man Richard Huckle, who has spent years teaching impoverished children in Malaysia and Cambodia about God and the Bible, has been given 22 life sentences after he admitted 71 charges of sexual abuse.
“Impoverished kids are definitely much easier to seduce than middle-class Western kids,” he said in one of his online posts.
Then, he commented on one of his victims, saying, “I’d hit the jackpot, a 3yo girl as loyal to me as my dog and nobody seemed to care.”
Photo credit: Central News
Huckle presented himself as a practicing Christian, first visiting Malaysia when he was 18 or 19 on a teaching gap year, then went on to groom children ages six months to twelve years while doing voluntary work.
Judge Peter Rook, during Huckle’s sentencing, said that it was very rare indeed that a judge has to sentence sexual offending by one person on “such a scale as this.”
In fact, authorities believe that Huckle abused over 200 children.
“Investigators found more than 20,000 indecent pictures and videos of his assaults on children, which were shared with pedophiles worldwide through a website hidden in the so-called dark web,” said a BBC report.
Huckle even tried to monetise his abuse by crowd-funding the release of his photographs and a pedophile’s manual he called “Pedophiles & Poverty: Child Lover Guide.”
One of his plans involved marrying one of his victims so he can continue abusing children.
Judge Peter Rook also said during Huckle’s sentencing, “it is also clear that, had you not been arrested, you planned to continue the same lifestyle using the expertise that you were keen to show off to and share with other abusers so as to continue your sexual exploitation of the children of such communities.”
Meanwhile, James Traynor from the National Crime Agency’s child exploitation and online protection command accused Huckle of deliberately travelling to the part of Asia where he thought he could abuse children and get away with it.
“He spent several years integrating himself into the community in which he lived, making himself a trusted figure,” said Traynor. “But he abused that trust in the worst possible way.”
The BBC report said that the Australian police who had traced Huckle though his online activity, suspected 17 other British men of using the same website.
“Five of those have now been convicted, two have killed themselves, and five have been arrested and are on bail,” the report said.
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