A Christian English tutor unmasked as one of Britain’s worst ever paedophiles has been jailed for at least 25 years for a horrifying campaign of rape and abuse against small children.
Richard Huckle, 30, exploited his "high status" as a wealthy Westerner to prey on impoverished children in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, chronicling nine years of abuse in pictures and videos distributed on the Dark Web.
The former grammar school pupil, born to devout Christian parents in Ashford, Kent, led a secret life as a prolific paedophile, targeting children as young as six-months-old to satisfy his depraved desires.
By the time of his arrest in December 2014, Huckle had penned a "truly evil" paedophile manual to help others avoid detection, and had begun to crowd-fund his abuse of a three-year-old girl.
The National Crime Agency snared Huckle in December 2014 when he flew to the UK for Christmas with his family, having been tipped off that the Brit had links to an Australian paedophile ring.
He pleaded guilty to an unprecedented 71 charges of abuse against 23 identified victims, though it is believed up to 200 children may have fallen into Huckle’s clutches.
Judge Peter Rook QC today passed 22 concurrent life sentences on Huckle at the Old Bailey, telling him he must spend at least 25 years behind bars before being considered for release but warning he would remain a danger to children for years to come.
“This was a prolonged campaign of rape of children from a small community", he said.
"You targeted and groomed impoverished children and families in a poor community.
"While you presented yourself to the outside world as a legitimate student, photographer English teacher, and philanthropist who could help with the education of children, in fact, you were systematically abusing the children you claimed to care about."
The judge said Huckle harboured "deep-seated distorted beliefs" about children, and sexual abuse had become "entrenched in your everyday life".
"Your life revolved around sexual activity with young children", he added.
"There is a strong likelihood you have blighted some of their lives forever."
Huckle clasped his hands together as if in prayer as the sentence was delivered.
As he was being led away to the cells, a woman screamed from the public gallery: "A thousand deaths is too good for you.
"I know one of the families, they mean nothing to you."
Huckle used his links to churches in north London and Kent to secure a trusted position in the tight-knit Christian community in Kuala Lumpur, working as an English tutor, freelance photographer and posing as a wealthy philanthropist.
Between 2006 and 2014, he amassed a horrifying catalogue of child abuse images, cataloguing his molestation of children from babies to 12-year-olds and boasting on the Dark Web about his depraved activities.
Huckle claimed he had “hit the jackpot” with a three-year-old girl who was “as loyal to me as my dog and nobody seemed to care”, and bragged that he had groomed four members of the same family for sex.
He took children out of orphanages to be raped and molested, all while holding a position of trust within the community.
He wrote online: “Impoverished girls are definitely much much easier to seduce than middle class Western kids”, and warned that he would never stop the abuse because he could get away with it so easily.
Huckle was a major contributor to an online paedophile sharing website called The Love Zone (TLZ), where he posted increasingly explicit pictures of his abuse of children.
He launched a “PedoFunding” campaign to sell pictures in exchange for Bitcoins, and confessed dreamed of eventually marrying one of his victims and making a living out of being a paedophile.
Huckle also awarded himself “PedoPoints” for each sexual act with a child, and amassed 1305 points in the year before his arrest.
Detective Superintendent Matthew Long, from the NCA, said Huckle “is one of the most committed, manipulative, and conniving paedophiles we have ever come across", adding that he had “based his whole life around the abuse of children”.
He had started his campaign of abuse at the age of 19 by photographing a naked two-year-old girl during his gap year in Cambodia.
The following year he took up a volunteer teaching post in Kuala Lumpur and he eventually moved out there in 2010 to study IT.
When he was finally snared in 2014, Huckle was initially freed on bail to live with his parents and he confessed to sexual activity with children for the first time.
His horrified parents begged police to take him away and offered to give evidence against their son if the case went to trial.
In a letter to the judge days before he was due to be sentenced, Huckle argued he was not a "martyr for child sex tourism" and claimed he was “easily influenced” and “gullible”.
He lamented that he had never been successful with women, adding: "I am regretful, remorseful and eager to be rehabilitated from this offending behaviour."
However the judge pointed out he had described paedophiles in one of his online blogs as an "unfairly repressed minority.
Huckle admitted 13 rapes, 31 sexual assaults of a child under 13, six assaults on a child by penetration, three charges of causing a child to engage in sexual activity, three counts of causing a child to engaged in penetrative sexual activity, and one charge of arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sex offence.
He also pleaded guilty to 12 counts of taking indecent pictures of children, one count of making indecent pictures of children, and one charge of advertising indecent photos of a child
Source : Standard
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