UK paedophile gets life for Malaysia abuse

Judge Peter Rook handed Richard Huckle 22 life sentences to be served concurrently after he pleaded guilty to raping 22 children.

Huckle, 30, held his hands together in prayer as the judge delivered his sentence, and remained impassive as his punishment was announced.

A woman in the public gallery leapt to her feet and shouted "a thousand deaths is too good for you" as Huckle was led out of court.

Rook said Huckle had almost certainly "blighted the lives of his victims forever".

The prolific offender has already spent 488 days in jail, so faces more than 23 years behind bars before a parole board can consider his release.

He admitted a total of 71 offences against children he groomed while posing as a volunteer working with Christian communities in the Malaysian capital.

"Relentlessly you preyed on the very young," said Rook. "You targeted and groomed impoverished children."

Huckle posted pictures of the abuse of boys and girls on website True Love Zone (TLZ), with the youngest victim believed to have been around six months old.

He was eventually snared by an Australian investigation into the site.

'Truly evil'

British police arrested Huckle at London Gatwick Airport in December 2014 as he returned home from Malaysia to spend Christmas with his parents.

He was carrying a heavily-encrypted computer and camera that contained over 20,0000 images of child sex abuse, over 1,000 of which showed him committing offences including rape.

The laptop contained a ledger in which he detailed the abuse of 191 victims, but officers were unable to press charges on all cases as there was no photographic evidence.

Some videos showed children forced to sexually abuse each other, abuse being committed as other children watched and children being urinated on.

Other victims were forced to hold up signs advertising the paedophile website, which had thousands of members.

Huckle handed the judge a note before sentencing on Monday pleading for leniency and his defence argued in mitigation that he had not inflicted any physical pain on his victims, a claim the judge dismissed.

"I've been shown some of the video footage and I'm sure that your action caused immediate pain and distress," said Rook. "Others were passive, having been groomed into submission."

The court heard that Huckle had abused children from the same families and had written a guide to child abuse that he intended to publish for profit.

Rook cited a "chilling quote" from the manual, in which Huckle said "impoverished kids are definitely much easier to seduce than middle-class Western kids".

"It is a truly evil document that speaks volumes about the scale of your delusion," he added.

"You were and are sexually obsessed with children. You have spent years abusing them. In one of your postings you stated that you had become consumed by your paedophilia."

'Pathetic, perverted lust'

Prosecutor Anthony Hill said it was "hard to put into words the sheer depravity of this case."

In a letter of remorse read at an earlier hearing, Huckle acknowledged "the scale of the damage I have caused".

"I completely misjudged the affections I received from these children.

"My low self-esteem and lack of confidence with women was no excuse to be using these children as an outlet."

He said he was "gullible to be easily influenced" by the "pathetic, perverted lust of those who drew me into the dark net".

Huckle admitted to his parents that he had committed the abuse after he was arrested at Gatwick Airport, where his father was waiting to pick him up. - AFP