Man who ‘based his whole life’ around child sex abuse faces multiple life sentences
One of Britain’s worst paedophiles is facing multiple life sentences for a catalogue of horrific sex crimes against Malaysian children which he bragged about on the “dark web”.
Freelance photographer Richard Huckle (pictured), 30, from Ashford in Kent, admitted an unprecedented number of offences against children aged between six months and 12 years from 2006 to 2014.
Twenty three children from mainly poor Christian communities in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur were identified in 91 charges, although it is believed Huckle abused up to 200 young victims.
Huckle took in the families of his victims by posing as a respectable English teacher doing good works abroad.
Details of the abuse can only be reported today because investigators had sought a court order allowing time to make sure the victims were safe from other sexual predators stalking the web.
Practising Christian Huckle first visited Malaysia on a teaching gap year when he was 18 or 19 and went on to groom children while doing voluntary work.
He was arrested as he arrived at Gatwick Airport by National Crime Agency officials on December 19 2014 as he came home for Christmas.
They uncovered numerous indecent pictures and videos Huckle took of himself abusing the girls and boys during his visits to the Far East. In all, more than 20,000 indecent images were found on his computer.
Huckle wrote a paedophile manual called Paedophiles And Poverty: Child Lover Guide as well as a “Pedopoints ledger” in which he detailed rapes and various sex acts.
The manual was on an encrypted space on Huckle’s laptop ready for publication on the “dark web” through a hyperlink.
His “Pedopoints” ledger was a private record of the children he had abused. He had made it a game of different types of indecent activities. Under the rules, he could not score for the same activity for the same child in the same week.
The ledger was also on an encrypted part of his laptop and he had written about the Pedopoints on a members only paedophile site called TLZ (The Love Zone) which has since been closed down.
Huckle was also accused of attempting to crowd-fund his abuse online using Bitcoin on a website called PedoFunding.
In January, Huckle pleaded not guilty to all 91 charges but ahead of his trial in April, he gradually admitted 71 of the offences over the course of five more hearings. At his first plea hearing at the Old Bailey, it took more than an hour to read out all the charges.
According to one charge, Huckle had bragged: “I’d hit the jackpot, a 3yo girl as loyal to me as my dog and nobody seemed to care.”
He allegedly forced a three-year-old girl to lie naked with him on a bed holding a handwritten advert, the court heard.
Another charge stated that he published an advert online to sell or distribute indecent photos for his “crowd-funding” campaigns in the autumn of 2014.
At an earlier hearing, Judge Peter Rook QC said: “You have pleaded guilty to 71 counts. As you know these amount to sexual offending of the utmost gravity and as a result I am considering life sentences in your case.
“I am also considering the minimum sentence you must serve. In any event you must expect a very long sentence in this case given that it comes into the category of cases of exceptional gravity. As everyone in this court will know, there is no distinction made between victims here or victims overseas. The cases are regarded as the utmost gravity in both cases.”
Twenty two of the offences he pleaded guilty to carry discetionary life sentences and 18 of these are multiple incident counts.
Some 14 of the charges were for rape, five digital penetration, 31 sexual assaults, six grooming offences so children were exposing or touching themselves or other children sexually; 12 counts were for taking very many photographs, one count was for making photographs and one of advertising indecent photographs plus one of arranging or facilitating child sex offences relating to the manual.
Prosecutor Brian O’Neill QC said: “The admitted abuse includes almost every conceivable aggravating feature. Accordingly having considered the pleas offered, tendered and now entered by this defendant, the Crown is of the view they are an adequate reflection of his criminality and the offences to which he has pleaded guilty inform the court sufficiently for sentencing.
“The public interest does not require a trial on the outstanding counts on the indictment and in due course the conclusion of the sentencing process we will invite the court that the outstanding 20 counts lie on the file.”
Huckle appeared before the Old Bailey for his sentencing on Wednesday which is expected to conclude on Friday.
‘Constant groomer’ based his whole life around child sex abuse
Richard Huckle was “a constant groomer” who pretended to be a Christian philanthropist while in fact basing “his whole life around the sexual abuse of children”, investigators said.
The depraved predator began his obscene crimes when he was just 19, and was so “conniving” he managed to get away without detection for nine years, during which time he had raped and abused dozens of children, one just six months old.
Huckle was so confident that he put together a paedophile guide on how to select victims and avoid detection, and bragged on abuse forums on the Dark Web about how one three-year-old girl was as loyal to him as a dog.
He presented an image as a respectable English teacher, targeting impoverished children, in particular in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) head of operations Tony Cook said: “There is no doubt that the quantity and quality of the offending of this particular individual would have increased had he not been arrested. He is only 30 years of age, so we can only imagine what sort of offending he had in front of him.”
National Crime Agency (NCA) investigators were tipped off about Huckle as part of an international police operation in late 2014 and “painstakingly analysed minute detail of what he was saying and the photographs he was taking” to work out that the majority of the victims were being abused in Malaysia. One was targeted in Cambodia.
In the shady paedophile forums, Huckle bragged that poorer people would want someone with his “high status” to care for their children.
He said: “Impoverished kids are definitely much, much easier to seduce than middle-class Western kids; I still plan to publish a guide on this subject.”
On one occasion he was supposed to take a five-year-old child out for her birthday but instead took her to his own home to abuse her. He called it “a small price to pay if nobody else is interested in celebrating your birthday”.
The NCA team received intelligence that Huckle was planning to return to the UK for Christmas in December 2014, and used a piece of legislation that allows a British suspect to be charged for crimes abroad.
He had “a wealth of evidence” on the computers, hard drives, camera and phone in his possession – more than 20,000 obscene images – and two months later was charged with an “unprecedented and exceptional” 91 counts.
Senior officer James Traynor said: “Richard Huckle groomed those children. He groomed them to a point that he was certain no matter what he did to them they would not tell their parents about the abuse they were suffering from him.
“Richard Huckle is a predatory paedophile. He based his whole life around the sexual abuse of children, around the grooming of adults in order to gain access to their children.
“Richard Huckle was so confident that he would not get caught for his actions that he produced a 60-page manual that he was planning on publishing online in order to tell other paedophiles about how not to get caught for the sexual abuse of children in a foreign country.
“As a result of the guilty pleas, Richard Huckle faces a long time behind bars, and as a result we have safeguarded many more children that he would have abused during his lifetime.”
He was described as “a lone offender”, although investigators also said their inquiry is “ongoing”.
They believe there are more victims who suffered at his hands in south-east Asia.
Deputy head of operations Detective Superintendent Matthew Long said: “He was extremely good at grooming. He would use any opportunity that he had to influence and cajole, to manipulate people into a position that he was given access to children.
“He was doing it all the time, he was a constant groomer.”
He went on: “He was one of the most committed, manipulative, conniving paedophiles we’ve come across. He’s been so committed he’s been using a variety of grooming methods, there’s no point that he would stop.”
There is no evidence currently that Huckle has abused children in the UK.
Mr Cook said: “We have investigated the offences we have got evidence and intelligence against. If we had evidence to suggest he committed offences in the UK we would investigate that, but I don’t think we have, That’s not to say he hasn’t committed offences in the UK.
“The only offending that we’ve found – again I reiterate the fact that does not mean he has not offended here – were the offences for which he was charged.”
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