Aussie sex predator jailed for 129 years in Philippines

MANILA: An Australian man has been sentenced to 129 years in a Philippine jail as part of a child sexual abuse case involving victims as young as 18 months, a prosecutor said yesterday.

It was the second conviction for Peter Gerard Scully, who is already serving a life sentence for an initial batch of charges involving the rape and trafficking of girls.

The Philippines has become a global hotspot for child sex exploitation, helped by poverty, English fluency and high internet connectivity in the country, experts warn.

“I hope this sends a very strong message to all abusers, all human traffickers, that crime really does not pay,” said Merlynn Barola-Uy, a regional prosecutor in the southern city of Cagayan de Oro.

A Cagayan de Oro court handed down the sentence on Nov 3 after Scully and his three co-accused entered into a plea bargaining agreement.

They had been charged with 60 offences, including trafficking, child pornography, child abuse and rape.

Scully’s girlfriend, Lovely Margallo, was jailed for 126 years while two others were given sentences of more than nine years.

Victims and their families have accepted the terms of the agreement and consider it a “sweet victory”, according to a statement posted on the regional prosecution office Facebook page.

“They all want to put closure to this dark phase of their lives and move on,” the statement read.

There was a total of nine victims in the two batches of charges against Scully.

The Nov 3 conviction involved seven victims, including an 18-month-old baby girl and a child whose body was found buried under the floor of a house rented by Scully, Barola-Uy said.

Scully was arrested in 2015 in Malaybalay, another southern Philippine city, after fleeing from Australia in 2011.

He had come to the Philippines to escape fraud charges in his home country.

The Australian then set up a cybersex business, filming teenage girls from impoverished families as he had sex with them or used sex toys, investigators said previously.

The videos were allegedly sold to customers in Germany, the United States and