Paedophile spent decade abusing children in Asia
One of UK’s most prolific molesters boasted that his south-east Asian victims were ‘easier to seduce’
ONE of Britain’s most prolific paedophiles is facing life in jail after pleading guilty to raping and sexually abusing dozens of children in south-east Asia for almost a decade.
Richard Huckle, 30, a former grammar school boy from Ashford in Kent, targeted poverty-stricken communities in Malaysia and Cambodia. After winning the trust of locals, he systematically abused boys and girls as young as six months old.
While he admits raping and molesting 23 youngsters, many more are thought to have fallen prey to him between 2006 and 2014 when he was arrested after a tip-off as he returned to Britain for a Christmas holiday.
At an earlier hearing, Huckle pleaded guilty to 71 offences, 22 of which carry a maximum life sentence. Investigators from the National Crime Agency said the scale of the offending was “unprecedented and exceptional”.
Huckle appeared at the Old Bailey yesterday for a sentencing hearing that is expected to last three days.
When he initially pleaded guilty it took the clerk of the court an hour to read out the individual charges.
Huckle, who worked in a mobile phone factory, first went to Malaysia in 2005 on a gap year teaching placement. The following year he visited Cambodia and while staying with a local family took indecent images of their child who was aged around three at the time.
He then began to visit Malaysia regularly, posing as a teacher, photographer and philanthropist in order to ingrati- ate himself with a local Christian community before abusing their children.
There is no evidence at this stage that he abused any children in the UK, but the authorities have not ruled out victims coming forward.
Huckle focused his offending on vulnerable children in a poor community in Kuala Lumpur, even boasting of his exploits to other paedophiles online.
In one post he wrote: “Impoverished kids are definitely easier to seduce than middle-class Western kids.”
He used the dark web to sell images of his abuse to other child molesters, accepting payment in Bitcoins.
Huckle’s victims included boys, girls, toddlers, pre-teens and even babies, including one aged six months old.
In one exchange found online he wrote about “hitting the jackpot” after discovering a three-year-old girl who he described as “loyal as a dog”. Investi- gators found a post in which he said: “I have found a three-year-old girl who I can have so much sex with it’s boring.”
Huckle also kept an electronic ledger or score card on which he would award himself points according to how far his abuse had gone with a particular child. Opening the case against him, Brian O’Neill QC said: “On occasions children were encouraged to sexually abuse one another or were present when Richard Huckle was abusing another child.
“His victims included multiple members of the same families. The offending was relentless in terms of the number of victims, the frequency and depravity of his offending and the prolonged period over which the offences were committed.”
When detectives investigated Huckle’s laptop, camera and phone they discovered more than 20,000 indecent images of young children, many featuring him participating in abuse.