Over a nine-year period he routinely abused children aged from six months to 12 years.
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Dubbed the country’s worst pedophile by Britain’s media, Huckle stood in the dock at London’s Old Bailey court with his hands clasped together as if in prayer as he was told he would have to serve at least 23 years behind bars for his crimes.
Huckle, 30, admitted to 71 charges of sex abuse against children, the majority of whom were from poor communities in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.
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’. In one of your postings you stated that you had become consumed by your paedophilia.
In one exchange he wrote about “hitting the jackpot” after discovering a three-year-old girl who he said was as “loyal as a dog”.
The NCA said officials had recovered more than 20,000 indecent images of children from Huckle’s computers and cameras, including more than 1,000 of which showed him raping and abusing children in his care.
Judge Rook told Huckle: “In my view, you may well harbour feelings of regret but there is no feeling of genuine remorse in this case”.
The abuse spanned almost a decade, beginning after Huckle travelled to Malaysia on a gap-year teaching placement in 2005.
Following Monday’s sentencing, James Traynor, a child protection officer from the National Crime Agency said that Huckle deliberately travelled to a part of the world where he thought he could abuse vulnerable children without being caught.
British police arrested Huckle at London Gatwick Airport in December 2014 as he returned home from Malaysia to spend Christmas with his parents.
“I completely misjudged the affections I received from these children”, the letter said.
Authorities said Huckle kept meticulous notes of his abuse in a document he called his “Pedopoints leger” and shared graphic images and videos with other pedophiles on a website web called TLZ – The Love Zone.
The National Crime Agency said he abused young people living in a children’s home, took indecent images of a 3-year-old while staying in the family home and sexually abused a 5-year-old after taking her out to celebrate her birthday, among others.
On Monday, moments after Huckle’s sentence was delivered, a woman in the public gallery offered him a message as he was led from the court, according to AFP.
“Sadly, child sex abuse is very prevalent in Malaysia”, said Sharmila Sekaran of the advocacy group Voice of the Children.
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”.
Although there was no evidence that he committed any crimes in Britain, Huckle cultivated his image of a devoutly religious philanthropist at home and overseas.
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The court heard that Huckle had abused children from the same families and had written a guide to child abuse that he meant to publish for profit. “Borders are no barrier – we are determined that those who go overseas to abuse children will be held to account”.
