Parents of British paedophile shocked at son’s crime

The parents of Britain’s worst paedophile were so upset at finding out about their son’s horrific abuse of children in Malaysia they begged police to take him away, a court heard.

Fri, 03 Jun, 2016 - 01:00

Emily Pennink

Richard Huckle, aged 30, has admitted an unprecedented number of child sex offences and faces multiple life sentences at the Old Bailey.

He masqueraded as a devout Christian and English teacher to gain access to up to 200 children as young as six months old from poor Christian communities in Kuala Lumpur over a period of nine years.

The freelance photographer, from Ashford in Kent, began the abuse on a gap year to south east Asia at the age of 19.

He went on to post a stream pictures and video of himself raping his young victims which were shared on the dark web.

He even set up a crowd- funding enterprise inviting other paedophiles to pay Bitcoins for access to images and was in the process of publishing a paedophile’s guide to abusing children in poverty-stricken areas.

In discussions online, he bragged: “Impoverished kids are definitely much easier to seduce than middle class Western kids.”

Acting on information, Huckle was arrested by the National Crime Agency when he touched down at Gatwick airport en route to spend Christmas at home with his family in 2014.

Prosecutor Brian O’Neill said Huckle’s computer equipment was seized and he was bailed on condition he return to his parents’ home.

Officers had also searched the home of Huckle’s parents. He refused to answer officers’ questions, but the next day his mother asked him about the allegations and he admitted he had sex with children aged between three and 13.

Mr O’Neill said: “His mother was both extremely upset and extremely angry. She and his father called the police and asked them to take their son away.

“Both have made witness statements in support of this prosecution.”

Huckle refused to give officers passwords to his encrypted computer, but they were still able to uncover more than 20,000 indecent images of children.

As well as the draft of Huckle’s paedophile manual, they found a “Pedopoints” ledger in which he awarded himself marks for acts of depravity with children. A total of 191 children were mentioned in Huckle’s scorecard.

Officers were unable to crack the passwords to more encrypted files on Huckle’s laptop.