Featured Image Credit: Nine Network
Topics: News, Australia, True Crime, Crime
Charisa Bossinakis
An Australian man who has been labeled the ‘Australia's worst pedophile’ has been sentenced to 129 years in a jail in The Philippines.
Peter Gerard Scully has received his second conviction after being ordered to serve a life sentence for trafficking girls, according to The Guardian.
A Cagayan de Oro court found Scully guilty of 60 offences, including attempted human trafficking, distributing child pornography, child abuse, and rape.
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He was convicted alongside his Filipina girlfriend, Lovely Margallo, after entering into a plea bargaining agreement.
Margallo was sentenced to serve 126 years in prison.
“I hope this sends a very strong message to all abusers, all human traffickers, that crime really does not pay,” Merlynn Barola-Uy, a prosecutor in the southern city of Cagayan de Oro, told AFP, as per The Guardian.
According to Barola-Uy, Scully's youngest victim was an 18-month-old, who was found buried underneath a house being rented by him.
"This is a big victory, not only for us prosecutors in the Department of Justice, but more importantly this is a big victory for the victim-survivors," she said, according to ABC News.
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Scully fled Australia in 2011 to avoid fraud charges before he relocated to the Philippines, a global hot spot for sex trafficking.
From then, Scully set up a cyberspace business where he distributed footage of himself having sex with underage girls and using sex toys on them.
His videos were allegedly sold to Germany, the US and Brazil.
Australian Federal Police officer Paul Hopkins told 60 Minutes Australia: "The perpetrator of these horrendous acts is the most depraved individual I've ever come across in 26 years of policing."
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Judge Ali Joseph Ryan Lloren shared that the predator would prey on girls from low-income families and lure them into his home in Cagayan de Oro from 2011 to 2014.
Rappler reported that two victims who escaped from Scully’s home alleged they were chained at times, sexually abused, and made to dig what would have been their own graves.
Shortly after they escaped, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) arrested Scully in Malaybalay City in Bukidnon in 2015.
According to The Exodus Road, The Philippines is one of the most prominent places for online sexual exploitation of children.
Between 60,000 and 100,000 Filipino children are victims of labour trafficking and sex trafficking.