UK pedophile Richard Huckle gets 23 life sentences for serial sex abuse in Malaysia

Child sex offender Richard Huckle has been given 23 life sentences for crimes committed in Malaysia at the end of a trial in London described as one of the worst pedophile cases to reach a British court.

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.

The Christian volunteer from Ashford, Kent, will serve a minimum of 25 years behind bars.

Huckle worked as an English teacher and freelance photographer in impoverished communities while uploading a stream of child pornography onto the now-defunct dark web site The Love  Zone (TLZ).

Judge Peter Rook QC said during sentencing: “It is very rare indeed that a judge has to sentence sexual offending by one person on such a scale as this.”

Poor children were targeted by Huckle because they were “easier,” according to an online manual to child exploitation he wrote.

“Impoverished kids are definitely much much easier to seduce than middle-class western kids, I still plan on publishing a guide on this subject sometime.”

British investigators discovered more than 20,000 pornographic images and videos taken of his assaults on children, many of whom are yet to be identified.

Huckle even tried to make money out of depraved acts by crowd-funding the release of images.