Brian O’Neill QC prosecutes ‘Britain’s worst ever paedophile’

Brian O’Neill QC is leading the prosecution team at the sentence hearing of Richard Huckle, widely described in the media as ‘Britain’s’ worst ever paedophile’.  Huckle, aged 30, has pleaded guilty to 71 counts of rape, sexual assault and other forms of child abuse against 23 children between 2006 and 2014; 22 of the counts carry a discretionary life sentence. He targeted and groomed impoverished children and their families in a poor community in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, impressing them with his relative wealth and status as a Westerner and exploiting their poverty accordingly.  It was within this community that the vast majority of his crimes took place. That 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.  Frequently the abuse included taking photographs of those children, editing them to achieve anonymity and uploading still and moving images and graphic details of his exploits to a paedophile network on the hidden internet aka the “dark web”.  He posted his views as to the legitimacy of paedophilia, describing paedophiles as an unfairly repressed minority and boasting of his exploits in hundreds and hundreds of posts over an 18 month period.  He also wrote detailed descriptions of the abuse on the dark web. Huckle encouraged others to behave as he did and gave them the tools to do so by preparing a paedophile manual giving tips on how to identify and abuse victims worldwide and how to avoid detection. He also sought to profit from his abuse by posting footage of his abuse on a website called “PedoFunding”.

Brian is instructed by Anthony Hill of the CPS Organised Crime Division (London).