Britain's worst paedophile who attacked hundreds of children in south-east Asia and used the 'dark web' to crowd-fund his abuse is facing 22 life sentences.

Richard Huckle, 30, targeted a poverty-stricken Christian community in Malaysia, where he posed as a photographer and English teacher to win the trust of his victims' parents.

The former grammar school boy, who came from a middle class family in Kent, took pictures and videos of himself raping and abusing young children and even a baby wearing a nappy.

Predator: Richard Huckle posted scores of images online of himself with youngsters in Malaysia

Huckle bragged of the attacks in online blogs and penned a sick 60-page 'handbook' titled 'Pedophiles & Poverty: Child Lover Guide'.

During his nine years of offending, he forced victims to pose with horrific slogans advertising his foul images, which he sold for Bitcoins on a notorious paedophile website on the dark web - the encrypted version of the internet.

As part of an international network, Huckle awarded himself 'PedoPoints' for carrying out the attacks and used a paedophile crowdfunding website to finance the abuse.

The case can be reported for the first time today after Judge Peter Rook QC lifted reporting restrictions at the start of a three-day sentencing hearing at the Old Bailey.

Huckle, originally from Ashford, faces up to 22 life sentences after admitting to 71 charges, including rape, sexual assault, and sexual activity with a child.

It took more than an hour for the charges to be put to Huckle at an earlier hearing, in what is believed to be the worst case of its kind.

He appeared in the dock today wearing a black shirt, with his long hair tied back into a ponytail and sporting a goatee beard.

The charges relate to the horrific sexual abuse of 23 girls and boys aged between six months and 12 years. Some 22 of the victims are from Malaysia while one is Cambodian.

Among Huckle's depraved posts online, he boatsed about how easy he found it to abuse poor children

Huckle started abusing children after spending his gap year in Malaysia. He later returned to the region

Huckle first visited Malaysia on a gap year teaching placement in 2005.

He then took indecent images of a three-year-old child while staying with a Cambodian family the following year.

He returned to Malaysia in 2006, where he abused and took photographs of two sisters, aged four and six.

In 2007 he came back to stay with their family where he took up a teaching post in their village and continued to abuse the girls until his arrest.

On his trips back to England he worshipped in Christian churches in London and Kent, which he used as a stepping stone to further the abuse abroad.

LAWYERS FEARED JURORS WOULD NEED COUNSELLING TO COPE WITH EXTREMELY DISTURBING CASE Using legislation that allows British citizens to be charged with crimes committed abroad, the National Crime Agency (NCA) charged Huckle with 91 counts. He originally denied each of the charges and was due to face three separate trials as it was thought the material would be too much for one jury to cope with. Jurors would have had to view the footage frame by frame while the public gallery remained closed to shield others from the horrific acts. Lawyers discussed whether counselling would be needed by all those who had viewed dozens of hours of harrowing material. But Huckle gradually entered guilty pleas to 71 counts during five separate hearings between February and April this year after police recruited an anatomical expert to identify him in his own homemade videos and pictures. Advertisement

Huckle moved to Malaysia permanently in 2010 and enrolled at the Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan University to study IT and later work as a freelance photographer.

He offered to take photographs for children’s birthday parties and even used his cover as an amateur photographer to snap the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in 2012 during their visit to a park in Kuala Lumpur, where he was later to take scores of his victims.

Huckle gained the trust of a poor Christian community in Kuala Lumpur through his English tuition where he was able to use his perceived status as a rich westerner to groom victims and their families with impunity.

Five of the children he abused were living in a children's home.

Huckle even boasted that he'd 'hit the jackpot' by grooming a three-year-old girl to be 'as loyal to me as my dog'.

On the dark web, Huckle documented every step of his child abuse and hoped to make paedophilia a paying profession.

He posted hundreds of images on one of the world's biggest child porn websites, which had more than 9,000 members before it was shut down.

He turned to online paedophiles to crowdfund the abuse, allowing those who paid him in Bitcoins access to videos of him raping his victims.

Huckle wrote: 'Impoverished kids are definitely much, much easier to seduce than middle class Western kids. I still plan on publishing a guide on the subject sometime.'

He added: 'Would love to make a small income off selling child porn.'

Huckle set up a disturbing system of awarding himself points for different abuse. Between November 2013 and November 2014, he amassed a score of 1,305.

His campaign of abuse was finally brought to an end when Australian police tipped off the authorities in the UK.

Huckle was arrested at Gatwick Airport on 19 December 2014 when he returned to the country to visit his family for Christmas.

Huckle posted non-explicit photos of himself in south-east Asia on social media while posting depraved images on the dark web

Police found 20,253 indecent images of children on his laptop and hard drives, many of them showing Huckle abusing children.

NCA Head of Operations Tony Cook said Huckle's crimes would have become even worse had he not been caught.

Mr Cook said: 'He was only 30 years old. We can only imagine the sort of offending he would have gone on to commit had he not been arrested.'

We can only imagine the sort of offending he would have gone on to commit had he not been arrested National Crime Agency's Tony Cook

Branding Huckle a 'depraved individual', he described the case as an 'unprecedented and exceptional amount of offending'.

'He had got away with this offending for nine years but finally we can see him held accountable for his actions.

'This case will hopefully send out a message to any transnational offenders who travel overseas to abuse children in this way that they will still face justice in this country despite the lengths they go to travel to countries like Malaysia to commit these offences,' Mr Cook added.

But Britain’s crime fighting agency faced criticism last night for waiting 16 months after his arrest in December 2014 to travel to Malaysia to inform the children’s carers about the abuse.

And it was accused of failing to inform Malaysian officials as soon it was tipped off by Australian police about his offences earlier in 2014. The NCA refused yesterday to say how long it knew about his offences after the tip-off by the Australians.

Huckle now faces up to 22 life sentences after admitting 71 charges, including rape, sexual assault, and sexual activity with a child in what investigators say is the worst case of its kind.

Posts on Facebook show Huckle being welcomed into schools and institutions (including this orphanage in India which is not suggested to have any connection with Huckle’s trial) while he posed as a 'photographer' who would 'teach the children about photography'

The case can be reported for the first time after Judge Peter Rook QC lifted reporting restrictions yesterday at the start of a three-day sentencing hearing.

The bearded paedophile sat with his head in his hands in the dock as the court heard how he set up a website to crowd-fund his sickening acts.

Investigators were stunned by the unprecedented scale of the offences he had committed from the age of 19.

As a shy Christian teenager growing up in his hometown of Ashford, the loner appeared to be devoted to children, lavishing gifts on youngsters he met at churches.

Richard Huckle abused hundreds of children in south-east Asia. He has admitted 71 charges, including multiple rapes and sexual assaults

But neighbours described him as ‘strange’, always wearing black clothing and eyeliner and spending hours on his computer. The son of a council engineer, Huckle enjoyed a comfortable upbringing and had ambitions to become a professional photographer or teacher.

His parents urged him to take up a career in computing while his local priest advised him to go to bible college in order to take up a position in the church.

But instead he used his photography skills to catalogue his horrific crimes. When his parents learnt of his crimes following his arrest, they threw him out of the family home, telling him they never wanted to see him again.

Yesterday prosecutor Brian O’Neill, QC, said he used local churches, where he helped out at Sunday schools, ‘as a stepping stone’ to further his abuse abroad.

Investigators suspect he may have attempted to groom victims in the UK, but Huckle found it was easier to target youngsters abroad where he feared no intervention from police, carers or even his victims’ parents, who allowed their children to be taken away for tuition even when they were terrified of him.

Huckle is thought to be only the third British man convicted under a recent law that allows the UK prosecution of ‘sex tourists’.

A spokesman for children's charity the NSPCC said the case highlighted the need for a global effort to crackdown on international paedophile rings.

The spokesman said: 'Internet service providers must take responsibility to cleanse the web of these images and prevent them from being viewed in the first place.’

The charity said of Huckle: 'He has left a trail of misery and devastated victims who will need extensive support to recover. Thankfully a successful police operation means he will spend many years behind bars.'

'Constant groomer' built his whole life around child abuse - and many of crimes could remain unknown

Richard Huckle was 'a constant groomer' who pretended to be a Christian philanthropist while in fact basing 'his whole life around the sexual abuse of children', investigators said.

The predator began his obscene crimes when he was just 19, and managed to get away without detection for nine years.

Huckle presented an image as a respectable English teacher, targeting impoverished children, in particular in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Huckle, pictured during one of his return trips to Kent, was described as 'depraved' by police involved

NCA Senior officer James Traynor said: 'Richard Huckle groomed those children. He groomed them to a point that he was certain no matter what he did to them they would not tell their parents about the abuse they were suffering from him.

'Richard Huckle is a predatory paedophile. He based his whole life around the sexual abuse of children, around the grooming of adults in order to gain access to their children.

He was described as 'a lone offender' and investigators said their inquiries into his crimes is still 'ongoing'.

They believe there are more victims who suffered at his hands in south-east Asia, although there is no evidence currently that Huckle has abused children in the UK.

Deputy head of operations Detective Superintendent Matthew Long said: 'He was one of the most committed, manipulative, conniving paedophiles we've come across. He's been so committed he's been using a variety of grooming methods, there's no point that he would stop.'

Huckle's parents Edwin and Christina moved out of their modern red-bricked detached home on a private estate in Ashford in December, according to neighbours.

His sister-in-law told Sky: 'None of his family will speak about him. None of us ever want to see Richard again.'

Locals described them as an 'exceptionally quiet' couple who would 'never speak or say a word' to anyone.

Did UK police allow Britain's worst ever paedophile to strike again?

By Richard Shears in Kuala Lumpur for the Daily Mail

For years, Richard Huckle moved stealthily from one community to another, targeting the young, innocent and impoverished.

The National Crime Agency was tipped off months before his arrest that he was sexually molesting children hardly out of nappies, photographing his exploits for other perverts as he travelled through Malaysia and Cambodia, brazenly taking his young victims on outings to parks, rides on the train and even to Sunday morning church services.

But the authorities in Malaysia where he eventually settled remained unaware of his activities. The English teacher was considered a philanthropist, a committed Christian, even a saviour.

Huckle returned to Britain and was regularly seen at a church, which he used to used to present himself as a Christian philanthropist

Yesterday Mariza Abdulkadir, interim executive director of the Malaysian charity Protect and Save the Children Association, told the Mail: ‘Yes, of course we have asked why no-one stepped forward to stop him. We cannot understand why there was no collaboration between the NCA and our own police.

‘I’ve learned that the NCA cannot operate in another country, move in and arrest someone, but I cannot understand why our police here were not tipped off to keep a watch on him.

‘Perhaps there was a fear he would realise he was being investigated and would go underground – that’s the only logical explanation I can come up with, but I still don’t think it’s strong enough to let him continue to abuse children until he returned to the UK in December 2014.’

She also criticsed the NCA for failing to tell community leaders in Malaysia about the extent of his crimes until 16 months after his arrest.

Yes, of course we have asked why no-one stepped forward to stop him Mariza Abdulkadir, interim executive director of the charity Protect and Save the Children Association

Miss Abdulkadir told Sky News: ‘We were actually approached by the British police back in December 2014.

'They didn’t give us much information so we went in there with nothing – so we approached the communities as an non-governmental organisation, doing prevention work on child sexual abuse and working with communities and giving them safety workshops and talks to parents and the community leaders. Absolutely no information was given to them at all.’

Miss Abdulkadir said the parents and carers of the victims were still in denial. She said of Huckle: ‘He might stay for just a couple of days in an area and then move on.

She added: ‘We are now working at getting the message through to them that, “It’s not your fault, not the children’s fault. Sexual abuse of their children was not something they wanted to even contemplate.’