WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

A MELBOURNE man running a paedophile empire on the dark net from a bedroom in his parent’s house has been described by the FBI as one of the most prolific child sex offenders ever.

Matthew Graham is awaiting sentencing for 13 child pornography charges in the Victorian County Court after he was arrested in 2014 following a joint FBI/Victoria Police probe.

The 23-year-old pleaded guilty for creating and administering a series of website on the dark web between 2011 and 2014, which were devoted to torture and abuse of victims under the age of 10.

Prosecutor Krista Breckweg said under the pseudonym of Lux, Mr Graham ran the paedophile websites, which had more than three million hits and 1000 active users globally.

While administering the websites, Mr Graham posed as a paediatrician from the United States and offered advice to paedophiles about how to cover their tracks while enticing young children.

Ms Breckweg said the FBI and Europol had identified the user known as Lux as one of the “most prolific” online child abuse pron facilitators in the world.

“Controlling multiple child abuse sites and also attracting criticism from abusers who did not like him because of [the cruelty of his content],” she said, reported the ABC.

“Lux taunted law enforcement on his site, claiming that each time their sites were taken down ‘they’ [the paedophile community] would just get stronger and make it harder for them to get caught.”

During his hearing, Graham sat with his head in his hands as the prosecution described the horrific content posted on his websites.

It was revealed that Graham was closely linked to Peter Scully — an Australian paedophile facing murder, rape and human trafficking charges in the Philippines.

Mr Graham had admitted to obtaining a four-part video called Daisy’s Destruction, in which Scully and his Filipino girlfriend sexually tortured an 18-month-old girl.

He said he procured the horrific video series as a “stunt” to get traffic towards his own dark net websites.

Ms Breckweg said the contents of the video were highly distressing.

“It’s pretty much one of the worst things that you’ll ever see,” she said.

During interviews with detectives, Mr Graham said he did not consider himself a paedophile, but felt pride in the number of hits his sites received.

“I guess I wanted to be part of something and so I made it up ... the sexualisation was never anything I was interested in, it was the power within the [paedophile] community,” he told detectives.

County Court Judge Michael Tinney expressed his deep shock at the crimes that begun when Mr Graham was an 18-year-old student at Epping Secondary College.

“It is as if he is from another planet,” he said, reported The Age.

Judge Tinney said he was shocked Mr Graham had obtained Daisy’s Destruction to try and build his audience.

“How any human can view that impassively ... the infant was being tortured, actual physical torture, an extremely trusting, vulnerable child who begins smiling wearing a nappy and ends a wailing physical wreck,” he said.

“I have seen some shocking things over the journey of my career and I have never seen anything like that.”

Judge Tinney said defence lawyer from Victoria Legal Aid, David Gibson, had conceded his client would spent time behind bars for his crimes.

“[Mr Gibson had] already conceded the inevitability of a substantial term of imprisonment,” he said. “The issue for me is just how substantial.”

Mr Graham will be sentenced on March 17.

The news follows a recent study exploring the illicit content freely available on the dark web.

According to the report, the most distressing statistic was the 122 websites distributing illegitimate pornography.

“Websites dedicated to providing links to videos purporting to depict rape, beastiality and paedophilia were abundant. One such post at a supposedly nonaffiliated content-sharing website offered a link to a video of ‘a 12 year old girl … getting raped at school by 4 boys’,” the report read.

The report said users of these websites appeared to seek vindication and support for what they deemed as “unjust discrimination” for their non-mainstream sexual practices.

“Users exchanged experiences and preferences, and even traded content. One notable example from a website called Pedo List included a commenter freely stating that he would ‘Trade child porn’,” it read.

“There appears to be no fear of retribution or prosecution in these illicit communities, and as such users apparently feel comfortable enough to share personal stories about their otherwise stifled tendencies.”