A man of Pakistani origin has been sentenced to 17 years in jail by an Australian court for what the police said was one of the worst online child sexual abuse schemes, where hundreds of victims in this country and abroad were targeted using a false persona of a social media influencer aged 15 years with many thousands of followers.
Muhammad Zain Ul Abideen Rasheed, 29, pleaded guilty to 119 charges relating to 286 people from 20 countries, including the UK, US, Japan, and France. Two-thirds of those were under the age of 16, BBC News reported.
A Perth court heard Rasheed coerced them into a cycle of increasingly extreme abuse by threatening to send explicit messages and images of them to their loved ones.
Rasheed posed as a teen YouTube celebrity and forced hundreds of children to perform sexual acts.
Rasheed will be eligible for parole in 2033, when he will be aged 38, ABC News reported.
In handing down her sentence in the District Court of WA on Tuesday, Judge Amanda Burrows said the volume of offences was of such magnitude there was "no comparable case … I can find in Australia".
He approached children online in that guise, sent them pictures of the online star, and at first asked innocuous questions to gain their trust.
He then asked the victims for pictures that he could "rate" and later threatened to send screenshots of their responses to friends and family unless they performed increasingly extreme sexual acts – including those involving family pets and other young siblings or children in the home.
In sentencing, Judge Burrows said those offences were "of a degrading, humiliating nature [and] the conduct involving a family pet was particularly abhorrent".
The court heard Rasheed would set a "countdown" timer, threatening to distribute the responses and further images he had made of them if they didn't comply with his demands, the report said.
Judge Burrows said Rasheed's offending was aggravated by the fact he abused a number of the victims with groups of other adults, inviting other paedophiles to watch live streams while he directed children to perform the distressing acts.
In other cases, he continued to bully and coerce the children despite their "obvious distress" and "extreme fear", with some telling him they were suicidal.
"The callous disregard this man had for his victims around the world and their distress, humiliation and fear make it one of the most horrific sextortion cases prosecuted in Australia," said Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner David McLean.
"This kind of online exploitation and abuse is devastating and leads to lifelong trauma," it said.
Police initially charged Rasheed in 2021 after the Australian Federal Police were contacted by Interpol and police in the United States with concerns about a person, believed to be in Australia, targeting young girls via social media.
He is currently serving a five-year jail term for another offence, sexually abusing a 14-year-old child in his car at Perth park on two occasions, said the judge, adding it happened in the same period while he was offending online.
The court heard Rasheed spent hundreds of hours while in prison participating in a sex offender treatment program but a psychiatrist found he still posed a "well above average risk" of reoffending.
A report prepared by a psychiatrist for the court outlined how Rasheed migrated to Australia at a young age and how his parents were "traditional, conservative and strict".
Then again, he was sent to an all-male private school where he and his brothers were the only Muslims, which further made him socially withdrawn.
Read also | Mexican President Suspends Relations with US Embassy Over Judicial Reform Dispute
Read also| Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos Announces Eighth Space Tourist Flight for Thursday
