Paedophile convicted with 129-year prison term, hurtcore child porn traumatized his prosecutors

Fifty-nine-year-old Peter Gerard Scully is a paedophilic Australian sex offender imprisoned in the Philippines. Filipino online news website Rappler reports that his 129-year prison term comes after he was found guilty of one count of human trafficking and five counts of rape by sexual assault of underage girls.

Scully garnered attention from law enforcement and media when he promoted his hurtcore show "Daisy's Destruction," which featured the sexual abuse of little girls as young as 18 months on a pay-per-view basis.

Eileen Ormsby, Australian writer and author of "The Darkest Web", described hurtcore as "a fetish for people who get aroused by the infliction of pain, or even torture, on another person who is not a willing participant". Hurtcore is a portmanteau of the words "hardcore" and "hurt" and is an extreme form of child pornography that usually involves degrading violence, bodily harm and sometimes even murder.

After viewing the extremely graphic child abuse on his show, the Dutch National Child Exploitation Team opened an investigation with the goal of locating the child victims. The international manhunt eventually tracked Scully down to where he was staying in Malaybalay City, Philippines.

Though first apprehended in 2015, the cases against him took several years to build, and the narratives of the victims and video recordings of their torture and abuse traumatized the prosecutors assigned to the case. Many of them had to seek professional help as they suffered vicarious trauma from their continuous exposure to victims of violence and trauma.

On Monday, Northern Mindanao Regional State Prosecutor Merlynn Barola-Uy said, "We couldn't imagine the manner and extent of the abuse that was captured on camera.... I don't think I'll ever see another thing like this in my lifetime. As a lawyer, this was the worst thing that I ever saw."

Earlier this month, Scully was also convicted of syndicated child pornography, child abuse, rape, and photo and video voyeurism, among others.