Australian man sentenced to 129 years in the Philippines for child sexual abuse

Peter Gerard Scully was arrested in 2015 in Malaybalay in Philippine city after fleeing from Australia in 2011

File. Peter Scully of Australia (R), accused of raping and trafficking two girls in the Philippines, leaves the court handcuffed to another inmate (L) after his arraignment in Cagayan de Oro City, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao on June 16, 2015 (AFP via Getty Images)

The Philippines handed a sentence of 129 years in prison to an Australian man over a child sexual abuse scandal.

For Peter Gerard Scully, who is already serving a life sentence for a plethora of charges including rape and trafficking of girls, this was the second conviction.

Scully was arrested in 2015 in Malaybalay in the Philippines after fleeing from Australia in 2011.

He had come to the Philippines to escape fraud charges in his home country.

He then set up a cybersex business, filming teenage girls from impoverished families as he had sex with them or used sex toys, investigators said previously.

On 3 November, a Cagayan de Oro court handed down the sentence after Scully and his three co-accused entered into a plea bargaining agreement. Reports said that they had been charged with 60 offences, including trafficking, child exploitation material, child abuse and rape.

Scully’s girlfriend, Lovely Margallo, was sentenced to 126 years in jail. Two others were given sentences of more than nine years.

“They all want to put closure to this dark phase of their lives and move on,” the statement from the families of victims reads, which included an 18-month-old girl and a child whose body was found buried under the floor of a house rented by Scully.

Merlynn Barola-Uy, a regional prosecutor in the southern city of Cagayan de Oro said: “This is a big victory, not only for us prosecutors in the Department of Justice, but more importantly this is a big victory for the victim-survivors.”

In 2016, prosecutors in the Philippines had been calling for the death penalty to be reintroduced as punishment for Scully. Then 52-year-old Scully is accused of directing horrific videos involving rape and torture and selling them through the dark web. He is being investigated for a total of 75 charges, including the alleged rape of an 18-month-old girl.