Pakistani man sentenced to 17 years in jail for sexual abuse of hundreds of victims

Melbourne, Aug 28 (PTI) A Pakistani-origin man has been sentenced to 17 years in jail for over one of the worst online child sexual abuse schemes in Australia, targeting hundreds of victims in the country and overseas by pretending to be a 15-year-old social media influencer with a large following.
     Muhammad Zain Ul Abideen Rasheed, 29, pleaded guilty to 119 charges, relating to 286 people from 20 countries, including the UK, the US, Japan and France. Two-thirds of his victims were aged under 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 pretended to be a teenage YouTube star and blackmailed hundreds of children into performing 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 initially 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 type of online exploitation and abuse is devastating and causes lifelong trauma," it said.
     Rasheed was first charged by the Australian Federal Police in 2021 after they were contacted by Interpol and police in the United States raising concerns about a person, believed to be in Australia, who was targeting young girls through social media.
     He is already serving a five-year jail term for a separate crime in which he sexually abused a 14-year-old child in his car on two separate occasions at a Perth park, which the judge noted was during the same period he was committing the online offences.
     The court heard Rasheed spent hundreds of hours engaged in a sex offender treatment programme while in prison, however, a psychiatrist found he still represented a "well above average risk" of reoffending.
     A report prepared by a psychiatrist for the court detailed how Rasheed moved to Australia from Pakistan at a young age and how his parents were "traditional, conservative and strict".
     He was sent to an all-boys private school where he and his brothers were the only Muslim students, which led to him feeling socially isolated.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)