An evil pensioner from Hornsey who travelled to Morocco to sexually abuse toddlers has been jailed.
John Thorogood, 75, abused boys as young as one - then shared stories of the abuse with a like-minded sex offenders.
Thorogood, of Middle Lane, Hornsey, was arrested in December 2021 after images were seized from a man who was convicted in the Netherlands.
It emerged that Thorogood was part of a Europe-wide network whose networks travelled the world to abuse children.
In August he pleaded guilty to one count of sexual activity with a child, one count of causing a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity and two counts of sexually assaulting a child.
He also pleaded guilty to possessing more than 200,000 indecent images of children.
Thorogood will be sentenced in mid-November.
Christopher Behn, 68, from Colchester in Essex, was part of the same network of offenders.
On Friday (November 3) at Chelmsford Crown Court he was sentenced to 11 years in prison and a further six years on licence for sexually assaulting young boys in Vietnam over a 10-year period.
He was previously arrested by the National Crime Agency in 2020 and was already serving a nine-year sentence, after pleading guilty to abusing 11 children on a trip to Myanmar in 2016.
Phil Eccles, operations manager at the NCA, said: “The scale, collaboration and commitment of this transnational child sexual abuse network is unprecedented.
“Behn, Thorogood, and their like-minded associates conducted their offending in remote parts of the world, conspiring together via encrypted chats in the hope of hiding from law enforcement. They then catalogued and shared these images between them, further victimising these children.
“It is evident that significant planning went into every trip taken by the group for well over a decade, all of which centred around abusing vulnerable children.
“However, thanks to joint work with our partners across Europe, including Europol and police in The Netherlands, these men are now being exposed.
“Protecting children is a priority for the NCA and international borders are not a barrier. We are dedicated to targeting the highest harm offenders wherever they are in the world, and working with overseas partners to ensure Britons committing abuse abroad will face justice in the UK.”
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here