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Catching A Monster | 60 Minutes | Peter Scully: Australia's Most Evil Predator

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• published: 17 Apr 2015
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After a four-year global manhunt, Australia's most evil predator – Peter Scully – was finally caught. 60 Minutes cameras captured the arrest. He’s considered Australia’s worst paedophile, and for four years Peter Scully was on the run. He thought by hiding out in a remote corner of the Philippines he was beyond the reach of the law. But Scully was wrong. In this exclusive report, 60 Minutes has been given unprecedented access to the international investigation for this terrifying criminal. Joining the Australian Federal Police and special agents in the Philippines on their global manhunt, our cameras were there when Scully was finally caught. Now, behind bars, and facing multiple charges, Tara Brown comes face to face with our country’s most depraved predator. What he has to say for himself will leave you stunned. HE’S a tall, slim, middle-aged man with grey hair and a composed demeanour. But this ordinary-looking person is accused of being Australia’s worst paedophile. Peter Scully is charged with some of the vilest acts known to humanity, including the torture and sexual abuse of children as young as 18 months old, human trafficking and the murder of a 12-year-old. The 51-year-old from Melbourne was arrested in the Philippines, from where he had allegedly been running a global paedophile ring, distributing videos for money online. 60 Minutes followed police as they arrested Scully, and he agreed to an interview from a Manila jail with presenter Tara Brown. Scully was the target of a global manhunt led by the Australian Federal Police and special agents in the Philippines. Business associates from Australia said he had brought a Malaysian teenager to Melbourne, married her and then pimped her out as a prostitute. In 2009, he was investigated for fraud, and he moved to the Phillippines in 2011, never being prosecuted for the 117 fraud and deception charges. He is now charged with the abuse of eight Filipina girls aged 18 months to 13-years-old over three years, after allegedly establishing a lucrative online child pornography business. He was allegedly assisted by two girlfriends, one of whom was just 14 when he reportedly bought her off the street. He was controlling and manipulative, police claim. All the alleged victims were from impoverished families — Scully or his girlfriends allegedly offered them food and took them home, or paid families for their children, in one case with just a five kilo bag of rice. After his arrest, police found a skeleton buried under a house he had rented. Scully had allegedly strangled one of the girls to death. One 13-year-old girl said her family agreed she could do domestic work at Scully’s home in 2012. Instead, she alleges, she was forced to perform sex acts with other young girls. “They told me they had to take pictures of me naked because there was an American who really wanted to see me naked ... and because the American will pay a large amount,” she said. She said she fled Scully’s house after she was told he had sold her to a German, who was coming to collect her. Scully was arrested after police made the link between allegations and the global paedophile ring and a hard drive of graphic material found in a raid in the Netherlands. Investigators claim the father of two also sold material to clients in Australia. “There is a market. These people exist,” says Tara. “The really frightening thing is they walk among us invisible.” Scully is writing a journal, which he says will explain everything. He says he is “seeking some understanding of what he’s done within himself,” says Tara. In the meantime, he faces a life sentence if he is convicted. The Philippines is a major hub of a billion-dollar global child cybersex industry, with operators aided by widespread poverty and legal loopholes that allow them to remain anonymous. But authorities said this footage is the most shocking they have seen, containing images of terrible violence that they will never be able to erase. “It was upsetting and confronting to be exposed to this very dark side of life,” says Tara. “But it’s important to know this happens.”