A sexual predator who abused and raped children as young as two years old and shared the footage online has been handed an order for lifelong restriction.
Benjamin Young created and moderated private chat rooms as part of a paedophile network to facilitate the exchange of indecent images of children.
The 43-year-old targeted 10 children and one adult, raping one child at least 26 times.
A court heard the chef was eventually caught after Police Scotland received intelligence from the National Crime Agency that someone at Young’s address had distributed indecent images of children to a paedophile in Denmark.
Almost 20,000 indecent images and videos were recovered following a raid on Young’s home.
After his arrest, Young was interviewed by officers but maintained complete silence throughout the interrogation.
Judge Lord Arthurson told Young: “As I indicated at the last calling of this case, very occasionally crimes come before the court which are so abhorrent that words are simply not adequate to express appropriate public revulsion.
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“Yours, Mr Young, are such crimes. Your offending has plumbed the very abyss of depravity.
“It is scarcely possible to believe that any person could do what you have done to your child victims in this case.
“Put short, you sexually abused and raped children as young as two years old, systematically filmed that abuse and then distributed the resulting images and footage online to a network of paedophiles in which network you played a pivotal role.
“You yourself are plainly a calculating and thoroughly committed paedophile.
“This, in my view, is one of the very worst cases of its kind ever to come before the High Court. You can be assured that your sentence today will reflect that dismal reality.”
Young’s offending occurred between January 2021 and December 2022, mainly in Argyll and Bute.
He pleaded guilty to 32 charges – including rape, sex assaults, and possessing, taking and distributing indecent images of children – at the High Court in Glasgow in December, and was sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh on Tuesday.
Lord Arthurson stated: “The degree of breach of trust, manipulation and calculation involved in this offending quite simply beggars belief.
“You have inflicted catastrophe on the most defenceless members of our society, and their families, and done so without remorse.”
Young was ordered to spend at least 12 years in prison before being eligible for parole and was placed on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.
If released back into the community, he will remain under the supervision of a criminal justice social worker as part of the order for lifelong restriction (OLR) and could find himself back behind bars if he were to commit another crime.
Young was also banned from contacting his victims.
The judge noted that the child abuse images recovered from Young’s devices were at the “worst end of the spectrum”.
Young was said to be active on the dark web.
Lord Arthurson added: “Such was the base and escalating nature of your internet tastes and addictions that you, on your own admission, have viewed adults being murdered in a particular virtual room.”
Young was assessed as meeting the criteria for autism.
He was also said to have a “constellation of personality disorders”, including a “paedophilia disorder” and “psychopathic traits”.
Lord Arthurson stated: “The assessor has further considered the chat logs engaged in by you and has concluded that you view children as objects to be violated using sadistic sexual violence.
“Unsurprisingly, the appointed assessor characterises the risk presented by you as high.”
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Detective Inspector Adrian Ure, of Police Scotland’s national child abuse investigation unit, branded Young’s behaviour “truly appalling”.
He added: “Young is directly responsible for creating demand which contributes to the dreadful sexual abuse and suffering of the children in the images and videos he was creating and sharing.
“Detectives worked tirelessly during what was an extensive investigation, and as a direct result Young will now rightly face a custodial sentence and the consequences of his actions.”
