Mark Page: Ex-Radio 1 DJ jailed for 12 years over child sex offences

A former Radio 1 DJ has been jailed for 12 years for arranging the sexual abuse of children in the Philippines.

Mark Page, 63, of Ingleby Barwick, Teesside, used a webcam to contact victims and travelled to the country.

He claimed his devices had been hacked but jurors at Teesside Crown Court found him guilty of four offences on Wednesday.

Judge Paul Watson QC said Page targeted vulnerable children and was the "very embodiment of depravity".

Page, who was on Radio 1 in the 1980s and worked as Middlesbrough FC's stadium announcer for 20 years, was found guilty of four charges of arranging the commission of a child sex offence.

The divorced father of three was convicted of two counts of abuse by using a webcam linking his home to the Philippines in 2016 and two more of offences while visiting the country in 2016 and 2019.

One of his victims, a then 13-year-old fatherless waitress who was the eldest of six children, has been traced and now lives in a place of safety, the court heard.

The judge said Page's offences "involve the grotesque sexual abuse of young children for your own sexual gratification" as he imposed a life-long Sexual Harm Prevention Order on the former broadcaster.

"You took advantage of the poverty and deprivation in an underdeveloped country in which children are routinely forced, through economic and social deprivation, into acts of prostitution.

"It did not matter to you that you were robbing them of the innocence of their childhoods, it did not matter to you what long-term trauma and emotional damage you were leading them to.

"You obviously delighted in their humiliation and the satisfaction of your own corrupt sexual desires.

"This was, in my view, the very embodiment of depravity."

Page had his phone, tablet and a computer seized in 2020 after Facebook monitors raised concerns.

He claimed he had been hacked but did not mention this in police interviews, when he gave "no comment" answers.

Page visited the Philippines regularly for business as managing director of armed forces radio station Garrison FM.

The jury heard he tried to haggle down the price for a sexual encounter with a 12-year-old girl and a boy of 13, saying 3,000 pesos - around £44 at the current exchange rate - was too much.

Det Sgt Kevin Carter from Cleveland Police's paedophile online investigation team, said Page had "refused to accept responsibility" and instead tried to "lay blame on everyone but himself".

Mr Carter said: "Page attempted to present himself as a respectable and credible individual, yet his actions betrayed the trust and confidence of many people, not least his family and close friends."

He said children of the Philippines would be "that bit safer" with Page in prison and his jailing should be a warning to other paedophiles.

Jo Kidd, prosecuting, said it was recently estimated that 60,000 children in the Philippines had been forced into prostitution and the situation had been made worse by the "crippling poverty" caused by lockdown.

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