Melbourne man admits urging a Russian paedophile to kidnap and film the rape and torture of a five-year-old girl.

His crimes have shocked even the judge.

Warning: this item contains disturbing details of child sex crimes, which may be distressing for some readers.

Some of the details of this man’s crimes are too disturbing to publicise.

They involve twisted, dark, sick, gruesome videos of babies and toddlers. One collection of images of a little girl, just a toddler, shows her with the word “rape” scrawled on her stomach in thick pen.

Others involve animals.

The man accused of procuring the collection of images and videos, a Melbourne website operator, has faced court on a raft of horrific child pornography charges.

Matthew Graham, 23, has admitted 13 charges of child pornography, child abuse and “hurtcore” (sexual torture) relating to a network of sites he ran from 2012 until his arrest in August 2014.

Thousands of users accessed his sites each day to watch and share child exploitation material. In one of his crimes, Graham admitted urging a Russian paedophile to kidnap and film the rape, torture and murder of a five-year-old girl.

The 23-year-old was arrested in 2014 after a joint FBI/Victoria Police probe.

He began the sites – hosted on the dark web, a collection of websites that hide the IP addresses of the servers that run them – between 2011 and 2014, when he was just 18 and a student at Epping Secondary College in Victoria.

The sites were operated from his childhood bedroom in his parents’ house in South Morang.

Prosecutor Krista Breckweg said the FBI recorded more than three million hits on Graham’s “pedoWiki” website.

“The FBI and Europol identified the user known as Lux as one of the most prolific online sexual child abuse offenders and facilitators around the world, controlling multiple child abuse sites and also attracting criticism from abusers who did not like him because of his cruelty,” Ms Breckweg said.

“Lux taunted law enforcement on his site, claiming that each time their sites were taken down ‘they’ [the paedophile community] would just get stronger and make it harder for them to get caught.”

The ABC reports that Judge Michael Tinney reluctantly agreed to view excerpts of the videos after the prosecutor said seeing the material would “bring home” the depravity of the offending.

“Graham sat hunched in the County Court dock with his head in his hands as the prosecution described countless videos and images he posted on his websites — the contents of which are too horrific to detail,” writes the ABC.

When he was arrested, Graham, who used the online alias “Lux”, told police he was not a paedophile himself but felt “power within the community”. Police considered him a non-contact offender.

“I guess I wanted to be part of something and so I made it up… the sexualisation was never anything I was interested in, it was the power within the [paedophile] community.”

At times Graham posed online as a US pediatrician with access to children. He advised an American man how he could rape a seven-year-old disabled girl in his care.

The child had muscular dystrophy and was unable to speak which Graham said would help him avoid detection.

“If you record audio then that can give a lot away but it’s good the fact she can’t speak, I don’t think it’s going to narrow it down,” he wrote.

He told the man: “It’s much better to ask a question now rather than spend the rest of your life in prison,”

Judge Michael Tinney said Graham’s crimes were “unusual and prolific.” In relation to one crime of advising a Russian paedophile with ideas on how to kidnap, rape and torture a five-year-old girl, he said it was unprecedented.

“That is an offence I have no knowledge of seeing before.”

Police say they do not know if the murder took place.

Graham had close ties to Peter Scully, the Australian paedophile facing murder, rape and human trafficking charges in the Philippines.

At one stage, Graham tried to sell a four-part video — of the torture and sexual abuse of an 18-month-old girl — Scully and his Filipino girlfriend made. They titled it: “Daisy’s Destruction”.

“Throughout the video the child is screaming in pain and obviously terrified,” Ms Breckweg said.

“It’s pretty much one of the worst things that you’ll ever see,” Ms Breckweg said.

Graham’s charges carry a maximum penalty of 20 years’ jail. His plea hearing continues.

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