Humans can look like humans, walk like humans, and socialize like humans. But when on the internet, some of these "humans" are monsters.
Hiding behind the screen, and interacting with others through the keyboard and mouse, these monsters lurk in shady parts of the web, called the dark web, and earn money by doing illicit things, becoming criminals by committing some of the worst crimes humanity has ever witnessed.
Peter Gerard Scully, born in 1963, was living in the suburb of Narre Warren in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife and two children.
And that is just about it.
Online, he was a human trafficker, a sex offender, a murderer, and a rapist of children.
Hiding in the shadows of the dark web, he built a fortune by becoming one of the worst criminals to have ever sunk their teeth on the internet.
Peter Gerard Scully, an Australian citizen, was living a life in his home country, before he was forced to leave everything behind.
He left Australia before he could be charged with his involvement in a property scheme and real estate scams that cost a number of investors over A$2.68 million.
It's said that if there is anything he is attracted to, it's money.
He was wanted in 2009 for 117 fraud charges.
However, he avoided capture by escaping to Manila in 2011.
Realizing that their target is a fugitive, the Australian authorities were still prepared to arrest him if he ever returned for any reason.
But Scully he never came back.
As a matter of fact. Scully went from bad to worse.
With the money, he began building himself an empire, on the web.
He began by setting up a dark web website, named the 'No Limits Fun' (NLF), where he offered pay-per-view video streams for viewers to see children being sexually abused and tortured.
From the island of Mindanao, Scully is alleged to have built up a lucrative child sexual abuse ring, which international reach and worldwide clients.
But before he could get the content to sell to his viewers, he must first obtain them.
It's reported that Scully scouted for victims by promising their parents that he would provide their children work or education.
At times, he also lured his victims with promises of giving them food to eat.
In short, Scully and his accomplices helpers promised a better life for them to the impoverished parents.
The type of content Scully produced, include extremely explicit content that involves violence, bodily harm, and severe degradation.
He sold a large collection of videos and pictures showing the abuse of children who were the victims of hardcore one of the most horrific videos.
While Scully mostly targeted children aged 14 and under, the youngest being 18 months old.
Among the victims who had their ordeals recorded and sold over the internet, also include a five-year-old who was raped and tortured by Scully and his female accomplices.
But the most disturbing videos he ever produced, was called 'Daisy's Destruction,' which features the torture and rape of three girls by Scully and his two Filipino girlfriends.
The three girls, who were all siblings, were handed over to Scully by their aunt, through his girlfriends. The aunt believed the girls would receive better care with him than staying with her.
But she was wrong, very wrong.
In the series of Daisy's Destruction videos, according to the witnesses, the three girls were tortured, humiliated, and violated.
For example, they had their limbs spread and their genitals clipped with cloth clips. Torture include waterboarding, having hot wax poured on them, and being tied upside down. Then, there are physical abuse and beating with hands, feet and more. The girls experienced these, all while writhing in pain.
Their faces were duct taped to prevent them from crying too much.
Two masked individuals were present.
Among those who have acquired and/or seen the video, it's said that the video is considered one of the biggest-ever purveyors of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
The video can be described as "hurtcore," a term to describe an extreme form of porn focusing on the unsimulated, hardcore affliction of pain, torture and humiliation, mainly on children, including toddlers.
It's later revealed that the two masked females are Scully's Filipino girlfriends, Carme Ann Alvarez and Liezyl Margallo Castaña.
Scully never really appeared on camera on the Daisy's Destruction video, but his voice and his thick Australian accent could be heard clearly.
At first, Scully sold the video privately to his clients on a pay-per-view basis.
But due to the nature of the video, it went viral amongst pedophiles, and began attracting the attention of the police, and also the media.
Unbeknown to Scully at first, it was the Dutch National Child Exploitation Team, who was the first to open an investigation with the goal of locating the victims. Subsequently, an international manhunt for those responsible for the video's production was launched by the Interpol.
The law enforcement counterparts informed the Philippine government of the video during an Interpol human trafficking conference in Bermuda in October 2014
Not knowing that the police was already after his trail, Scully, blinded by money, began making fortune by selling the video on his NLF dark web website to clients for up to $10,000.
In an attempt to create more similar content, Scully made one of his accomplices to lure two girls to come to his house, and there, he allegedly gave them alcohol to intoxicate them.
The two victims, cousins, were 9 and 12 years old, when Alvarez took them in 2015.
Alvarez allegedly took the two girls from a shopping center in Cagayan, before making them drunk, and forcing them to perform various sex act, on camera.
The prosecutor alleged that when the girls tried to escape, Scully forced them to dig graves in the basement of the house and threatened that he would bury them there.
The young girls reportedly considered taking their own lives just to escape their torments.
Scully was tracked to Malaybalay City in the Philippines, and then it was a dead end.
It was Alvarez, who blew his cover.
This happened about a week after Scully recorded the video with the two girls.
At the time, Alvarez went to Scully's house to find the two girls wearing pet collars, chained like dogs, treated like animals.
Alvarez felt remorse, freed the two girls, and reported Scully to the police, putting an end to the monster.
It was also Alvarez's willingness to cooperate during the investigation, that played a crucial role in finding Scully's hard drives.
These hard drives were examined by the Australian federal police, which stepped in after they were informed that one of their nationals was the subject of international investigation.
Scully was arrested on 20 February 2015.
He was caught off guard and was not resisting.
Investigators had six warrants for his arrest, all of which were related to the abduction and sexual abuse.
Her skeletal remains were found under the house, and was retrieved following Scully's arrest. It's said that she was buried there on the grave she dug herself, under the threats of Scully.
Scully faced a total of 75 charges, and in total, it was said that he allegedly abused at least that many children, sexually.
He was on trial with others who assisted in the production of his pornography, including his female accomplices, and also four men: German Christian Rouche, Filipinos Alexander Lao and Althea Chia, and Brazilian Haniel Caetano de Oliveira.
It was only after Scully's arrest, that the police found how he managed to get his accomplices.
It's said that Scully managed to make these women work for him by making her rely entirely on him, in a master-slave-like relationship.
For example, Alvarez was a sex worker before Scully "saved" her.
While there was no apparent love between them, Scully's dominance made Alvarez follow his orders without questioning.
The same goes for his other female accomplices.
In common, all of the females, including Scully, claimed to have been either sex trafficked or sexually abused as a child.
In the end, Scully, now considered a sex offender and murderer, is imprisoned in the Philippines after being convicted of one count of human trafficking and five counts of rape by sexual assault of children.
Judge Jose Escobido also ordered Scully and Alvarez to pay 5 million PHP (almost 87,000 USD) to the victims.
Scully and his girlfriend Alvarez were sentenced to life in prison in June 2018.
In November 2022, he received a second conviction and was sentenced to an additional 129 years in prison.
Margallo was sentenced to 126 years, and two accomplices, Alexander Lao and Maria Dorothea Chia, were given a 9-year sentence each.
In total, there have been 60 cases filed against Scully.
It's worth noting that even before his built his dark web empire, Scully was already breaking the law when he pimped out his teenage Malaysian girlfriend Ling as an escort and forced her to participate in sex parties he was also involved in
Scully's case revealed that such hideous crimes happen under many people's noses, without them realizing. Many people involved in this, and Scully was not the first child predator. And because of the high demand of such pornographic materials, he may not be the last.
Speaking about Scully, it's worth mentioning a man named Matthew David Graham, a man in his early 20s, living in Melbourne, who also abused children online on an international scale.
Graham was connected to Scully through their involvement in online child exploitation activities.
When Graham was caught, the police found that he was not the creator of the content on his site but instead, he was only administering it, and had his website be the gateway that directed visitors to a primary website, where CSAM materials were originally uploaded and posted.
The website in question, was operated by Scully.
It's worth noting that during his years running the dark web website, Scully conducted his crimes not only based on his own personal interest, but also his clients', who allegedly fed him instructions and their personal fantasies.
Scully displayed no remorse for his victims or his actions throughout his arrest trial, and verdict he remained nonchalant to the point of joking around with his co-accused in the courtroom while in detention he complained about.
His crimes, in which involves young girls and even babies in the Philippines have left many traumatized for life.
For example, in the Daisy's Destruction video, the first victim of Daisy's Destruction, named Liza, was found to be alive. The second victim, the titular Daisy, was also alive, but experienced lasting physical injuries caused by mistreatment. Due to the severe torture to her lower body, Daisy may not be able to bear children.
The third victim, Cindy, was murdered.
Investigators found that Scully had tortured and raped Cindy in a video, then forced her to dig out her own grave in the basement of the house before strangling her to death with a rope.
His acts are so depraved that country was considering calls to re-introduce the death penalty.
Capital punishment was outlawed in 1986 at the end of the brutal Ferdinand Marcos regime.
Regardless, Scully allegedly knows how to use his money, including for bribery. It's said that he bribed a number of police officers, who in turn helped him destroy some evidence.
For example, much of the physical evidence against him, including a computer, video camera and memory card, had been destroyed in a fire at the Cagayan de Oro Hall of Justice. Then, some speculated that Scully continues running his criminal activities through a chain of networks, even from prison, after all he was found communicating with his Filipina girlfriend Lezyl Margallo via social media before her arrest.
Because his operation involves the dark web, some suggested that Scully may still have other accomplices working on the website on his behalf.
It's worth noting that according to the former lawyer of Scully, the pedophile monster doesn't look like a pedophile at all. In fact, Scully is intelligent, and that he can speak and convey his message very well, and also talks with sense.
"He looks normal. It’s hard to believe that he’s a pedophile," the lawyer said.
The Philippines has become a hub of a billion-dollar, global child cybersex industry, which is assisted by widespread poverty.