Thaindian News

London, Oct 24 (IANS) A 54-year-old taxi driver posed as a photographer for years to sexually abuse teenage girls after drugging them made video of the abuses with the help of his wife, a British court heard.

Phillip Brindle, a father of two, was jailed for life and will serve a minimum of 11 years, The Daily Telegraph said. Judge Mark Brown described the defendant as an arch manipulator and “sexual deviant”.

“He is an individual who has no respect for women at all and was obsessed with sex,” he said. “In my judgment, his actions are those of a sexual predator.”

Brindle targeted vulnerable girls for nearly a decade throughout the 1990s, convincing them to strip naked on the pretext of launching their modelling careers.

Once he had drugged them, he would often film the abuse he meted out and was seen on the footage checking their eyelids to make sure they were unconscious. On at least one occasion, he raped a victim, the report said.

His wife Victoria was key in helping the girls to pose, assisting in the drugging and helping move the bodies so they could be filmed.

Victoria died two years ago from deep vein thrombosis before their “sex obsessed” crimes were uncovered.

The case could not be reported until Thursday as Brindle, from Cornwall, faced other charges related to possession of indecent images of children which will now lie on file, the daily said.