A former undercover Victorian policeman who helped catch alleged child abuser and murderer Peter Scully has blasted the Attorney-General's Department for giving the accused Australian pedophile $500,000 to mount a legal defence from his Philippines jail cell.
Following his 2015 arrest in the Philippines, Melbourne father-of-two Scully was hit with a massive list of charges, including the murder of a 12-year-old Filipina girl, multiple counts of rape, child abuse and human trafficking.
Scully, a disgraced businessman who fled Australian shores in 2011, is accused of operating a sad*stic and ghoulish cyber sex den that live-streamed the sexual abuse of babies and children to pedophiles in Australia and around the world.
Today it was revealed tax payers have been footing a $500,000 bill, after the Attorney-General's Department approved Scully's application under a special program called the Serious Criminal Matters Scheme.
Ex Victorian cop Glen Hulley, who now works as a pedophile hunter in Southeast Asia, and has intimate knowledge of Scully's alleged offending, called the decision by the department, then headed by George Brandis, as "disgraceful".
"This is an embarrassment to the Australian government that we would fund his defence," Hulley told nine.com.au.
"The nature of the offences that he is accused of are some of the worst that I have ever come across."
Hulley said he had seen the evidence against Scully, who is being held in a jail near the Filipino city of Cagayan de Oro.
"The evidence against this man is overwhelming," Hulley said.
"The offences that I viewed myself being committed in these videos ranged from torture of young children, brutal torture, and rape, graphic rape. I have never seen in my time investigating these crimes anything as heinous."
Prosecutors in the case claim one of Scully's videos, Daisy's Destruction, shows the Melbourne man and his Filipina girlfriend allegedly sexually torturing an 18-month-old girl.
Hulley said, if found guilty, Scully "was a psychopath and by far one of the worst perpetrators that I have seen".
In 2015 the Attorney-General's Department approved Scully's application for financial help with his legal bills under the Serious Criminal Matters Scheme program.
The program provides legal funding for Australians facing serious charges overseas.
It is only available to those facing more than 20 years' imprisonment or the death penalty and who cannot otherwise afford the costs of a lawyer.
Attorney-General Christian Porter told nine.com.au in a statement that the decision to fund Scully had been made while the department was under the watch of George Brandis, who resigned from the Senate last month to become Australia's next High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.
Porter, who was appointed Attorney-General in December last year, said his office was now undertaking a review of the scheme, given the Scully decision "would be considered out-of-step with community expectations".
The review could mean those with histories of sexual offending or with similar circ*mstances to Scully will no longer be eligible for financial help, Porter said.
Hulley said it was "astounding" the Attorney-General's department could have rubberstamped Scully's application.
"The elaborate structure and organisation that was put behind the business that Scully was allegedly running in selling child sex exploitation material over the dark web was one of the most sophisticated that I have seen," Hulley said.
"Since his arrest he has done nothing but deny the allegations and used every avenue available to him to drag this process out as long as possible."
It is expected some of Scully's alleged child victims will be required to take the stand to give evidence.
Hulley's charity and advocacy group Project Karma helped initiate Australia's recent ban on child sex offenders travelling internationally. He urged the Attorney General to expedite changes to the Serious Criminal Matters Scheme program.
The raid on Scully's cybersex den, located on an island in the Philippines where he had lived since fleeing fraud charges in Melbourne, allowed police to seize his prized hard drives.
Digital forensics teams trawled through the computers and have since broken into a covert web of international pedophiles, including Australians, Hulley said.
In recent years the Philippines has become "a hot spot" for live streaming abuse of children.
The FBI is alarmed by the rise of online child exploitation. The US crime-fighting agency estimates that, at any given moment, 750,000 child predators are online.
Hulley said he believed Philippines police were currently investigating further allegations that Scully had hired someone to burn down a building that stored some of the state's evidence against him.
"It was alleged that Peter Scully had used a network inside the prison to contact somebody and pay a sum of money to burn that facility down," Hulley claimed.
"Even though an amount of evidence was damaged beyond use, prosecutors still believe the evidence that they have is overwhelming and they will still win this case."
In late 2014, Hulley received information from a source that would lead Philippines' National Bureau of Investigation agents to a house in Surigao City once rented by Scully.
There, buried under a concrete slab near the home's septic tank, agents recovered the remains of one of Scully's alleged victims, the dead body of a 12-year-old girl.
Scully is also accused of repeatedly raping two teenage girls who were found naked and chained in his apartment in the town of Cagayan de Oro.
He has pleaded not guilty to five counts of rape and one of human trafficking.
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