Mark Page, 63, was sentenced in March to four years in prison on four counts of conspiracy to commit child sexual abuse between 2016 and 2019. On Friday, that sentence was increased to 18 years by three Court of Appeals judges who said the original sentence was unjustifiably lenient and that Page’s “total crime” was not reflected in the original sentence. Page worked for BBC Radio 1 in the 1980s and as a presenter at Middlesbrough FC for 20 years. He also helped set up a radio station for the British Army. His Teesside Crown court found him guilty of “traumatic sexual abuse” of children as young as 12. The divorced father of three from Stockton, Teesside, often used business and charity trips to the Philippines as cover for the abuse, jurors said. Two of the charges related to incidents witnessed on the webcam at his home and the other two were in the Philippines. He pleaded not guilty to all four charges, but failed to convince the jury that his devices had been tampered with. Image: Cleveland Police posted this screenshot of the Page to the webcam Page “children were robbed for their innocence” Condemning him in March, Judge Paul Watson QC told him: “You have taken advantage of poverty and deprivation in an underdeveloped country where children are usually forced into prostitution through economic and social deprivation. “Your only purpose was to engage children, just 12 years old, in miserable sexual activity to satisfy your perverted appetites. “It did not matter to you that you seized the innocence of their childhood, it did not matter to you what long-term trauma and emotional damage you were leading them to. Image: This web profile was found during searches on the Page computer “Obviously you were pleased with their humiliation and the satisfaction of your own corrupt sexual desires. That was, in my view, the very embodiment of alienation.” He was arrested after Facebook expressed concerns about some of his messages. Police then searched his home and searched his Skype and money transfer accounts. Page is now subject to a lifelong sex harm prevention order.
