SINGAPORE — An Australian man based here who sexually abused dozens of young boys in the region, including five in Singapore, was sentenced to at least 28 years’ jail on Wednesday (Jan 29).

Boris Kunsevitsky, who groomed children in four countries while travelling across Southeast Asia on alleged work trips between 2002 and 2017, received the maximum jail term of 35 years and will be eligible for parole only after 28 years.

Justice John Champion, in an Australian Associated Press report, described his offences as the worst he had ever seen, calling him a “child abuser of appalling… proportions” and his appetite for sexual abuse “insatiable”.

Kunsevitsky, a 53-year-old father-of-one, took more than 35,000 photographs and more than 4,800 videos of the sexual abuses. 

Most of his crimes took place in the Philippines. He also abused one boy in Indonesia, five in Singapore and one in Melbourne, Australia.

The photos and videos depicted children engaged in sexual activities with each other on his instructions or of Kunsevitsky abusing them. 

More than 1,000 of the photographs or videos that were found on him were taken when he was overseas at various times between May 2010 and April 2015.

He had stored the obscene material in a folder labelled “jailbait”.

In 2007, the police in Germany found 55 images he had distributed on Microsoft Office Groove — a discontinued desktop application designed for document collaboration. Most of the images were titled “Aussie01jpeg to Aussie49jpeg”.

The German authorities referred the case to the Australian authorities in 2008, but the victim — a teenager from Melbourne — was identified only in 2016.

The police in Australia began investigating Kunsevitsky in 2016 and charged him on May 26, 2017 when he was overseas.

He was arrested on Sept 4, 2017 during a visit to Melbourne and the police found five electronic devices on him containing the obscene materials.

Kunsevitsky was diagnosed with a paedophilic disorder after his arrest in 2017.

Justice Champion described the images and videos as "difficult to look at, and it is deeply disturbing, sordid and sad".

Kunsevitsky was sentenced in the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia on Wednesday after pleading guilty last year to 59 offences, including engaging in sexual intercourse with a child outside Australia.

Of the victims, 36 were aged between 10 and 15 at the time of the offences while eight were aged between 16 and 17. 

Five of them suffered from “persistent sexual abuse” between June 2010 and June 2011, and again between February 2013 and June 2013. 

Kunsevitsky targeted the Melbourne teenager — now aged about 28 years old — in 2004 and 2005, producing 55 child exploitation images of him.

The victim reportedly turned to drugs and tried to take his own life while he was in his teens and he is divorced.

During Wednesday’s sentencing, Justice Champion was reported as telling Kunsevitsky: “There is no sentence that I can pass that will undo the tremendous pain you have caused (the victims).”

Kunsevitsky emigrated to Australia with his family from Russia when he was 12 years old before moving to Singapore in the early 2000s. He was employed in Singapore as a clinical director at medical company Esthemedica.