A 49-year-old man has been jailed for six years to be followed by psychiatric prison for the rape and abuse of several under-age girls.

Frank R, described as ‘socially incompetent’ by experts, faced charges of abusing at least 21 girls but had actually persuaded hundreds to carry out sex acts via a webcam and recorded them, the court was told.

He was arrested last October and was said to have been active for eight years. His victims, said to number around 300 by the public prosecution department, were aged between 10 and 17. R pretended to be a handsome young man to persuade the girls to carry out the acts.

Videos

Police found some 26,000 videos and 144,000 photographs during a raid on his house, the department said in a statement. Some of the girls came from Belgium.

Grooming, the process of contacting children with the aim of sexually abusing them, is a criminal offence in the Netherlands.

The case came to light following the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl from Groningen in May last year. She was later found in R’s car and said she had been abused by him.