A former Radio One DJ jailed for arranging to have sex with vulnerable children in the Philippines has had his prison sentence increased to 18 years.

Mark Page, 63, was given a 12-year sentence in March for four counts of arranging the commission of a child sex offence between 2016 and 2019.

On Friday, that sentence was increased to 18 years by three Court of Appeal judges who said the original term was unduly lenient and that Page’s “overall criminality” was not reflected by the original sentence.

Page worked at BBC Radio 1 in the 1980s and as an announcer at Middlesbrough FC games for 20 years. He also helped set up a radio station for the British Army.

His trial at Teesside Crown Court heard he was responsible for “grotesque sexual abuse” of children as young as 12.

The divorced father-of-three from Stockton, Teesside, used frequent business and charity trips to the Philippines as a cover up for the abuse, jurors were told.

Two of the charges related to incidents witnessed on his webcam at home and the other two were in the Philippines.

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He pleaded not guilty to all four charges, but failed to convince a jury of his claim that his devices had been hacked.

Page ‘robbed children on their innocence’

Sentencing him in March, Judge Paul Watson QC told him: “You took advantage of the poverty and deprivation in an under-developed country in which children are routinely forced, through economic and social deprivation, into acts of prostitution.

“Your sole purpose was to engage children, as young as 12, in vile sexual activity to satisfy your perverted appetites.

“It did not matter to you that you were robbing them of the innocence of their childhoods, it did not matter to you what long-term trauma and emotional damage you were leading them to.

“You obviously delighted in their humiliation and the satisfaction of your own corrupt sexual desires. This was, in my view, the very embodiment of depravity.”

He was arrested after Facebook raised concerns about some of his messages. Police then searched his house and carried out checks on his Skype and money transfer accounts.

Page is now subject to a lifelong sexual harm prevention order.

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