I was gonna say, sentences in the US both server as punishment and deterrence. As outlined,it sounds like a big social taboo that was broken and it wasn't broken randomly, there's pecuniary gain and there's a systematic breach. I am unsure if these are aggravating factors in the legal sense, but if not, they are most definitely factors considered in the sentencing guidelines and they serve a function and thus they are needed.

Everyone wants the state to be hard on crime; here it is, our opportunity to be hard on crime given the egregious nature of the crime. And it's not like most criminal cases where the lines are blurry - there's a bunch of bodies and the very clearly point in exactly one direction.