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Swede, 76, jailed for child sex crimes in Philippines

A 76-year-old man has been convicted in Sweden for molesting three young girls in the Philippines when he was teaching English to poor children there.

Published: 29 March 2012 17:24 CEST

The man, who hails from Eskilstuna in central Sweden, was sentenced to 18 months in prison by the Eskilstuna District Court for aggravated sexual assault against a child, sexual assault against a child, and child pornography crimes.

The man had previously been convicted for child sex crimes in the 1990s and had been sentenced to court ordered psychiatric care, but was released after nine years.

The 76-year-old, who still owns a home in Eskilstuna, lives in a house in a small village in the Philippines where he abused young girls from poor families.

He taught English to one of the victims and began sexually abusing her when she was nine years old.

According to the court’s ruling, the abuse took place twice a week, and each time the Swede gave the girl a small sum of money equivalent to a couple of US dollars.

Another one of the victims also participated in the English lessons and was abused on at least one occasion.

The third girl, who that man had taken into his home to support, was photographed naked several times by the 76-year-old.

The court found that the man’s crimes deserved a punishment equivalent to two years in prison, but reduced the sentence in light of the man’s old age.

According to the court’s ruling, the man has a predisposition to paedophilia and he “therefore prefers young, immature girls”, the local Eskilstuna Kuriren newspaper reported.

“I’ve often seen men move abroad and engage in schools and volunteer organizations in order to gain access to children,” detective Lisbeth Tolfes of Sweden’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) told the TT news agency.

Tolfes participated in the investigation into the 76-year-old’s sex crimes as a part of the NBI’s child sex crimes unit.

In the past, it’s been uncommon for people to be convicted in Sweden for child sex crimes committed abroad.

But on Wednesday this week a 45-year-old man from the Kristianstad area in southern Sweden was sentenced to seven years in prison by a court of appeal for abusing children in the Philippines.

“The Philippines is an incredibly poor country. It’s tragic how these men use these poor children,” said Tolfes.

TT/The Local/dl

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CATHOLIC CHURCH

At least 3,000 paedophiles active in French church since 1950: report

Thousands of paedophiles have operated inside the French Catholic Church since 1950, the head of an independent commission investigating the scandal told AFP, days ahead of the release of its report.

Published: 3 October 2021 09:16 CEST
French archbishop Cardinal Philippe Barbarin leads his last mass,on June 28, 2020. Barbarin was released on appeal on January 30 for his silence on the sexual abuse of a priest, and resigned quickly afterwards.
French archbishop Cardinal Philippe Barbarin leads his last mass,on June 28, 2020. Barbarin was released on appeal on January 30 for his silence on the sexual abuse of a priest, and resigned quickly afterwards. Photo: Jeff Pachoud/AFP

The commission’s research had uncovered between 2,900 and 3,200 paedophile priests or other members of the church, said Jean-Marc Sauve, adding that it was “a minimum estimate”.

The commission’s report is due to be released on Tuesday after two and a half years of research based on church, court and police archives, as well as interviews with witnesses.

The report, which Sauve said runs to 2,500 pages, will attempt to quantify both the number of offenders and the number of victims.

It will also look into “the mechanisms, notably institutional and cultural ones” within the Church which allowed paedophiles to remain, and will offer 45 proposals.

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The independent commission was set up in 2018 by the French Catholic Church in response to a number of scandals that shook the Church in France and worldwide.

Its formation also came after Pope Francis passed a landmark measure obliging those who know about sex abuse in the Catholic Church to report it to their superiors.

Made up of 22 legal professionals, doctors, historians, sociologists and theologians, its brief was to investigate allegations of child sex abuse by clerics dating back to the 1950s.

When it began its work it called for witness statements and set up a telephone hotline, then reported receiving thousands of messages in the months that followed.

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