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PAEDOPHILIA

Norwegian politician faces trafficking charge in massive paedophilia case

A former politician for the Labour Party has been charged with human traficking in connection with last week’s police break-up of a massive online paedophilia ring.

Published: 30 November 2016 10:58 CET
Norwegian politician faces trafficking charge in massive paedophilia case
Janne Ringset Heltne, the head police prosecutor in the Operation Dark Room investigations, addressing media last week. Photo: Marit Hommedal / NTB scanpix
The 40-something man has been in police custody since October 12th on charges that he ordered the sexual abuse of minors in the Philippines. Those sexual assaults were live-streamed to the man’s computer in Norway. 
 
Police said that the man is connected to ‘Operation Dark Room’, a major police action carried out last week that revealed a number of atrocities against children as young as infancy. It is believed to be one of the largest child sexual abuse cases in Norway’s history.
 
 
Norwegian police filed charges against 51 individuals involved in the grotesque paedophilia ring, but would not say which individual now faces the human traficking charge. 
 
“We have a person who is charged with traficking. This is related to ordering live transmissions from the Philippines and there are things that point to this having gone on for several years,” Janne Ringset Heltne, the head police prosecutor in the Operation Dark Room investigations, told Bergens Tidende. 
 
The man’s lawyer, Jannicke Keller-Fløystad, said she could not comment directly on the charges. 
 
“He regrets what he has done and will take steps to get to the bottom of why this happened,” she said. 
 
In a similar case, a 66-year-old Norwegian man plead partially guilty last month to charges that he had sexually abused 62 children, including 20 kids in the Philippines were abused on direct orders from the man.

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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