Adults who take unrelated children to their rooms should be reported to the police. A Goa free of all paedophiles will attract more tourists not less — a message from Goa’s children, posted in a shack on Baga BeachON a wooden bench in a sessions court corridor, a greying, respectably dressed Swiss couple sits ramrod straight. Their composure doesn’t give away the fact that their story is being followed all along India’s coastline, from Goa to Kerala.A boy swaggers up with two bottles of chilled cola. He returns change, accepts a scribbled list and asks: ‘‘Any message for Mustafa?’’Oops, they are sharing the bench with the Sunday Express reporter. ‘‘Just move off. Move!’’ barks Wilhelm Albin Marty, on trial with Loshiar Mary Lily Marty as the first foreign couple held in India on charges of luring Mumbai’s street children with toys, free car rides and meals, to perform porn for the camera.Not since 76-year-old Freddy Peats — arrested in April 1991 (2,305 porn photographs were seized from his Margao home) and sentenced to life in 1996 for sex crimes against children — has a case so challenged the paedophile stereotype. ‘‘I have sworn not to talk to journalists, they make plucky stories about us,’’ says Mary. They move to a corner, almost passing for 50-something tourists greedy for a South Mumbai view. Two winters after the Martys, a camera, computer, two nude children and lurid photographs tumbled out of a plush Madh Island hotel in a December raid. Evidence is finally moving in court in the Martys’ case. Their past is sketchy. But investigators allege they visited India (and Sri Lanka and Thailand) often, once a year, shooting photographs that they peddled to websites. Unlike Freddy, the Martys never made bail.‘‘I was pretty shocked, she seemed absolutely normal,’’ recalls police psychiatrist Smita Watwani, who interviewed Mary after her arrest. ‘‘The Marty woman showed no psychiatric manifestations or sexual deviations and denied the whole thing in educated English. They did it only for money. the victims will take a long time to heal.’’‘‘We’re keenly awaiting the verdict. The case is significant, here we have an elderly couple one would not normally associate with paedophilic activities. Paedophiles are generally believed to be males,’’ says Nishtha Desai, director Children’s Rights in Goa (CRG). ‘‘In the US or the UK, an Indian holding a child’s hand while helping him/her cross the road could well be subject to police questioning. In India, even if a child spends the night in a foreign tourist’s room, no questions are asked. The Marty case shows that this attitude has to change,’’ she says.At Arthur Road Jail, prison authorities say the Martys — pleading not guilty — spend time shuffling to court and back. ‘‘When they are not in court, they watch TV and read English newspapers.’’But their story is unravelling nevertheless before a woman judge. The prosecution is led by a woman and little ones who turned witnesses are fiercely protected in-camera.For a country stirring sluggishly to tourism-related paedophilia and still seeking comprehensive laws to tackle sex crimes against children, this case is being followed as a precedent for future action.Ajit Muricken, director of Mumbai’s Vikas Adhyayan Kendra (VAK) highlights a legal grouse hotly debated by activists. ‘‘Under existing laws, it’s difficult to book paedophilia. everything is under sodomy or indecent acts.’’The Martys are charged under the IPC with wrongful confinement, extortion, outraging modesty of women, kidnapping, procuring a minor girl to selling pornographic material. ‘‘We hope this case will serve as a deterrent to paedophiles who believe India is a ‘cool’ place to operate,’’ says Desai, who authored a study on tourism-related paedophilia in Goa.Meanwhile, lunch-break. The errand boy brings a fast food takeaway and yogurt. At another end of the corridor, two little girls are swiftly chaperoned to a safe room.
