Paradise for paedophiles

Most notorious is the stretch of coastline at Negombo, 45 km north of Colombo. For a `boy man’, the local term for a Westerner looking for sex with boys, buying it on these idyllic beaches is as simple as buying coconut water. Only well-known hotels have rules against children loitering on the premises, while the others turn a blind eye in the interests of business. So far, only one person, a Belgian national, has been convicted in Sri Lanka for paedophilia. After an arduous trial that stretched over two years, he was convicted this February and given two years rigorous imprisonment. Although the country has a tough law, since 1995, to deal with paedophiles that specifies a minimum penalty of seven years and a maximum of 20 years, last week, public attention once again focused on the difficulties of implementing this legislation when a team of investigators flew down from Zurich to collect evidence against Swiss national Victor Bauman who has been charged by the Swiss police for sex offences.

Bauman was arrested in Negombo by the Sri Lankan police in October 1996 but was granted bail. In February this year, the police decided not to charge him in Sri Lanka. A senior police official admitted to journalists on record that as Bauman was a man of considerable influence among local bigwigs, he would have attempted to subvert the trial. Indeed, soon after he was released on bail, two important witnesses who could have provided critical evidence, disappeared.

So, barely two weeks after President Chandrika Kumaratunga announced in January this year that she was taking a personal interest in a Government campaign against paedophiles, and formed a task force to recommend measures, the police decided to deport the 52-year-old Swiss businessman who had settled down in Sri Lanka some years ago, owned four industries here and 150 acre of prawn farm.

His activities had gone unchecked for 15 years because none of the children whom he exploited complained. Finally, it came to the fore when a local NGO teamed up with a similar organisation in Switzerland to uncover the extensive network of pimps and boys that he had set up for himself at a palatial mansion on the sea front. It was only then that he was arrested. In March, another Swiss national was deported to be tried in his own country. Under Swiss law, a person who has committed a crime in a foreign country can be prosecuted in Switzerland for those crimes but will receive a milder sentence than if he had committed the same crime at home.

Coupled with the outrage in Sri Lanka that Bauman will perhaps get away with a light sentence, is the helplessness that the country’s own system is even now not equipped to deal adequately with such offenders. The maximum punishment that he could get under Swiss law is seven years in prison — if he had been tried and convicted in Sri Lanka, under the new law, he could have got a maximum of 20 years.

“Even if he had been charged here, it is doubtful he would have gone to prison. And even if he had been convicted, he had so much money, he would have been a king inside the prison,” says Father Anthony Humer Pinto, a Catholic priest spearheading the campaign against paedophiles in Negombo. Last week, the Government announced that it was setting up a Child Protection Authority, which would monitor the implementation of the law against sexual offenders and also provide rehabilitation to the young victims.