Australian national arrested for sexually abusing two boys in Nepal

The two boys, aged 12 and 14 were rescued from his flat during the police operation

On Wednesday, the Nepal police arrested an Australian national from a popular tourist spot in Nepal for allegedly sexually abusing two boys. The accused, identified as 63-year-old Berryman Thomas Alfred, was arrested on Tuesday from his rented accommodation in Pokhara, the tourist hub of western Nepal.

The two boys, aged 12 and 14 were rescued from his flat during the police operation. A hunt is also on for other victims, if any, as part of the police investigation. The Australian national who was working as a paragliding pilot for a local company in the tourist town is the latest foreigner to be accused of paedophilia in the landlocked country where child sexual abuse has become rampant due to cultural taboos and a lax legal system.

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Last month, a Nepalese court sentenced former United Nations official Peter Dalglish to nine years of imprisonment for sexually abusing two boys. The court also imposed a fine of USD 10,000 on the Canadian national. In 2015, 71-year-old Canadian orphanage volunteer Ernest MacIntosh was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment for sexually abusing a disabled 15-year-old boy.

In 2010, the Australian police charged a man identified as Geoffrey John Prigge for child sex offenses in Nepal under laws that allow overseas child sex-tourism offences to be prosecuted in Australia. In the same year, French charity worker Jean-Jacques Haye was convicted of raping 10 children at a Kathmandu orphanage.

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Civil society groups in Nepal opine that due to lax legal frameworks and law enforcement as well as reluctance to talk about child sexual exploitation, there have been fewer prosecutions of the offenders. According to Nepalese government data, only 10 foreigners have been arrested between 2016 and 2018 for child sexual abuse.

With inputs from PTI

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