The Sunday News
Peter Matika, Senior Reporter
A 35-year-old suspected paedophile from Madlambudzi in Bulilima District, who was in a habit of sodomising his employer’s two sons and then buy their silence by paying them R1 each, was last week arrested by police, following a tip-off.
The man, whose identity has been withheld to protect the minors, is reported to have sexually assaulted the two boys aged five and seven for months before they spilled the beans. Matabeleland South provincial police spokesperson Chief Inspector Philisani Ndebele confirmed the arrest.
“Two male juveniles aged five and seven years were rescued from a 35-year-old paedophile employed at their homestead in Madlambudzi as a herd boy. He was in a habit of sodomising them and would give them R1 each, after he assaulted them,” said Chief Insp Ndebele.
He said the suspect will soon appear in court in connection with the case.
“Members of the public are urged to monitor their young children and not to expose them to such abuse at the hands of domestic workers,” said Chief Inspector Ndebele.
In another incident, police around the world are reported to have taken down a global child abuse ring in which paedophiles in at least 38 countries gained “loyalty points” for uploading abuse videos to a dark web website and paid in Bitcoin to download others.
According to the Daily Mail, a UK-based newspaper, more than 250 000 horrific videos, stored on a computer server in South Korea and available through a website called “Welcome to Video”, were sold to paedophiles around the world through the dark web, with more than a one million clips downloaded.
The site was uncovered by Britain’s National Crime Agency during its investigation into one of the UK’s most prolific paedophiles, Matthew Falder, who is serving 25 years in prison for 137 offences linked to the sexual abuse of children.
The US Department of Justice has now charged South Korean suspect Jong Woo Son (23) with running the website, as police forces around the world move in on those who have been using the site.
So far, 337 suspects have been arrested globally, with 18 investigations in the UK and seven British men already convicted. American authorities have raided the homes of 92 people and released the names of 34 people arrested or charged in the US.
Arrests have been made in 38 countries including the UK, Ireland, America, South Korea, Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic and Canada.
The man suspected of being behind the website, Jong Woo Son, was arrested in South Korea and is serving an 18-month sentence in his own country. The site has also been removed from the dark web.
The dark web is part of the internet that isn’t visible to search engines and requires the use of an anonymising browser to be accessed. —@peterkmatika
