Balinese children abducted and killed by pedophiles: Australian report

Balinese children abducted and killed by pedophiles: Australian report

Agencies Sydney, Australia

Hundreds of Balinese children are feared to have been abused and abducted, and some even killed, by pedophiles belonging to a child sex network operating in the Indonesian resort island, an investigation by The Australian newspaper alleged on Monday.

The report quoted an Australian expatriate, Gloria Goodwin who runs the Crisis Care Foundation in the island's north, as saying children had been drugged, had gone missing or had been found dead.

Non-governmental agencies working in Bali had reported the allegations to Interpol while the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is also understood to be investigating "criminal activities" on the island after a tip-off.

The latest allegations follow a report by Australian child advocacy group Child Wise gave to the government last week which said pedophile rings of Australians, Americans and Europeans were operating largely undetected on the Indonesian island.

The Child Wise report has not been made public due to the explicit nature of its contents.

Child Wise told AFP children on Bali's streets had reported networks of thousands of foreign men preying on them, working together and sharing the children.

"There is a village ... where three children died apparently from sexual abuse and sodomy," the Child Wise report said. "Apparently money changed hands and nothing came of the investigation."

The newspaper quoted the report as saying that of the 80 children who were missing in the island's north, some were said to have been killed "by one man in a sexual frenzy and buried in a cave."

Some 80 children were said to be missing from an area surrounding the village of Karangasem while other locals said children had been abducted as they slept in their beds or walked home from school.

Professor Luh Ketut Suryani, chairwoman for Bali's Committee Against Sexual Abuse, raised the claims last week with Bali police chief I Made Mangku Pastika, the newspaper said.

Suryani will travel to Karangasem later this month to teach the villagers about how pedophiles operate.

Meanwhile, officials said in Canberra on Monday that Australia will station a police officer on the Indonesian island of Bali from this month to help crack down on a growing number of tourists heading there to have sex with minors.

The move comes amid reports that paedophiles were also adopting or fostering poverty-stricken children from Bali which is struggling to rebuild its economy and tourism after nightclub bombings in October 2002 killed over 200 people, mainly foreigners.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Mick Keelty said an officer -- appointed with Jakarta's permission -- would target child abuse by wealthy foreigners, many of whom are Australian.

"The biggest priority he will have, outside terrorism and prosecutions for the Bali bombings, is child sex tourism," Keelty told a parliamentary committee.

AFP acting deputy commissioner John Lawler said the officer would also investigate reports of children being abused after being adopted or fostered by foreigners on the tropical island. "We're aware of circumstances where it occurred," he said.

While child sex tourism is widespread across Southeast Asia, the extent of the problem in Bali only hit the spotlight in Australia last month with the arrest of former diplomat, William Brown, 51, who is now awaiting trial there on charges of sexually abusing two Balinese boys, aged 13 and 15.