Media Releases
Plea to bring notorious child sex offender Paul Henry Dean home to face justice
Child Wise, Australia's leading child protection charity is calling on the Australian Government to immediately extradite Paul Henry Dean to face prosecution in Australia on multiple child sexual abuse charges.
Wednesday, 27 January 2010-Notorious Australian child sex offender, Paul Henry Dean is once again escaping justice on child sex charges in India. He is out on bail, living in the community with unrestricted access to children.
Paul Henry Dean's time in India spans over thirty years during which he has been known by a variety of different names and identities including charity worker, priest and doctor. He has used each of these professions as a credible cover for his brutal attacks on hundreds of Indian boys and young men; crimes he has never faced justice for committing.
At the time of his last arrest in 2008, Dean was working as a doctor at the Mary Ellen Gerber orphanage, under the name Paul Allen. Dean is alleged to have abused several young boys at the orphanage in Puri town, 65 kilometres east of Orissa state capital, Bhubaneswar. In a report filed by Gerber to Indian police, she stated that Dean had been terrifying the children and the staff and that he had sexually abused boys as young as 11 years old. When interviewed by the media in May 2009, Ms Gerber confessed that she felt partially responsible for the crimes as she had trusted Dean and failed to conduct a thorough background search on him before he began working with children.
Dean had also been charged with child sex offences and possession of pornography in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh in 2001 where he escaped custody by jumping from a moving train. He then continued to volunteer at local orphanages, protected by powerful friends and colleagues across the country, with Australian authorities doing nothing to find him.
Today, leading child rights advocate and CEO of Child Wise Bernadette McMenamin, called for Dean's immediate extradition to Australia to face prosecution for the repeated abuse of children in India. "We know that Dean is being protected in India by some very influential and powerful allies. If this were not the case he would surely have already been brought to justice in that country. However, this has not happened and so we are today imploring the Federal Government to extradite him immediately. The Government must act now or he will again disappear!"
Throughout his time in India Paul Henry Dean has collected powerful friends to maintain his credibility and innocence. Those whom he could not deceive into trusting him were met with manipulation, intimidation and aggression; techniques used to silence victims and witnesses alike. This is the reason behind Child Wise's plea to extradite. Dean has a documented history of providing false identities and there is a real fear that he will do this again, and the cycle of abuse will continue, unchallenged.
"We have extra-territorial Child Sex Tourism laws that were enacted in 1994. We have adequate laws for him to be extradited and prosecuted in this country for crimes against children. He's obviously in Asia because he doesn't feel he'll be prosecuted."
Ordinarily, Child Wise advocates for the apprehension and sentencing of child sex offenders in the country of their arrest. In this case, however, it is clear that Paul Henry Dean has gone unpunished for his crimes against children for over thirty years; crimes which in some cases have led to the victim taking their own life as a result, as in the case of deaf mute Anil Kumar who committed suicide in 1985.
For Comments contact Bernadette McMenamin at Child Wise on: 0419 397 689