Police probing the biggest pedophile ring ever uncovered in Poland said Wednesday more than 100 foreigners, including Canadians, were on the lists of a homosexual contacts service offering under-age boys for sex.
Police Lt. Pawel Biedziak told Reuters the alleged organizer of the ring, a 44-year-old local government official in the northern city Szczecin, had been formally accused by police of sexual offences against minors.
The ring's existence was revealed late Tuesday by Polish public television's Wiadomosci news program which showed explicit but electronically-blurred photographs, confiscated by police, of men and boys engaged in sexual activities.
Biedziak said police raided the home of the civil defense inspector and former army officer, identified only by his underworld alias "the Major," after being alerted by a journalist and a call to a helpline for abused children.
The police found a computer with nearly 1,000 names of men seeking gay sex partners. Most of these men were interested in other adults and Biedziak said they did not concern the police.
"But among the adults there was a part who specified they wanted to meet underage boys for sexual contacts and that will be the subject of our interest," Biedziak said, speaking by telephone from provincial police headquarters in Szczecin.
Biedziak said about 100 names on the computer lists were of foreigners, including men from Germany, The Netherlands, Russia, Austria, Canada, and Saudi Arabia, but declined to say if or how many of these were suspected of abusing young boys.
He said none were from Belgium, which has been rocked this year by child-sex scandals.
The computer also contained names of boys, including more than a dozen elementary school pupils, who were available for sexual contacts with adults and usually were seeking a so-called "sponsor" who would support them financially.
Biedziak said the Szczecin police had started by tracing boys who featured on photographs found at the scene and several of these had said they had had sex with the Major.
"One of these boys also speaks of contacts, when below the age of 15, with a citizen of Sweden," Biedziak said.
The television news interviewed boys who had been under 15, the age above which sexual relations with adults are not prosecuted in Poland, when they were allegedly picked up by the Major at stations or video parlors and lured to his home.
One, 14-year-old Robert who was shown in silhouette, said he had telephoned the Major and been invited to meet a man.
"The guy said he was rich and so on. I didn't care about that and I went and slept with him," Robert said.
Biedziak said the large-scale investigation was still in its early stages.
Police had also found a sex video featuring eight boys, some of whom were not Polish speakers, and were investigating.
Biedziak did not give "the Major's" real name to safeguard him from attacks by other prisoners.
There has been public concern that child abusers from wealthy Western Europe may be coming to Poland to prey on children from deprived homes. But Biedziak said foreigners had so far featured only in a few of the child sex abuse cases uncovered in Szczecin, near Germany.
Warsaw police spokesman Andrzej Przemyski said the Szczecin case was by far the biggest of its kind uncovered so far in Poland, although there were continued cases of Polish boys traveling to Berlin to offer themselves for prostitution.
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