Remember ‘Brother’ and ‘Father’ Freddy Peat in Goa in April 1991 who also almost got away with sadistic sexual child abuse? He ran an ‘orphanage’ where the police found syringes, sedatives and aphrodisiacs along with pornographic photographs involving children. A young boy went home after visiting ‘Father’ Freddy and complained to his father of pain in his penis. The parent was shocked, so many young Goan boys from decent homes were going to see ‘Brother’ Freddy all the time! He lodged a complaint with the police. The mid-sixties Freddy Peat was arrested and 2,305 photographs seized, all of them featuring young Indian boys engaged in pornographic acts, some with older white women, most with elderly male foreigners. The police released Freddy Peat on bail within forty-five days on grounds of ‘insufficient evidence’.

Child rights activist Sheela Barse intervened. She went immediately from Mumbaii to Goa in December 1991 and camped there. She sorted out those 2,305 pictures, all of them with little Indian boys save one with a little Indian girl. A girl-child, her mouth and eyes screaming in pain, being held firmly by two pairs of hands to be lowered, at the base of the picture, on a hugely stiff penis belonging to a third male. Sheela Barse’s stomach never stopped churning. But she did sort out the photographs, she gathered evidence from the banks of foreign accounts, she spoke to landlords whose premises had been rented to shoot these pictures, she ran passport checks, she sent the drugs used on the children for analysis, she detailed the parcels which were mailed out from Goa’s post offices. And she found the laws in the rusty Indian Penal Code under which the book could be thrown at Freddy Peat. She ensured the chargesheeting of Peat in August 1992 and his ultimate conviction in March 1996, when he was seventy-one years old. Sheela Barse can be credited with not only the first paedophilia conviction in Asia but also the highest sentence to be awarded in India in any case of sexual assault: twenty years.

Sheela Barse is still trying to secure those children justice. Peat was part of an international child-trafficking ring. A dozen foreigners have yet to be arrested and brought on trial to India. She says, ‘I am in touch with Interpol headquarters at Lyon as also Interpols in some countries, I pass on information which they give me to the Indian authorities. I keep phoning the CBI in Delhi, I realize I don’t need British Interpol to tell me that India is not serious about ending the problem. Thai police informs me that a paedophile is to pass through an airport and since India needs to arrest him on a specific case, I let the Indian authorities know. I give the flight details along with the date and time. I follow it up with phone calls. They say, “Oh, we missed him at the airport.” I have been telling them since a while now that Himachal Pradesh, Thiruvananthapuram, Kovalam and Bangalore are being used much more these days by the tourism sex industry. I don’t see anybody looking into the matter or even caring.’