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The Living Force
Indonesia has granted clemency to a Canadian teacher convicted of sexually abusing students, an official said on Friday, in a case that critics say was riddled with irregularities and threw a spotlight on the Southeast Asian country's justice system.
Indonesia grants clemency to Canadian teacher convicted of sex abuse
Neil Bantleman and Indonesian teaching assistant Ferdinand Tjiong were convicted in 2014 on charges of abusing kindergarten students at the Jakarta Intercultural School, where the children of many expatriates, diplomats and wealthy Indonesians are enrolled.
The pair have always maintained their innocence and the lack of transparency in the case was criticized by Canada and the United States, adding to concern about the lack of legal certainty in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.
Chile removes statute of limitations on child sex abuse amid Church crisis
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera signed into law on Thursday a bill to remove the stature of limitations on sex crimes involving children amid a sex abuse crisis that has rocked the country's Catholic Church and claimed more than 200 victims.
Outpouring of support in Russia for sisters who killed abusive father
One summer night last year, sisters Krestina, Angelina and Maria Khachaturyan went into the room where their 57-year-old father Mikhail was sleeping and attacked him with pepper spray, a knife and a hammer.
After killing their father in their Moscow apartment on the night of July 27, the Khachaturyan sisters, now aged 18, 19, and 20, called the police. Initially, they said they killed their father in self-defense when he was attacking them.
Later, the investigation found that was not true, but that they had been subject to years of abuse by their father, including systematic beatings and violent sexual abuse, according to investigators’ documents.
In 2017 Russia decriminalized some forms of domestic violence. Under the new rules, the maximum punishment for someone who beats a member of their own family, causing bleeding or bruising, is a fine, as long as they do not repeat the offense more than once a year.
The sisters’ lawyer, Alexei Parshin, said they were not demanding anonymity as victims of sexual abuse because the allegations about abuse were already in the public domain.
The lawyer said the sisters, at the time of the killing, were suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. He said they considered running away but feared his retribution if they were caught. Their mother and father were separated.
German court hands life sentence to Iraqi over teenager's rape-murder
An Iraqi immigrant was sentenced in Germany to life imprisonment on Wednesday for raping and killing a 14-year-old girl, a case seized on by the far right to make a disputed link between crime and a record influx of migrants in 2015.
Ex-U.N. aid worker jailed in Nepal for sexually abusing boys
A court in Nepal has sentenced a former UN aid worker from Canada to nine years in jail on charges of sexually abusing two boys, a court official said on Tuesday.
Peter Dalglish, 62, was arrested at his home near Kathmandu last year and was convicted in June of sexually abusing two boys aged 12 and 14.
“He was sentenced to nine years in jail in one case and to seven years in the other,” said Thakur Nath Trital, information officer at the court in Kavre district, 30 km (20 miles) east of Kathmandu.
The sentences will run concurrently.
Dalglish, who was present in court for the sentencing on Monday, pleaded not guilty and would appeal, his lawyer said. “Due process has not been fulfilled during the investigation in the case. So we’ll appeal,” the lawyer, Rahul Chapagain, said.
Dalglish was also been ordered to pay about $9,100 in compensation to the boys, Trital said.
Dalglish had been helping children from poor families in Nepal by providing financial support. He had earlier worked with humanitarian agencies like U.N. Habitat in Afghanistan and a U.N. mission in Liberia, Chapagain said.
At Vatican, empty tombs add new twist to missing girl mystery
The Vatican opened two tombs on Thursday to see if the body of a girl missing since 1983 was hidden there and ran into a new mystery when nothing was found, not even the bones of two 19th century princesses supposed to be buried there.
Experts were looking for the remains of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican clerk who failed to return home following a music lesson in Rome. Her disappearance has been the subject of wild speculation in the Italian media for years.
Slideshow (16 Images)
At Vatican, empty tombs add new twist to missing girl mystery
Indonesia grants clemency to Canadian teacher convicted of sex abuse
Neil Bantleman and Indonesian teaching assistant Ferdinand Tjiong were convicted in 2014 on charges of abusing kindergarten students at the Jakarta Intercultural School, where the children of many expatriates, diplomats and wealthy Indonesians are enrolled.
The pair have always maintained their innocence and the lack of transparency in the case was criticized by Canada and the United States, adding to concern about the lack of legal certainty in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.
Sri Utami, director general of correctional affairs at Indonesia’s Law and Human Rights ministry, confirmed in a text message to Reuters that Bantleman had been granted clemency.
Bantleman’s brother, Guy, said in a statement: “I am pleased to confirm that my brother Neil has safely returned to Canada.”
Bantleman was cited in the statement as saying: “Five years ago I was wrongfully accused and convicted of crimes I did not commit and furthermore never occurred.”
His clemency petition included a handwritten note in which he appealed to President Joko Widodo to allow him to return to his family in Canada to have the “opportunity to once again become a contributing and productive member of society”.
His jail sentence had been reduced from 11 years to 5 years and one month, though he would still be required to pay a fine of 100 million rupiah ($7,100), according to a copy of Widodo’s clemency decision.
The two were originally sentenced to 10 years in jail but were acquitted in August 2015, after nearly a year behind bars, and released.
However, Indonesia's Supreme Court later overturned the acquittal, extended their jail sentence and ordered their re-arrest, a decision the Canadian embassy in Jakarta called unjust.
Lawyer Denny Kailimang, who represents both men, said Tjiong remained in jail because he felt sending a petition for clemency meant he would be admitting guilt.
Five janitors from the school were also jailed over the case. Police said a sixth suspect killed himself.
Bantleman in his statement thanked family and friends around the world for their support and “the government of Canada for their steadfast commitment to seeing us home”.
“We are asking for privacy at this time so we can reconnect with family and move forward with our lives,” he said.
Chile removes statute of limitations on child sex abuse amid Church crisis
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera signed into law on Thursday a bill to remove the stature of limitations on sex crimes involving children amid a sex abuse crisis that has rocked the country's Catholic Church and claimed more than 200 victims.
Outpouring of support in Russia for sisters who killed abusive father
One summer night last year, sisters Krestina, Angelina and Maria Khachaturyan went into the room where their 57-year-old father Mikhail was sleeping and attacked him with pepper spray, a knife and a hammer.
After killing their father in their Moscow apartment on the night of July 27, the Khachaturyan sisters, now aged 18, 19, and 20, called the police. Initially, they said they killed their father in self-defense when he was attacking them.
Later, the investigation found that was not true, but that they had been subject to years of abuse by their father, including systematic beatings and violent sexual abuse, according to investigators’ documents.
In 2017 Russia decriminalized some forms of domestic violence. Under the new rules, the maximum punishment for someone who beats a member of their own family, causing bleeding or bruising, is a fine, as long as they do not repeat the offense more than once a year.
The sisters’ lawyer, Alexei Parshin, said they were not demanding anonymity as victims of sexual abuse because the allegations about abuse were already in the public domain.
The lawyer said the sisters, at the time of the killing, were suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. He said they considered running away but feared his retribution if they were caught. Their mother and father were separated.
German court hands life sentence to Iraqi over teenager's rape-murder
An Iraqi immigrant was sentenced in Germany to life imprisonment on Wednesday for raping and killing a 14-year-old girl, a case seized on by the far right to make a disputed link between crime and a record influx of migrants in 2015.
Ex-U.N. aid worker jailed in Nepal for sexually abusing boys
A court in Nepal has sentenced a former UN aid worker from Canada to nine years in jail on charges of sexually abusing two boys, a court official said on Tuesday.
Peter Dalglish, 62, was arrested at his home near Kathmandu last year and was convicted in June of sexually abusing two boys aged 12 and 14.
“He was sentenced to nine years in jail in one case and to seven years in the other,” said Thakur Nath Trital, information officer at the court in Kavre district, 30 km (20 miles) east of Kathmandu.
The sentences will run concurrently.
Dalglish, who was present in court for the sentencing on Monday, pleaded not guilty and would appeal, his lawyer said. “Due process has not been fulfilled during the investigation in the case. So we’ll appeal,” the lawyer, Rahul Chapagain, said.
Dalglish was also been ordered to pay about $9,100 in compensation to the boys, Trital said.
Dalglish had been helping children from poor families in Nepal by providing financial support. He had earlier worked with humanitarian agencies like U.N. Habitat in Afghanistan and a U.N. mission in Liberia, Chapagain said.
At Vatican, empty tombs add new twist to missing girl mystery
The Vatican opened two tombs on Thursday to see if the body of a girl missing since 1983 was hidden there and ran into a new mystery when nothing was found, not even the bones of two 19th century princesses supposed to be buried there.
Experts were looking for the remains of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican clerk who failed to return home following a music lesson in Rome. Her disappearance has been the subject of wild speculation in the Italian media for years.
Exhumation work began after a morning prayer in the Teutonic Cemetery, a burial ground just inside the Vatican walls used over the centuries mainly for Church figures or members of noble families of German or Austrian origin.
Officials were expecting to find at least the bones of Princess Sophie von Hohenlohe, who died in 1836, and Princess Carlotta Federica of Mecklenburg, who died in 1840, but there was no trace of either.
“The result of the search was negative. No human remains or funeral urns were found,” Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said.
Gisotti said the Vatican would now examine records structural work done in the cemetery at the end of the 19th century and again about 60 years ago to see if they could shed any light on the new mystery.
Princess Sophie’s tomb led to a large empty underground room and no human remains were found in Princess Carlotta’s tomb, he said.
“They went down and found a room measuring 4 meters by 3 meters (13 feet by 10 feet), which was the first surprise ...There was absolutely nothing inside,” Emanuela’s brother, Pietro Orlandi, told reporters outside the Vatican.
The two tombs were opened in the presence of the Orlandi family and descendants of the princesses.
The Orlandi family had received an anonymous letter saying Emanuela’s body might be hidden among the dead in the Teutonic Cemetery where a statue of an angel holding a book reads “Requiescat in Pace,” Latin for “Rest in Peace”.
Theories about Orlandi’s disappearance have run the gamut from an attempt to secure freedom for Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk jailed in 1981 for trying to assassinate Pope John Paul II, to a connection to the grave of Enrico De Pedis, a mobster buried in a Rome basilica. His tomb was opened in 2012 but nothing was revealed.
Last year, bones found during ground work at the Vatican embassy in Rome sparked a media frenzy suggesting they might belong to Orlandi or to Mirella Gregori, another teenager who disappeared the same year. DNA tests turned out negative.
Police in 1983 did not exclude the possibility that Orlandi may have been abducted and killed for reasons with no connection to the Vatican or been a victim of human trafficking.
Slideshow (16 Images)
At Vatican, empty tombs add new twist to missing girl mystery