2 Britons sentenced to long jail terms for pedophilia

TIRANA, Jan. 12 – An Albanian court on Tuesday convicted with imprisonment two Englishmen for sexually molesting children at an orphanage.
Dino Christodoulou, 45, and Robin Arnold, 56, who were extradited from Britain to Albania two years ago, will be jailed for 20 and 15 years and six months imprisonment respectively for sexual or homosexual abuse with children.
They were also declared persona non grata and would be deported from the country upon completing their jail term.
In 2008 a court sentenced their Scottish charity working partner John David Brown with 20 years imprisonment for the same charges.
In 1999 during the war in neighboring Kosovo the three Englishmen came to Albania and two years later registered a charity organization, His Children, housing orphans and abandoned children found on the capital, Tirana’s, streets.
The orphanage was shut down in 2006 upon Brown’s arrest.
Christodoulou and Arnold were arrested in London in September 2007 and extradited to Albania some months later.
Court sources said that while reading the verdict judge Shefkie Demiraj mentioned six cases of sexual or homosexual abuse for Christodoulou and one for Arnold, adding the latter had also been himself a victim of abuse in his childhood.
Testimony of former orphanage residents, children 6-9 years old, showed they were beaten and sexually abused and forced to sleep naked in his bed.
It was expected the two defendants would appeal the verdict as they had declared themselves innocent, according to court officials.