Scottish jailed for child abuse

TIRANA, Nov 19 – The Tirana court found a 57-year-old Scottish man guilty of abusing children in orphanages and jailed him for 20 years.
John David Brown, a charity worker from Edinburgh, was convicted Wednesday by a criminal court in Albania’s capital Tirana. The verdict described Brown as “a threat to society” and said he would be deported from Albania after completing his sentence.
Tirana court judge Gerd Hoxha said Brown was “guilty for sexual relations with infants and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment … and also be deported out of the country upon ending the jail term as he presents high social threat.“
Brown had come to Albania in 1999 during the war in neighboring Kosovo and remained there to register his charity non-governmental organization His Children two years later. His orphanage helped and sheltered Roma children up to 14 years old, orphans or uncared of, found in capital Tirana streets.
The orphanage in Tirana’s old quarter promised shelter to the city’s abandoned street children, who came barefoot and clutching siblings in search of a place to rebuild their lives.
What should have been a sanctuary for vulnerable boys and girls became the site of one of Eastern Europe’s most shocking child sex abuse scandals.
Missionaries affiliated with churches travelled to Tirana to care for the children and give Bible lessons.
It was one of them that indicted Brown after seeing the abuse at his center.
Judge Hoxha mentioned testimonies from the then-children telling how Brown, arrested in May 2006, had sexually abused with at least two of them, beating and putting them to sleep naked in his own bed. The children were also threatened not to tell anything or they would be fired from the shelter.
More than seven children from the orphanage were medically checked and found with sexually abused signs.
Brown had worked with children for 35 years in Scotland.
Two other Britons _ Dino Christodoulou, 45, a social therapy nurse from Blackburn in Lancashire, and Robin Arnold, 56, a salesman from Cromer in Norfolk _ were also accused of the same charge. They were extradited to Albania earlier this year and face the same court, though their case was separate due to their delay of extradition from Britain. Christodoulou and Arnold were extradited to Albania in May.
Brown’s lawyer Gjystina Golloshi said he would appeal but would remain in prison until the case was heard.