An Australian man who was found guilty and ordered to serve three years in jail on charges of child sexual abuse is a free man after the same court gave him a bail.
Paul Henry Dean has been living in India for nearly forty years without a visa and posed as a doctor and a charity worker. Last month, he was found guilty of sexually abusing visually challenged, speech and hearing impaired orphans, besides other charges related to overstaying his visa in India.
A court in Vishakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) sentenced him to three years imprisonment following a lengthy trial lasting seventeen years. However, Dean was freed the same day after he applied for bail despite concerns that he may offend again.
“It is not at all safe for the general public, especially children, if he is out,” The Guardian quoted a police officer as saying.
“[Dean] is good at fooling people.”
Paul Henry Dean (The News Minute) Source: The News Minute
He has also filed an appeal against his conviction and sentencing.
75-year-old Dean used many aliases and impersonated as a priest and at times as a doctor and carried out many surgeries in leper colonies in Odisha.
He was first arrested in 2001 in Vishakhapatnam for sexually abusing children in his apartment. After his release on bail, he committed similar offences in a village in the neighbouring state of Odisha in eastern India.
The court heard nearly 33 witnesses in the case against him many of whom his alleged victims who were reluctant to testify against him.
While the trial was still in 2015, the public prosecutor told the that it was very difficult to get the victims to depose before the court and they finally agreed after much persuasion.
“They explained in detail how they were sexually abused. To make them comfortable while deposing, we ensured there was no one in the court except the judge and a few others,” public prosecutor Botcha Prameela said.
Dean’s victims revealed he used to threaten them that he would throw them out of the orphanage.
During the course of the trial, one of his victims ended his life.
The child sex offences he committed carry jail sentence of up to ten years. But after he appealed for mercy, the court handed him a 3-year jail term and Rs. 10,000 ($200) for child sex offences and two years for violating India’s Passport Act and Foreigners Act by staying in India without a visa. The different sentences will run concurrently.
Dean had disappeared from Bunbury, Western Australia in 1973 after allegedly embezzling over $100,000 from a local travel agency.
