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Tamil Nadu: Hostel Warden Of Govt-Aided School Arrested
For Allegedly Raping Boys
Writer: Varnika Srivastava 31, 15 March 2022 4:43 AM
Editor : Snehadri Sarkar | Creatives : Snehadri Sarkar
The Logical Indian Crew
Police said eight students, who are staying in the hostel called Childline and lodged a complaint that the hostel warden has been sexually assaulting them.
A hostel warden of a government-aided higher secondary school near the temple town was arrested on March 13 on alleged charges of sexually assaulting boys.
The entire incident unfolded after seven boys aged between 14-16 years of age, who lived at the hostel, claimed that the warden had sexually assaulted and raped them for over three months, reported The Times Of India.
Sagairaj, the owner of the hostel, was also arrested for failing to report the abuse to the police.
According to a Childline officer, the warden, A Duraipandian, is from the Thoothukudi district and has worked at the home for over two years.
Case Filed Against Warden
After eight boys dialed 1098 to report the sexual assault, a team of officials from the District Child Protection Unit (DCPO), and police department visited the home and conducted an investigation. The children had complained to police that the warden had sexually assaulted and misbehaved with them.
Chetpet police filed the case under Sections 7, 8, 19 (1), and 21 (2) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO) Act, Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, and Section 506 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act based on a complaint lodged by the Childline (1) IPC. According to P Chitra Priya, Legal Protection Officer at the DCPO in Tiruvannamalai, the children have been relocated to a reception home.
Similar Case Filed
Similarly, a recent case has been registered against a government school teacher in Manapatti who has been charged for sexually harassing female students. According to the New Indian Express, he inappropriately touched the female students and sexually assaulted them.
Manapatti is in southern Tamil Nadu.
Man wanted in Philippines for sex crimes against kids,
known to Winnipeg police since 2011: search warrant
Publication ban and sealing order on the case lifted, police given more time
to search electronics
Caroline Barghout, Kristin Annable ·
CBC News ·
Posted: Mar 16, 2022 5:00 AM CT
Marshall Ruskin, 63, abandoned a motion Tuesday that would have forced Winnipeg police to return electronic devices they seized as part of its investigation. (Facebook)
WARNING: this story contains disturbing details about child sexual abuse.
A Winnipeg man wanted in connection with an alleged child sex trafficking ring in the Philippines has abandoned a court motion that, if successful, would have forced Winnipeg police to return electronic devices seized during the execution of a search warrant.
On Tuesday, CBC News was notified that Marshall Ruskin, 63, is no longer challenging a Winnipeg Police Service court application to retain his property.
Ruskin has been on the radar of Winnipeg police since 2011 for his alleged "interest in young children," according to court documents obtained by CBC News.
And, 11 years later they are still trying to charge him? Good grief! I guess that reseals the priorities of the Winnipeg Police force.
The documents were under a publication ban and sealing order, which was also lifted on Tuesday.
Ruskin remains a free man in Canada, even though he's been wanted on three arrest warrants in the Philippines since 2016.
He's accused of paying for videos and photos of girls as young as 18 months old being sexually abused and tortured in the Philippines, according to yet untested Winnipeg police seach warrant documents.
In 2019, Winnipeg police executed a search warrant on Ruskin's home in Garden City, where he was living with his now 28-year-old Filipina wife. They seized a number of devices, including his laptop computers and cellphones.
CBC News first reported on the years-long investigation into Ruskin earlier this year, after obtaining unproven search warrant documents filed by Winnipeg police in court.
Those documents alleged that Ruskin sent thousands of dollars to the Philippines to watch the live sexual abuse of an 11-year-old girl via Skype.
Police executed the search warrant after telling a judge they believed he recorded the Skype sessions on his electronic devices.
Peter Scully of Australia walks in handcuffs as he arrives at Cagayan de Oro city hall in southern Philippines on Tuesday, June 16, 2015. (The Associated Press)
The documents also revealed his alleged connection with Peter Scully, who was arrested in 2015 after a global manhunt and has since become one of the world's most notorious pedophiles.
After CBC News published a story last month alleging Ruskin's connection to the child sex trafficking ring, his lawyers got a publication ban and sealing order on all court documents relating to the investigation by Winnipeg police.
The bans were lifted Tuesday in Manitoba's Court of Queen's bench, meaning CBC News can now report on further information it has learned from these documents.
This includes Ruskin's alleged history with Winnipeg police, and what police say about his career working for the Department of National Defence and occasions when he was flagged by the Canada Border Services Agency.
Offered cash for 'hook-ups': police report
The search warrant documents say Winnipeg police knew about Ruskin's "interest in young children" years before the Philippines investigation, because a number of reports had been made to officers here between 2011 and 2013.
Police incident reports filed in the search warrant application referred to Ruskin as a "known sex trade consumer."
"These occurrences detail disturbing information in regards to young children, and as such this unit entered into an investigation," said police in the search warrant documents.
Police document 10 instances where Ruskin came to the attention of officers.
In one report, a confidential informant told police in 2011 that Ruskin had been asking around for underage girls and was offering cash for "hook-ups," according to the search warrant documents.
A recent photo of Cagayan de Oro, a city in the Philippines. Peter Scully was sentenced to life in prison in Cagayan de Oro court for human trafficking and rape. (Reuel Lowe Jumawid)
Ruskin offered the confidential informant $1,000 to have the informant's four-year-old daughter undress in front of him, police say.
They also say Ruskin offered the informant $2,000 to have her daughter perform oral sex on him.
The police reports say Ruskin paid an informant $100 for a date with a 14-year-old girl, who turned out to be 21.
Ruskin told sex workers that he had two apartments — one where he lived with his wife and another that he took sex trade workers to, according to the court documents.
The police reports say in 2013, a confidential informant reported a disturbing incident involving Ruskin to police. Ruskin told that informant his fantasy was to break into a little girl's room "and force himself onto her and have her fight him off, pushing his chest," the search warrant documents say.
Canadian military contractor
Ruskin travelled to the Philippines 15 times between April 10, 2013, and April 1, 2016, according to the search warrant. They say he had spent a month in the country before returning on Dec. 15, 2013.
The Winnipeg police search warrant documents say in December 2013, border services agents stopped and searched Ruskin on his way home from the Philippines.
Officers found condoms and venereal disease medication, which they say led them to believe he was travelling for sexual reasons.
Winnipeg police say the Canada Border Services Agency told them Ruskin crossed the border into the U.S. up to 30 times a year, the court documents said.
Ruskin worked for the Department of National Defence for decades as a civilian contractor, beginning in 1997. He left in 2016, the same year the Philippines issued three warrants for his arrest.
Winnipeg police say they informed the Canadian Forces National Counter-Intelligence Unit of their investigation into Ruskin in September 2013, according to search warrant documents. The officers were referred to military police because their investigation was criminal in nature, according to the documents.
In the court records, Winnipeg police say they were told that Ruskin was a contracted webmaster who worked off base, out of his home. This meant he didn't follow the same regulations or restrictions as those employed on the base.
The documents say Ruskin had access to the National Defence database, which means he would have been privy to a search by military police in that database for his name. "To maintain being discreet, they have ceased checking his info … [but] will search further if requested on a secret server," the police search warrant documents say.
Ruskin worked as a contractor and could have had as many as 100 contracts in Winnipeg or around the world, with the potential to make as much as $15,000 a month, according to the court documents.
"He would have an unlimited amount of knowledge of computers and the internet, storing, hiding, accessing and keeping files, and how to make it untraceable to him," the police search warrant said.
Police get court order to keep electronics
Ruskin filed a motion in January of this year to have the court direct Winnipeg police to give back all items seized during the 2019 execution of the search warrant.
In court filings, Ruskin said the amount of time that has passed since shows that police have been dragging their feet and are inadequately trained.
Seven of the 10 devices seized were returned to Ruskin, after they were "fully analyzed" and no evidence was located, according to a 2021 affidavit by Winnipeg police Det. Chad Black.
Police said the other three items had not been analyzed due to "encryption that had not been bypassed as of yet."
Black said that technology continues to evolve, and that police can now access products they couldn't five years ago. "The possibility of assistance from outside agencies and time are essential," Black wrote.
In November 2021, Winnipeg police filed an application with the court to keep Ruskin's electronics for three more years, so that officers could continue their attempts to access what's inside them.
That order was granted on Tuesday.
Under Canadian law, police can only keep a person's property for as long as the courts allow. Normally, items would be returned if no charges are laid.
Police struggled to get info from Philippines
The search warrant says Winnipeg police were alerted to an investigation by the National Bureau of Investigation in the Philippines involving Ruskin in February 2017.
According to Winnipeg police, Philippines officials weren't sure if they would ask for Ruskin's extradition, so they wanted to know if Winnipeg police could charge Ruskin in Canada.
"We would like very much to ensure that [Ruskin] is prosecuted for his involvement in the heinous crimes committed in the Philippines and we are very prepared to work very hard to do that," wrote Winnipeg police Det.-Sgt. Esther Schmeider in the 2019 search warrant documents.
She wrote that he needed "to face charges for his part in these crimes," but added "we need to be provided with the appropriate evidence to meet our judicial standards. I do hope that there is a way that we can obtain the evidence [we] require."
Philippines court documents obtained by CBC News say prosecutors approved charges against Ruskin for a number of offences, including four counts of qualified trafficking in persons committed by a syndicate and one count of qualified trafficking in persons committed by a syndicate involving a girl who is now deceased.
Charges were also approved on one count of child abuse and five counts of syndicated child pornography.
"The pieces of evidence, both … [from] local and international sources, clearly suggest a criminal network of online child traffickers and pedophiles" that included Ruskin and Scully, wrote Jinky P. Dedumo, an assistant state prosecutor in the Philippines, on June 30, 2016.
The Philippines has not sought an extradition order.
National Bureau of Investigation officials won't comment on the case because they say it's an ongoing investigation.
There is no evidence that this strip search was motivated by sexual perversion, we can probably take it at face value. Nevertheless, a horrifying experience for a young girl.
Racism likely a factor in strip search of Black girl in London,
review found
By Sommer Brokaw
March 16 (UPI) -- Racism was likely a factor in the strip search of a Black girl in London while on her period two years ago after she was wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis in school, a review found.
Female police officers strip searched the 15-year-old girl, which exposed her intimate body parts, at her school in Hackney, east London in 2020 after searches of her bag, blazer and shoes didn't reveal any drugs, according to the review published this month. The search occurred without an adult being present and with the knowledge she was menstruating.
"The report concluded that racism was likely an 'influencing factor,' in the strip search, and the girl -- a Black child -- was subjected to 'adultification' bias -- where Black and global majority children are held to adult standards, but their white peers are less likely to be," some Hackney Council members said in a joint statement Tuesday on the review.
I suspect this bias is real, although I think a lot of white girls who were groomed by Pakistani men were also treated as adults by police and councils.
"We want and expect better for our young people and our wider communities," the statement continued. "It is up to all of us to challenge racism where this is seen, heard or felt -- and it is incumbent on the Council to challenge partners and be a driving force of meaningful, systemic change."
The police officers remain on full duties even though they were placed under investigation by a police watchdog over the incident in December 2020, according to The Guardian.
Hmmm. I wonder if they checked their sexual preferences? Asking for a friend.
Metropolitan Police Service has apologized for the incident, which has left the girl traumatized, saying she "can't go a single day without wanting to scream, shout, cry or just give up," and her family saying it was motivated by racism, the review said.
"The incident also illustrated unambiguous issues of importance that warranted independent analysis, not least the potential impact of disproportionality and racism and how these factors might have influenced the actions of organizations and individual professionals," the review said. "Having considered the context of the incident, the views of those engaged in the review and the impact felt by Child Q and her family, racism (whether deliberate or not) was likely to have been an influencing factor in the decision to undertake a strip search."
The 15-year-old girl has been referred to as Child Q in the City & Hackney Safeguarding Child Partnership review, authored by Jim Gamble, Independent safeguarding commissioner, and Rory McCallum, senior professional adviser.
The Independent Officer of Police Conduct's investigations into the conduct of the police officers remain ongoing, according to the council.
The review made eight findings and 14 recommendations for improving government, school and police practices.
Along with finding racism was a likely factor in the incident and adultification bias, the review also found the police decision to strip search the child "was insufficiently attuned to her best interests or right to privacy."
The review also found that "school staff had an insufficient focus on the needs of Child Q."
Some recommendations included the school revising its policy on searching, screening and confiscation to include "explicit reference to safeguarding" the student, and the police similarly revising its policy to focus on "safeguarding the needs of children."
The review also recommended that the government and the National Police Chiefs Council seek to strengthen policy to include parents when strip searches are done on children, multi-agency training against adultification bias and support for anti-racism guidance.
The council asked for an updated report in six to nine months of progress made based on the review's recommendations.
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