An alleged British paedophile has been arrested in Colombia alongside a Venezuelan woman accused of pimping out her 14-year-old daughter to foreigners in a case police have called "perverse".
Locals are said to have tipped off cops after seeing the male suspect, accused of sexually abusing the youngster, "acting strangely" with the teenager. CCTV footage published by Colombian TV station Citytv showed the unnamed man walking down the street holding hands with the girl alongside a woman identified as her mum. The youngster appeared to be in school uniform and was carrying a small rucksack on her back.
It also published footage showing images of the middle-aged man “inappropriately touching” the child inside an unidentified restaurant believed to be in the Colombian capital Bogota.
The mother was also arrested (CityTV)The young girl, whose face was pixelated, appeared to be kneeling by the table on the floor while the man touched her as he sat opposite her mum. At one point the youngster was filmed reaching up for a Coca-cola on the table and taking a sip of her drink while her mother fiddled with her phone.
The Venezuelan woman was arrested in Ciudad Bolivar, a neighbourhood of Bogota in the south of the capital. She and the man, who police have confirmed is foreign and the TV station says is British, have now been handed over to state prosecutors so they can decide whether to release them or remand them in custody pending an ongoing investigation. The pair were also filmed being taken away in handcuffs after their detentions.
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Reports say that the man was touching the young girl in public (CityTV)Police chief German Gomez said a person who was part of a neighbourhood watch-style organisation alerted police after checking his cameras because of a repeated ‘anomalous situation’ involving the teenage girl, the male suspect and the youngster’s mum.
He said: “He checked the cameras because this anomalous situation repeated itself over several days, in which both the mum and the foreign man are walking with the girl and entering a retail centre where he’s allegedly fondling the youngster. It’s a perverse case. The foreign man was arrested for sexually abusing a girl under the age of 14.
CityTv said the suspect, who it described as British, had been in Bogota for several days and was allegedly practicing “sex tourism.” The teenage girl has now been placed in the care of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare. Police are probing whether her mum was operating a child prostitution ring in Bogota.
Another Colombian city, Medellin, declared war on sex tourism at the start of the month after a US national was found with two little girls at a hotel in the city Medellin’s Mayor Federico Gutierrez announced the six-month suspension of sex work in certain parts of the city and limited operating hours of some of its bars and clubs.
He ordered the crackdown after an American was arrested when a concerned local said he was with the two girls aged 12 and 13 at an exclusive hotel in Medellin. The 36-year-old Ohio-born man flew back to the States after being released on bail because of a “lack of evidence” against him. Colombian NGO Valientes Colombia reported last year more than 320 children had been sexually exploited in Medellin, where the problem is said to be worse than in Bogota.
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