After Tehelka, Goa won’t be the same
It came without much warning. On 5 August 2004, word went round that the investigative weekly, Tehelka, was set to strike in Goa. Later that evening, Hindi national TV channel Aaj Tak broke an investigative scoop that the weekly had spent months secretly shooting in Goa. Was it about drugs, people speculated. No, it wasn’t. When it came later that night, it turned out to be a story on Goa’s long-known but little-discussed other seamy side – paedophilia.
If at all there is a misnomer, this is it. ‘Paedophilia’ isn’t about the ‘love’ of little children, but about their sexual abuse. Goa’s first case of its kind emerged in the early nineties. Then, a man claiming to be an Anglo-Indian and called Freddy Peat, was accidentally detected, and his “orphanage” was found to be a den where foreign tourists sexually abused pre-pubescent boys. Peat (pronounced ‘Pee-yat’) has been long forgotten in the seaside Aguada Jail. Weeks back, he made it to the news when a journalist met him battling for life at the Goa Medical College’s ward 110. He said he was hoping not for recovery but “the warm welcome of death”. He continues to swear that he was innocent but framed by police and public prosecutors.
But unlike the over half-dozen subsequent cases, Peat was caught with vital evidence. In his possession were as many as 2,305 photographs of the boys being subjected to various sexual acts. These photographs had been developed at a local Margao studio, in pre-digital camera times. Goa’s local authorities – both Congress or BJP – have long sought to make it out that this was one stray case, and that other allegations were simply the work of a fertile imagination.
Tehelka captured all of the reality...on tape.
After targeting high-level rackets in Indian test cricket, military sleaze and corruption, US evangelicals’ plotting to push religious conversions in India, and a doctor who certifies people insane at a price, Tehelka turned its eye to India’s smallest state of Goa (population 1.4 million, and area 3,700 square kilometres).
After what the website-turned-national paper called a “five-month sting operation”, it accused Goa of becoming “a haven for European child molesters”. Its charges, as done in other cases too, were released strategically at prime time on prominent news-channels. To back up its charge, it offered reels of film, names, documents, first-person quotes and plenty of detail.
Three of its journalists did half-a-dozen pieces in a single Tehelka issue on the ramifications and modus operandi of child-sex-abuse here. Its team consisted of VK Shashikumar, Mayabhushan Nagvenkar (a journalist who worked in Goa till end-2003 and moved to Delhi, after feeling stifled by the limited ability for expressing the truth as he saw it here), and Sanjukta Sharma.
Singing like canaries
But Tehelka.com’s style of journalism is not the one that you come across everyday in your newspaper. The blurred pictures of secret-camera recordings came alive on late-night TV screens in millions of Indian homes, with some of those having a link to this sordid business singing like canaries and telling the truth without even realising whom they were talking to. Besides spending five months and investing a lot of resources on the story, the team itself also pretended to be event managers, filmmakers and researchers. There was the typical Tehelka stamp on the sting operation.
In order to check how deep this linkage (between trafficking of children and paedophilia) was, Tehelka’s reporters armed themselves with a fake brochure of a dummy event management company called ‘Red Satin’. They carried with them a proposal for staging events at ‘shacks’ (makeshift restaurants) on the beach. Their proposal was outrageous. It said: “Each client has different requirements... Sometimes the requirement is for foreign escorts (women and men), or foreign hostesses or young boys and girls... We also require support for police permissions and other such logistical requirements. For special requirement like under-18 escorts (boys and girls) we will have to work a separate channel of operation.”
But those they spoke to were willing to offer everything... at a price.
Tehelka said “hundreds of Europeans – British, Germans, Dutch, French, Swiss and Swedish – visit Goa to seek children for sexual gratification. They come to Goa because it is easy, and cheap, to sexually abuse a child here. On the run after crack-downs on cheap child-sex tourism in Thailand and Sri Lanka, the paedophile bus has rolled into Goa.”
Story behind the story
But the story behind the story is perhaps more interesting.
Aaj Tak ’s version of the Tehelka expose left much to be desired, with the TV channel almost sensationalising the issue, without going beyond sound-bytes. Likewise, Aaj Tak’s perceived attempt to blame entire Goa for ignoring, if not encouraging, the paedophilia problem here is far from the reality.
Overwhelmingly, the vast majority of this state would be even unaware of this problem. For one, it is highly localised along the coastal belt, which is home to the bulk of foreign tourist stays. Secondly, there’s the deny-it-at-any-cost approach of the bureaucracy and administrations. Further compounding matters has been the inadequate follow-up by the press – the few journalists who have tried complain of being misunderstood by editors. This fact was also more than obvious in the issue was reported locally. Newspapers hardly reported– some completely ignored – the Tehelka public screening of their film on August 6, 2004. Later on, the statements of the chief minister, the police and officialdom got a greater play in the local press, as compared to the point that Tehelka and citizens’ groups were making over this issue.
What Tehelka told
A British journalist following this issue commented, “In fairness, (Tehelka) doesn’t appear to be saying anything startlingly new, and certainly not taking the issue much further forward than the ECPAT (End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism) report. To Tehelka’s credit though, it has put child-sex tourism back high on the agenda where it belongs.”
That’s one side of the story. The other is that Tehelka captured on film, often using secret cameras, what was widely suspected but officially denied. By giving names, official leaks, and interviews on tape, the tabloid with a differing style of journalism made its strong point.
One of its articles was titled Six Most Wanted: File of Dreaded Paedophiles. It listed the names and detailed modus operandi of half-a-dozen foreigners. Tehelka claims that its lengthy investigation implicated Jorg Harry Ringlemann (German) of Chopdem, John Collin Middleton (aka Steven “Steve” Christopher King of UK) who moves between Kerala-Goa-Nepal, David Meredith Vagg (UK/Candolim), Theodore Wilhem Anema alias Theo Anema (Dutch national residing in Herfordshire) and John Dening (British national), and an unidentified Bernard.
Tehelka named and identified locals on tape, people openly acknowledging that they know of the sexual-abuse of children, and even openly – and at least a couple almost casually – using terms like “Bomkis” (the Konkani slang for “sodomiser”) to identify paedophiles in their area.
Stung by the criticism, the official response was not hard to predict. There were denials and attempts to play down the issue. Till date, one of the biggest mysteries remains why the Goa government simply refuses to take this issue head on.
Tehelka captured on tape the attitude of Goa’s officials, whether it was the police or senior tourism officials. One senior police official had this to say to the team: ‘But why are you so much (concerned)? Where are paedophilias in Goa? I will just question: When in the US gay marriages have been legalised, then why all this hue and cry?’
Reported the Tehelka team: “During the interview, (the senior police official) Shukla shares with us a delicate mix of lies, ignorance and pride, claiming that paedophilia is hardly a problem in Goa. He blamed the non-government organisations for not doing a proper job in assisting the police in ‘taking children out from the streets.’ ”
Fallout
In Goa, the fallout of this entire issue was also telling. “I kept reading about paedophilia in the local papers, and didn’t quite understand why the issue had surfaced,” said one computer software professional, from state-capital Panaji’s suburb of Porvorim. In large part, the odd manner in which the local press responded to this story explains such a bewildered reaction.
But the scene was a little different on the ‘idiot box’. Goa lacks any private TV stations of its own. What it does have is three cable-TV based news operations, that collate local news and put it out after replacing an existing satellite channel for half-an-hour or so each, in the evenings. Local viewers seem to appreciate the diet of local news. Goa-365, the youngest of the three cable-news operations, carried the Tehelka movie in two parts. This despite its perceived closeness to the BJP-lead Parrikar government. But then it is a reality that every young media organisation needs to establish its credibility.
In Goa, one of those identified as a prime paedophilia suspect – German-national Ringlemann – was sent back home. But strangely, the action came not for reasons of paedophilia or anything remotely connected with it, but for technical grounds to do with his stay here. Ringlemann was staying with two teenage Indian girls, one whom he claimed to be his “wife” and the other his “adopted daughter”.
Goa has seen it all when it comes to paedophilia, since 1993: graphic photographs involving small boys, the perversity of which one cannot even imagine. Persistent police inability at tackling the issue. Other paedophile suspects giving the authorities the slip. Repeated denials by the authorities of the problem’s existence. And non-governmental organisations (NGOs) struggling to prove their point with only very limited success. NGOs have even complained about the manner in which a few high-profile paedophile suspects gave the cops the slip here, while the state seemed persistently lethargic in taking up this issue.
Like their style or not, Tehelka seems to have jogged public opinion out of its stupor. Immediately after its expose, at least three high-profile cases came to the surface. Ironically, one came up in a RSS-run school, known to be a favourite of the BJP-led dispensation currently ruling Goa. The other involved a Catholic priest from the Panaji suburb of Ribandar. The complaint coming up in the RSS-run school case involved a student, while the Ribandar priest’s case was over a 13-year-old who was allegedly molested by the priest, when she was due to play the role of the Virgin Mary for Christmas mass.
Unfortunately, the latter quickly turned into a slanging match between a high profile though controversy-courting lawyer spear-heading the charges and the priest, with the religious sentiments of many playing a defensive role over the issue. Goa’s government, defiant despite the expose, as is usually chief minister Parrikar’s style, took steps to set up a children’s court.
For a while at least, the press and public appeared to be more alive to issues relating to children. But if Goa needs to become more sensitive over this issue, it is also one which can be misused to settle various scores, and even fight political battles. Both the case of the Ribandar church and the RSS-linked school give more than enough signs of these issues becoming a punching bag for various interest groups, with the state’s neutrality in taking up such concerns coming in for questioning. 
Gomantak Times, the smallest of Goa’s three papers and also the most active in its reporting, broke a story on September 7 that three police – including an assistant sub-inspector – from the port-town of Vasco da Gama were accused of sexually and physically abusing four minor street children, including one physically-handicapped teenager. The boys were detained on 5 September on charges of stealing and were produced before Juvenile Justice Board judge, SD Natekar for remand. When a social worker visited Apna Ghar on 6 September in the morning, the children alleged that they were tortured at the police station. The paper pointed out that this had happened “even as the state police department announced the formation of a new child protection unit”. Within days, the police were suspended pending a departmental inquiry against them.
In end-August, the paper noted that while suspected paedophiles in north Goa have been in the eye of the recent media storm, their counterparts on the beaches of south Goa have, so far, managed to skirt both the law and attention. “Taking advantage of the relative isolation that south Goa offers, these men – most of them elderly, with big paunches and dressed in beach-wear – are suspected to have used and abused children over long periods of time from (coastal spots like) Palolem to Colva and all the beaches in between. Most of them have been visiting the state for more than a decade and are usually long-stayers. Some of them have even invested in local businesses, our sources say,” commented journalist Reuven Proenca.
Citizens’ groups stepped up concern over the issue. On September 6, NGOs and concerned citizens met in the capital city (Panjim) to discuss the fate of women and children in a society where, they alleged, the legislature, the executive and judiciary were less sympathetic to all woes placed before them.
National Human Rights Commission warned that child sex tourism in India has assumed “serious dimensions” because of lack of open protest by citizens and slender chances that the abusers will be caught or punished. “While Goa has been the ‘sex destination’ of foreign tourists for a long time, a growing number of cases have been reported from the beaches of Kovalam in Kerala, Puri in Orissa and Digha in West Bengal,” an action on trafficking in women and children prepared by National Human Rights Commission with an NGO, Institute of Social Sciences, said.
Against the backdrop of growing sex-crimes against women and children here, public meets have been held here to protest against this and demand that the police be more effective in bringing the guilty to book. Citizens have been pressing for the early setting up of a children’s court to implement the much-touted Goa Children’s Act, which the authorities here used as an alibi to project Goa as a “child-friendly” state, prior to the Tehelka expose. Slowly, the wheels of officialdom have been moving on this.
Conspiracy of silence
Various theories have come up. Is officialdom simply unable to comprehend its ramifications and modus operandi? Does police corruption explain the unofficial patronage that suspects seem to be getting, as in the case of drug mafias along the north Goa coast?
Commented one journalist from outside Goa, following the story: “It does sound like the noises coming from the Goan authorities could be smoke and mirrors though – the unmistakeable eau-de-bulls**t that often accompanies embarrassing reports such as Tehelka’s. I mean, hasn’t the government been criticised for failure to act in the past? Doesn’t a promise of publication (of parts of the report by Scotland Yard’s Rick Wood) seem to be “action”?”
Tehelka ’s own explanation is an economic one. Policy-makers and the State are unwilling to upset tourism’s apple-cart. The BJP chief minister Manohar Parrikar got criticised for not taking action, and sleeping over information. Parrikar has himself since conceded that a report was submitted to the Goa government in 2001 on the issue. It was prepared by a former Scotland Yard detective named Ric Wood and looks at the paedophilia problem facing Goa. Since then, suggests Tehelka, some three financial years have passed and the Goa government has netted approximately Rs 4,000 crore as revenue from the tourism sector.
Says its report: “Rs 4,000 crore... that’s the size of the heap the chief minister will have to dig into, in order to unearth the critically important Ric Wood report. In a state desperately dependent on monies generated by tourism, issues affecting the public have been conveniently brushed aside by chief minister Manohar Parrikar – the apprehension being that the disclosure of paedophilia would result in Goa losing favour as one of the most popular tourism destinations in this part of the world.”
But this point of view is one which situates itself on the back of questionable official claims itself. It is only a limited number of villages on the coast that are dependent on tourism, not the entire state as made out to be. Likewise, the earnings from tourism are often overstated as a means of justifying the lobby’s demands. If the earnings are as huge as officially claimed, a large chunk goes unreported and without entering the non-black economy of this state.
Paradoxes and unanswered questions
There are many paradoxes and unanswered questions about child-sex abuse in Goa. Do not people care about it? Are they largely just kept in the dark, and struggling to cope with a reality that a society which has seen vast social change in just four decades after Portuguese colonial rule ended cannot really comprehend? Is there a marked reluctance to take a stand and get involved? Or is it a mix of all these factors?
One undeniable factor is that a strong section of Goan society sees this as concerning two sections of ‘outsiders’ – foreign tourism and poor migrant children from the outlying areas of states like Karnataka – and hence not a local concern. On the other hand, a small section has rightly made the point that ethnicity has no role to play in the battle for social justice to all.
Then, is Goa an exception when it comes to such problems, which simply do not get highlighted in other parts of India? Undeniably, Goa has been a gateway for India’s links with the West for at least the past five centuries. Goa’s proportionately large Western tourist population – over a quarter million every year, in a state with just 1.4 million inhabitants – increases the probability here. The hospitable nature of the local society further aggravates issues like these.
NGOs in the state have been alert to this issue for long. But the persistent ‘denial syndrome’ by the authorities and, to a lesser extend, disinterest by the media, has left them fighting the odds to get results. Together with this have been allegations that some NGO interest in the issues has been more to gain the ear of international funders.
Tehelka is not the first publication to come out strongly over Goa’s uneasy relationship (and tolerance, as some see it) of paedophilia. British tabloid News of The World was involved in a similar operation years ago, though on a smaller scale, with a single journalist posing as a paedophile himself.
Following News of The World reporter Roger Insall’s expose, the police conducted ‘surprise raids’ over some suspects, which hardly seemed to have any element of surprise. Expat Goans networked through the Net have themselves taken up this issue sometime around 1996-1997, and even undertook a global petition, urging for action on this issue.
Was the feet-dragging attitude brought on by disbelief, the perceived tourism interest (not wanting to upset the tourism apple-cart at any cost), the fact that our British-legacy colonial laws are incapable of dealing with this situation, or a largely unwary populace?
Foreign-tourism linked child-sexual abuse is not Goa’s only problem of this league. Sex-crimes involving locals are growing speedily, and every few days shocking stories emerge in the newspapers. This is particularly so in the case of Goa, a strongly migration-oriented society. On the one hand, there are Goans migrating mainly abroad, and to other parts of India. There is also a large in-migration of job-seekers and the rural poor from the hinterland states lying outside Goa. Both lead to a spurt in ‘incomplete families’. This apparently has a link with the growing sex-crimes.
Weeks ago, Goa’s only openly-tolerated red-light squalid slum quarter of Baina near the port-town of Vasco da Gama was demolished in one swift official action. This mid-June, mid-monsoon action was justified by the state government by pointing to one court judgement, and middle-class morality fears were played on to justify the action. Yet, fact is that many teenage girls, mainly from poor and ‘lower’ caste families from outside Goa, were thrown into prostitution in the area. Officials seldom took action on this front, till NGOs like ARZ which were working in the area came out strongly over the issue.
Tehelka saw this as “a story about human rights. About how the government turns a blind eye to the brazen violation of these rights. About foreigners fearlessly subverting the Indian law. About how the government, in the quest for increasing revenues, looks the other way and colludes to facilitate a shocking crime.”
But this is also a story of which issues become news… or do not become news for years together. Of how defensive responses coupled with vested interests can indeed block justice to the most vulnerable sections of society. How a society can sometimes view sexual exploitation of the hapless as shocking, but tolerate other forms of exploitation all the same. Or how a state can put up a bold front with the help of an uncritical press.
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