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August 22, 2004
Paedophile suspect runs children's charity in Tanzania
Fiona MacGREGOR
A Children's charity in Tanzania, backed by UK fundraisers, is being run by a Briton believed to be wanted in India on charges of sexual abuse against young boys.
Duncan Grant, 61, a former Royal Navy reservist, is alleged to have beaten and sexually abused youngsters at shelters he ran for street children in Bombay. Grant, who has been running similar shelters in Tanzania, has denied the allegations.
He is the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by the Indian authorities after a police investigation into the claims by children at shelters in Bombay that he and another Briton, Allan Waters, had beaten and sexually abused them.
It has also emerged the Jesuits in Britain have pulled students from a gap year project at Grant’s shelters in Tanzania because of concerns about the treatment of children there.
The Bombay shelters, which were never formally registered with the state authorities, were home to between 50 and 60 boys aged from eight to 18.
The project received money from British schools and churches, where Grant gave illustrated talks, and from the UK charity Rescue-a-Child, but an official Indian report is alleged to have found the homes to have been "ramshackle and filthy and the children were being beaten indiscriminately".
In 2001 a police investigation was launched after some children alleged they were abused by Grant and Waters, but by that time the two men had left India. Grant is reported to have said the allegations were invented by the Bombay police, a lawyer and a rival volunteer, and that the boys had since withdrawn their allegations.
"They cooked up some story that we were part of a paedophile ring and using the shelter for all sorts of child abuse. It was all nonsense," he is quoted as saying.
Ged Clapson, a spokesman for the Jesuits, said: "The students assigned to the Anchorage shelter project by the gap year programmes in January this year expressed their concerns to their supervisor in London about the way that some of the children were being treated.
"The matter was referred to the British Jesuit Provincial, who reviewed the reports from the students and ... decided immediately to withdraw gap year students from the shelters."
Posted by Nealus at August 22, 2004 04:01 PM
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