An Italian man was sentenced to 15 and a half years in prison for abusing six children in northern Moldova in 2009-2011. He was also convicted of child pornography. The searches were conducted in 2017, when the man was detained, IPN reports.

The Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime and Special Causes said the defendant, together with his friend, both in their 60s, began their visits to Moldova in 2009. The stated purpose of the visits was to help poor families with children, as well as orphans.

The six children and adolescents they abused were then aged between 12 and 17. With the first, eldest teenager, they met at a transport company. After asking him if he would like to earn some money, they offered him a phone and money. The next day, they bought food and clothes and brought them to his home, telling his mother that they would help him.

On their next return to Moldova from Italy, after a few months, one of the men bought him winter shoes, after which he made a first attempt at sexual abuse, which was unsuccessful. A year later, he repeated the attempt and offered him 600 lei and a bag for oral sex. Later, the teenager was threatened with disclosure of the fact that he had oral sex if he didn’t identify other boys in the village for the same purpose. 

Therefore, he introduced them to a 15-year-old boy from a family with a difficult financial situation, who received 400 lei for touching the defendant’s sexual organ. He later abused him through oral sex. Other children of those six were later abused. They were sexually exploited both in the apartment rented by the two men, in the house of one of the teenagers and also in a guesthouse in the region. For sexual exploitation, the two paid 200 to 800 lei to the boys.

When attempting to expand the network of sexually abused children, the defendants were severely beaten by a potential victim who was studying in a boarding school. When the police and lawyers arrived, the sexual exploitation of children was exposed.

One of the men was arrested, but when the preventive measure expired, the defendant left Moldova. He was sentenced in 2021 in absentia. Now, at the request of the Moldovan authorities, the Italian authorities extradited him to Chisinau to serve a sentence here for child trafficking and child pornography.

The second accused is wanted internationally.