A British paedophile exposed by the Guardian newspaper for abusing orphans of the Ethiopian famine was on Thursday jailed for nine years with hard labor by a court in Addis Ababa after an apparent attempt to open another center for children in Zambia.
David Christie, 62, was found guilty of abusing boys under 15 and of procuring boys for his friends. Originally from Bournemouth, Christie was the subject of a Guardian investigation in July 1999 which revealed that he had targeted a village set up to house orphans of the famine.
Christie was sacked by the agency, Terre des Hommes Lausanne (Tdh), in 1997 after admitting an "improper sexual relationship" with one of the 300 children in his care. Other children in the village also made allegations of abuse.
The first criminal bench of the high court in Addis Ababa said Christie had also arranged for five boys to be abused by two of his friends, one of them a Briton. The court declared that Christie had abused boys daily for several weeks at a time. It said he lured the boys by giving them sweets and promising them an education abroad.
Christie had been living in the UK when he was arrested on an international warrant in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, and was in the process of being flown to the UK when he was arrested by Ethiopian authorities who took him off a transit flight bound for London.
Officers with Scotland Yard's (London's Metropolitan Police Force) paedophile unit had been monitoring his movements in London. After the Guardian allegations, Christie changed his name by deed poll to David Allen and obtained a passport. He could not be prosecuted because his offences predated the 1997 Sex Offenders Act enabling British courts to try UK nationals for such crimes. But an associate of Christie's tipped officers off that he was planning to flee to Zambia with the intention of working with children again.
Christie had been the head or "father" of Jari Children's Village, an eight-hour drive from the capital. There he was responsible for the welfare of more than 300 children. His associates -- some known paedophiles -- would visit the village and a number of allegations were made against them.
In 1999, a Guardian investigation discovered that it was not just in Jari that children were abused.
Christie had ready access to young boys in Addis Ababa, where many children are forced to beg on the streets.
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