A Dutch national, Hans Egon Dieter Vriens, has been finally arrested after evading the law in Kenya for two years.
Vriens was accused of defiling underage Kenyan girls in separate incidents in 2016 and had been on the run since then.
Reports by local media have indicated that the paedophile was arrested in Nairobi’s Kasarani neighbourhood late Thursday.
The arrest was made possible by detectives from the Child Protection Unit & Transnational Organized Crime Unit.
#ARRESTED|Mr.Hans Egon Dieter Vriens, a Dutch national, who defiled three girls aged 8, 9 & 10years in 2016 and disappeared for 2 years, was arrested today in Kasarani by Detectives from the Child Protection Unit &Transnational Organized Crime Unit. To appear in court tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/1Dj4ovc5kZ
— DCI KENYA (@DCI_Kenya) November 1, 2018
Vriens had defiled three girls aged eight, nine and 10 years in 2016 at separate incidents.
He denied the charges on November 2 and is to remain in remand until November 16.
The court heard that he allegedly duped the children’s mothers that he would sponsor their education at his school in Yatta, Kitui county. He also gave the children $1 dollar after molesting them and threatened them with murder if they reported him.
This would not be the first time Vriens was charged in court.
In 2002, he was arrested and charged before a Magistrate’s Court in Nairobi for allegedly sexually assaulted another girl, 14, at Donholm Estate in Nairobi.
Vriens joins the list of white sexual assaulters who have been charged for preying on Kenya children.
Wood killed himself days before he was required to appear before the court for charges that included “one count of indecently assaulting a girl under 16, two counts of making indecent photographs of a child and one count of possessing indecent images of a child.”
Another Briton, Simon Harris, was also jailed for sexually assaulting children in a school in Gilgil in Kenya. Harris would lure street boys with “bread and milk. Then with clean clothes.”
Simon Harris. Photo: West Merica Police
Known as one of UK’s prolific paedophiles banned from working with children forever, Harris obtained fake papers to get into Kenya after spending time behind bars in the UK in 2009. His travels into Kenya were not monitored.
Harris was sentenced to 17 years, but the sentence was later reduced to 15 years after his team appealed.
Kenya has been under scrutiny for increased cases of sexual assault and sex tourism, especially in its coastal region.
Human rights and children welfare groups have raised concerns over paedophiles, the majority of who come from Europe and America, targeting children from poverty-stricken towns and villages in the region under the guise of giving them scholarships.
In Kenya, sex with underage children is a crime and offenders are liable to imprisonment for a term of not less than 15 years.
