Elite paedophile ring convictions (Portugal)

[Jeff]

Portuguese TV presenter found guilty of being in paedophile ring
Conviction of Carlos Cruz ends six-year court case over child prostitution at Casa Pia state-run orphanages

Friday 3 September 2010

One of Portugal's most famous television presenters and a former ambassador were among six men found guilty today of involvement with a paedophile prostitution ring that exploited children from state-run orphanages.

The guilty verdicts handed down to TV presenter Carlos Cruz and the others exposed the truth of more than three decades of rumours about systematic abuse of young boys at the 230-year-old Casa Pia network of orphanages.

It was only when a former orphanage boy called Joel came forward in 2002 and accused some of the country's best-known names of being involved that Portugal woke up to full horror of the scandal.

Members of Portugal's media, civil service and professional elite were alleged to be regular abusers of the boys, some younger than 14. Even well-known politicians were involved, it was initially rumoured. A flood of accusations from boys who had passed through the Casa Pia system followed. Some 32 boys alleged at least 800 crimes.

The case pitted the orphanage boys against a group of well-educated, influential people – including a former ambassador to Unesco, a lawyer, a doctor and Cruz. Today, eight years after they dared to speak out, the boys finally won their case.

The four men and two former orphanage employees were found guilty. An 18-year sentence went to Carlos Silvino, a 53-year-old Casa Pia worker, who confessed to 600 crimes and gave evidence against other defendants.

"The court recognised that we were telling the truth," said victim Bernardo Teixeira. "It's a happy ending for us. The paedophiles are going to jail."

The court case lasted six years, bringing additional outrage over the slow speed of Portugal's legal system. The case was already in court when the 2007 disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann made world headlines. Portuguese police were, at the time, defensive about claims, particularly in the British press, that they had a history of mishandling cases involving children.

Buried in the case paperwork are allegations that Casa Pia was known to paedophiles internationally and that some flew in to abuse children from the orphanage, according to at least one source familiar with the case.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/se ... phile-ring

[Project Willow]

If there were some appropriate way to celebrate, I would do so. These vics. got far further than most in their situation, and that should be noted.

I don't know what else to say and I find myself contemplating a process that might generate an effective response to the type of organized crime that profits from trafficking and sexual slavery. There are bigger systems at work that must be addressed.

[cptmarginal]

I noticed this article was edited multiple times in the course of me reading it earlier.

The version on cryptogon is the original, including this part:

A former senior government official also revealed that allegations of abuse at the orphanages had been presented to the country’s then president, General Ramalho Eanes, in the 1980s.

Former secretary of state for families Teresa Costa Macedo, who presented the evidence to Ramalho Eanes and sent a dossier to police that was later lost, said she received anonymous threats by phone and post.

“They said they would kill me, flay me and a lot of other things,” she said.

The title and some wording was changed, too.

[Jeff]

Thanks for that, cptmarginal.

[Stephen Morgan]

The ambassador to UNESCO will presumably be Ritto, Dutroux's friend.

[cptmarginal]

The ambassador to UNESCO will presumably be Ritto, Dutroux's friend.

It is.

And with that, I've bumped up too many sickening threads in a row. Time for a real break.

[jingofever]

The ambassador to UNESCO will presumably be Ritto, Dutroux's friend.

Is there a citation for that?

[Jeff]

Former diplomat and Unesco ambassador Jorge Ritto, a defendant in a major child sex abuse trial that has lasted almost six years arrives at a court in Lisbon, Friday, Sept. 3 2010 for the verdict. A former worker at a state-run orphanage called Casa Pia admitted to participating in a network that systematically abused children and implicated six other defendants.

http://oneclick.indiatimes.com/photo/0e ... S?q=Lisbon

I can find links claiming Ritto and Dutroux were "closely linked," but that's it. It's probably reasonable enough to presume a connection, but what's the evidence?

[jingofever]

I can find links claiming Ritto and Dutroux were "closely linked," but that's it. It's probably reasonable enough to presume a connection, but what's the evidence?

As far as I can tell the claim originates in an article by Oswald LeWinter. I don't know anything about him.

[Jeff]

"Condemned" is the most commonly used word on the front pages of Portugal's newspapers today, after the country's longest ever criminal trial ended with a damning verdict.

Six men were given jail sentences of between six and 18 years for sexually abusing children.

But the media coverage of Friday's verdict also made much of the fact that all six men remain at liberty, after their lawyers immediately submitted appeals against the decision.

...

...the sluggish pace of court proceedings in Portugal could lead to the statute of limitations being applied in this case if there is a series of appeals.

"The trial alone took six years [but] normally the appeal phase takes much more," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11187558

[Stephen Morgan]

I can find links claiming Ritto and Dutroux were "closely linked," but that's it. It's probably reasonable enough to presume a connection, but what's the evidence?

As far as I can tell the claim originates in an article by Oswald LeWinter. I don't know anything about him.

He was in Francovich's Gladio documentary, a whistle blower sort.

[cptmarginal]

I remember him in that documentary, he seemed somehow dishonest to me at the time.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 61637.html

"LeWinter is an example of a brilliant mind gone to the bad," former CIA counter-terrorist expert Vincent Cannistraro said in a conversation about the man two years ago. "His father was a professor at Columbia University. He grew up in a New York City suburb with all the privileges. It is amazing how far he has fallen."

Beyond this, however, facts about Mr LeWinter are hard to come by. When I dealt with him in 1996 - spending a week with him at his Mojave Desert home in California - for a Channel 4 documentary that never made it into production, the psychological warfare he waged against me left me uncertain about almost everything concerning him.

Spy buffs know Mr LeWinter as a former CIA operative. A Vienna tabloid last week quoted Rodney Stich, author of Disavow - a CIA Saga of Betrayal, as saying that Mr LeWinter worked for more than 30 years for the CIA under the codename "Razine"; he was recruited in the Sixties, during the Vietnam war, as a college professor, and acted first as an informer on students.

Mr LeWinter told me he had become involved with the CIA while a college professor. "I was invited to go on a lecture tour to eastern Europe, to talk about Shakespeare," he said. "The CIA approached me. I became one of their fish." He claimed he had become a deputy director of the agency under the late James Angleton, its legendarily paranoid counter-espionage expert. But a former Washington DC police intelligence chief pointed out flaws in his account of his CIA career that cast serious doubt on this and other claims.

His personal life is also hard to pin down. He told me he had married an heiress to the Humble Oil fortune with whom he had two sons - one now a successful executive, the other a beach bum - but the marriage had foundered and in the Eighties he married a German woman, an executive at the German software firm SAP. They have a daughter.

He told me that from 1979 he worked for the CIA at Itac, the Brussels- based intelligence coordinating arm of Nato. In the Eighties he was arrested and convicted of drug dealing in Germany. His admission that he served a prison term in Germany - for moving amphetamines from Libya to the US - is qualified by his insistence that the operation was one of Oliver North's secret missions. It was after this miscarriage of justice, he said, that he became a renegade.

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2004/06/ ... -moon.html

You probably don't know the name. You may recall, however, that there was a fellow who tried to sell a forged document to Mohammed Al Fayed. The document, which came at a very hefty price, allegedly revealed the ghastly truth behind the deaths of Al Fayed's son and Princess Diana. LeWinter was the man behind the scam; he was caught, and did time.

During the Vietnam war, LeWinter was a professor at U.C. Berkley -- an expert on Shakespeare, as I recall. He befriended at least one leader of the anti-war movement. At the same time, he was relaying info to the feds. In the years since, he has claimed to be either a general or an intelligence operative. Reportedly, he was friendly with CIA man George Cave.

Using the name "Razin," he provided researchers with "inside" info on the October Surprise scandal. Later, before a congressional committee, he admitted that he had been lying. Although the October Surprise story was confirmed by more reliable sources -- including French intelligence head Alexandre de Marenches, Russian prime minister Sergei V. Stepashin, Israeli secret agent Ari Ben-Menashe, former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and former Israeli prime minister Yitshak Shamir -- LeWinter's odd games deep-sixed official inquiry into the event.

He is, in short, a very strange man. He now writes for a somewhat loopy (okay, very loopy) conspiracy site, where he has turned out stories with names like "Bush-Cheney Cabal: Pedophilia, Arms Dealing, Murder." His Moon piece seems fairly good. Even so, when dealing with a shady fellow like LeWinter, caveat lector!

http://rigint.blogspot.com/2006/12/marr ... topus.html

Sometimes you can tell a conspiracy by the high grade of disinformation that accrues about it, including the number and quality of shadowy "renegade insiders" eager to step up, speak out and muddy the waters. ... Former CIA agent Oswald LeWinter tried to sell to Mohammed Al Fayed apparently forged documents that spelling out in big, block letters an alleged DIA-MI6 assassination plot. And it may even be true, but to showcase the truth within the framework of a lie is to strip its consideration of credibility. (Regarding LeWinter, Al Fayed's attorney Mark Zaid told CNN six years ago that he "was responsible for disseminating a lot of the - what's been deemed disinformation about [the October Surprise]. He has shown up in allegations that Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was murdered, he has shown up involving allegations of the bombing of Pam Am 103, and then he showed up in this latest endeavor of his. He is quite a man of mystery.")

You can find his name linked to lots of suspicious things, if you look further.

In reference to this potential disinfo linking Dutroux to Ritto, his time living in Portugal and even publishing books in Portuguese might lend some credence to his claim. It stinks if you ask me.

[semper occultus]

...his MO sounds identical to ole Robert Eringer....