National Post (National Edition)
Canadian was lauded for his work in Nepal. Now he faces rape charges.
CANADIAN AID WORKER FACES RAPE CHARGES IN NEPAL
When Canadian Peter Dalglish, a lauded humanitarian worker, built a sleek cabin near a Nepalese village of rutted roads and hills ribbed with rice paddies, locals knew virtually nothing about him.
But over several years, Dalglish endeared himself to many in the community, greeting villagers in Nepali, offering chocolates from Thailand to children playing in the forest and helping people rebuild their homes destroyed by devastating earthquakes in 2015.
The goodwill was shattered last month when police swarmed Dalglish’s home, placed a gun to his head and arrested him.
On Monday, Central Investigation Bureau chief Pushkar Karki said Dalglish, a lawyer and native of London, Ont., was arrested at his home with two Nepalese boys aged 12 and 14 after weeks of investigation. His case is being heard by a court in Kavre, a town near Kathmandu.
Karki said Dalglish was charged with raping the two boys and faces up to 13 years in prison if convicted.
Dalglish, 60, has denied the charges.
Now villagers are on edge, worried about how far the betrayal — and abuse — may have stretched.
“We trusted him,” said Sher Bahadur Tamang, who said he received hundreds of dollars from Dalglish to pay for his child’s education. “He treated us so well. We never knew what was inside his mind.”
Dalglish’s downfall has been a shock partly because his work aiding street children around the world was so widely admired. In 2016, he was awarded the Order of Canada.
Dalglish helped found the
charity Street Kids International and has worked for decades for a number of humanitarian agencies, including UN Habitat in Afghanistan and the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response in Liberia. He has focused much of the time on working children and street children.
Officials said he helped families who lost their homes during a devastating Nepal earthquake in 2015 that killed 9,000 people and damaged nearly a million houses.
Karki said Dalglish lured children from poor families with promises of education, jobs and trips, and then sexually abused them.
Investigators followed Dalglish for weeks after they received information about alleged abuses, Karki said.
At a restaurant in town, the father of one of the boys in the case said he had worked as a labourer on Dalglish’s property for half a decade and had formed a warm bond with his boss. The father, Tamang, identifying himself only by his common last name to protect his family’s privacy, said he let his son, 14, occasionally spend the night at Dalglish’s home.
“I never imagined Peter would do such a thing,” he said.
Rahul Chapagain, Dalglish’s lawyer, said evidence collected by the police could belong to visitors who rented the home through Airbnb.
“Whatever they found, it does not necessarily belong to Peter,” he said.
Dalglish marketed his cabin online as a “Himalayan Hideaway,” equipped with a Bose sound system, German bathroom fixtures and a lush garden. In his profile’s display picture, a beaming Dalglish embraces Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
A few days after the arrest, Tamang said he was summoned by the authorities to Dalglish’s home.
The police showed him a small, white box. Inside were dozens of photographs and film negatives of naked children, some of them playing in pools, Tamang said.
Chapagain, the lawyer, said Dalglish told him they were “pictures of povertystricken children and nothing sexually exploitative.”
Nepal is one of Asia’s poorest countries, and thousands of non-governmental organizations operate with limited government oversight. The absence of strict regulations means aid groups can be used as a cover for human traffickers and predatory behaviour by humanitarian workers, said Karki.
This year, the police arrested Hans Jurgen Gustav Dahm, 63, a German who was running a charity organization in Kathmandu that provided free lunches to children, many of whom accused him of sexual abuse.
In the past two years, five other foreign men, including Dalglish, have been arrested on suspicion of pedophilia, Karki said. “There have been some instances where they were found working with charities,” he said, noting that several of the men informally offered money, food and clothing to children. “Our laws aren’t as strict as in foreign countries, and there is no social scrutiny like in developed countries.”
The arrest of such a notable humanitarian has added urgency to a new effort by aid workers around the world, who are saying it is now time to investigate themselves. Late last year, they started a #Metoo-like movement called #Aidtoo.
In February, Oxfam, one of Britain’s largest charities, fired four workers and accepted the resignations of three others after an investigation found that senior officials for the organization had hired prostitutes in Haiti, including for sex parties.
That same month, the BBC reported that men delivering aid on behalf of the United Nations and international charities had abused displaced women in Syria, trading food for sexual favours.
“Peter Dalglish’s arrest should be a ‘teachable moment’ for the humanitarian community to understand and recognize how predators exploit the cover of ‘heroism’ to commit crimes,” Lori Handrahan, a veteran humanitarian worker, wrote in an essay published on Medium. “Let’s be clear. Peter Dalglish is not a hero. He never was.”