Former aid worker charged with more child-sex crimes

Former Ottawa aid worker Paul McCarthy — already facing childsex charges from 2019 involving five boys in Nepal — is now charged with two more sex crimes involving another child abroad.

McCarthy, 64, was arrested in January 2019 at Pearson International Airport and escorted off a plane bound for Panama City. The former international aid worker was originally stopped in December 2018 by the Canada Border Services Agency as he returned home from a volunteer mission to an orphanage in Nepal. That investigation identified five alleged victims, all Nepalese boys.

McCarthy was a CARE Canada director for Indonesia from 1992 to 1995. A CARE Canada spokesperson told the Citizen in 2019 that the child-sex allegations are not related to his past work with the relief organization.

The charges against McCarthy have not been proven in court.

Defence lawyer Robert Carew told the Citizen in 2019 that every story has two sides. At the time, McCarthy had just been charged with child-sex crimes including luring, assault and importing child pornography. At the time the Ottawa police internet child exploitation unit said they feared there were more alleged victims because McCarthy has a long history of travelling around the world.

McCarthy is now charged with sex assault and sexual interference involving another victim abroad. His lawyer said he's still waiting for disclosure on the latest charges.

Lori Handrahan, who wrote the book Epidemic: America's Trade in Child Rape, said in 2019 Nepal has been a hotbed for child exploitation by those either connected to the international aid community or pretending to be a part of it.

“This has been going on forever and ever,” Handrahan said in 2019. “It's huge. This is a difficult problem. We've had these scandals, and (aid agencies) have all said, `We're going to do safeguarding better.' And they're not. What they're doing is training and conferences and little papers and public relations, and that's it.”

In October 2019, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund issued a warning about orphanages in Nepal. The organization said as many as 85 per cent of the children in Nepalese orphanages aren't actually orphans, and have at least one living parent. More than 75 per cent of the country's orphanages are in high-tourism areas, the organization said. In some cases children are deliberately separated from their families and placed in orphanages so they can be used to attract money from donors.

McCarthy, reached by phone Monday, declined to comment.