A convicted pedophile from the United States managed to slide under the world’s radar, traveling from country to country working as a schoolteacher and molesting at least 90 students along the way.
64-year old William James Vahey was found dead of suicide last month in Minnesota last month, taking his life two days after investigators filed a warrant to search a computer belonging. The drive contained pornographic images of at least 90 boys aged from 10 to 14, who appeared to be drugged and unconscious. He reportedly admitted to drugging and molesting children all throughout his career, when a colleague confronted him about the images on his computer.
The photographs were catalogued with dates and locations that corresponded with overnight field trips that Vahey had taken with students since 2008. But because of Vahey’s admission to his coworker, investigators believe it went on long before that.
FBI Special Agent Patrick Fransen said, “I’ve never seen another case where an individual may have molested this many children over such a long period of time.”
According to the FBI, Vahey worked at schools in Nicaragua, the UK, Venezuela, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Greece, two stints in Iran, Spain, and Lebanon. Before that, Vahey was jailed for child sex offenses in California in 1969. Somehow that never came up in the background checks.
One of Vahey’s employers was Southbank International School in London, where Sir Chris Woodhead is chair of governors.
“Our two priorities now are to communicate as much information as we have as quickly as we can,” said Sir Chris, “And to help the police as much as we can in what is now an international police inquiry into the activities of this man.”