Roland Flath, 72, the US national who was busted in June 2010 in Copper Bank Village, Corozal, by Belize police, allegedly with pornographic materials on a laptop and desktop computer, and who had been accused of having sexual relations with a Belizean minor from the time she was 10 years old, until she was 14, had pleaded guilty in a US court to sexual exploitation of a Belizean minor, according to a release on Wednesday, May 9, by the US Department of Justice.
The report said that Flath, who pleaded guilty in Milwaukee, faces a maximum penalty of up to 30 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Flath had admitted to “traveling in foreign commerce and engaging in and attempting to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor…” less than 18 years of age.
The US DOJ, said, in its press release Wednesday that the Flath case in the US “…was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice.”
“According to court documents, Flath, of Fond du Lac, Wis., traveled to Belize in July 2006, and subsequently sexually molested a minor girl from Belize,” said the US DOJ release.
US authorities had announced his indictment on March 22, 2011, by a grand jury sitting in the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
Amandala readers will recall that on June 19, 2010, Belize police had reported that Flath had been charged with the crime of aggravated assault of the minor in the Corozal District, who would now be 16.
Police had said that “a 14-year-old female student, in the presence of her mother … stated that in 2007, when she was 10 years old, she had gone to the Flath’s residence where Roland Flath invited her in his house and showed her a book of nude pictures and asked her if she wanted to do what she saw. She said ‘no’.”
Police added that, according to the child, “…Roland then took off her blouse and told her that she was pretty. Her friend came by and Roland gave her $20.”
According to the girl, she had visited Flath 30 to 35 times over the next four years.
“During the visits, she normally performed oral sex on him and other sexual acts,” police said the minor told them.
That was June 2010 in Belize, and in October 2010, Flath was also charged by a criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of Wisconsin. He was not arrested on the US indictment at the time, but four months later, Guatemala police caught up with him in that jurisdiction.
US authorities say Flath, who had been bailed on the Belize charge, was arrested by the Guatemalan National Civil Police on February 20, 2011, and expelled to the US.
On February 24, 2011, Kevin A. Carr, United States Marshal for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, announced Flath’s arrest in Gualan in Guatemala, beyond that country’s southern border with Belize (see map).
“The US Marshals, the US Department of State, and the Department of Homeland Security worked closely with Belizean and Guatemalan Immigration agents over the past several months. Flath was expelled by Guatemalan Immigration officials, and arrested by Deputy US Marshals once he arrived in Houston, Texas,” the report added.
In one of the most serious child sexual exploitation cases in recent memory reported from the Belize jurisdiction, Cedric Casimiro, 42, was sentenced in April 2011 to a total of 75 years for unlawful carnal knowledge of an 8-year-old girl, a charge which could carry up to a life sentence, when he was sentenced by Justice John “Troadio” Gonzalez in Dangriga.
In the Casimiro case, he was accused of molesting the child at her home in the Stann Creek District between January 2007 and March 2008 and faced six counts of carnal knowledge and one of unnatural crime.
So will Belizean authorities still prosecute Flath on separate charges, despite his US conviction? Director of Public Prosecutions in Belize, Cheryl-Lynn Vidal, told Amandala this evening that Flath had been granted bail in 2010, notwithstanding he is a foreigner, and Flath absconded before the case could come to trial. The matter is in abeyance and he still has a case to answer here in Belize, Vidal added.