Amsterdam pedophile gets life in Philippine prison

A 70-year-old convicted pedophile from Amsterdam was sentenced to life in prison on the Philippines. There he was convicted for sexually abusing his stepdaughters, age 10 and 14 years, the Amsterdam police announced on Facebook.

Joep M. was arrested on the Philippines in September 2015, after a tip from Amsterdam sex crime detectives. He was convicted and sentenced in April of this year.

In 2006 M. was convicted in the Netherlands for sexually abusing multiple mentally and physically disabled children in Amsterdam-Noord. After being released in 2008, he tried to open a child care institution, but the Dutch police managed to prevent it. Two Amsterdam sex crime detectives continued to monitor M., because they feared for recidivism, until he disappeared in 2010.

In 2012 the Dutch police tracked him down, via a face-to-face ad in which M. was looking for a Philippine woman of around 25 years old, preferably with children. He wanted to open an orphanage with this woman. At around the same time, a tip led the Dutch police to a website on which M. offered services as the leader of a daycare. "Joep and defenseless children, you understand why alarm bells went off with the detectives", the police wrote on Facebook.

"Doing nothing was of course not an option for us", one of the two sex crime detectives said. They passed on the information they had to the Philippine authorities, leading to M.'s arrest and trial. The detectives are very pleased with the verdict. "Wherever in the world, in collaboration we do the best we can so that men like Joep M. do not escape the dance", the second detective said.