SINGAPORE: Australian paedophile Boris Kunsevitsky’s sexual abuse of five children in Singapore went undetected for more than 15 years until Australian police found a folder in his computer called “Jailbait”.
When investigators opened Jailbait, they found videos and images of Kunsevitsky having sex with children in his Singapore home, as well as subfolders that related to his victims’ names, according to court documents seen by CNA.
Jailbait is an informal word for someone who is perceived by some to be sexually attractive, but younger than the legal age of consent for sex.
The five victims in Singapore make up part of the 47 children Kunsevitsky has admitted to abusing over a period of 16 years. Kunsevitsky, 53, pleaded guilty in a Melbourne court last week.
The victims, aged between 10 and 17 years old, were in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia at the time of the offences.
He is facing 59 charges relating to child sexual abuse, including having sex with a child, making child pornography material, inducing a child to have sex with another child, persistent sexual abuse of a child, and importing child pornography.
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SINGAPORE VICTIMS ABUSED ON 3 OCCASIONS
Kunsevitsky sexually abused his five victims in Singapore on three occasions, prosecution court documents show.
The crimes between August 2002 and August 2003 in Singapore were among the first offences Kunsevitsky committed.
The Russian native, who moved to Australia with his family when he was a child, was living in Singapore at the time of most of his offences, the court heard.
He was employed by Singapore beauty firm Esthemedica, where he was a director. The company told CNA after he pleaded guilty that it had not known about his crimes.
Prosecutor Krista Breckweg told the court that “victim one” was a child residing in Singapore at the time of the offences.
Kunsevitsky had sex with “victim one” between September 2002 and August 2003, the court heard.
“The offender took a series of 17 photographs of a young male, known as (redacted), who was aged approximately 12 to 14 years old, and this was at the offender’s home,” Ms Breckweg said.
Some of the images showed Kunsevitsky having sex with the boy, the prosecutor added.
In November 2002, while living in Singapore, Kunsevitsky took another 28 photographs of a boy. These images included himself committing sodomy and the boy performing oral sex on him.
Between 2001 and 2003, he also had sex with children in four countries, namely Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, and photographed those incidents.
The crimes went undetected and he continued abusing children and producing child pornography material until he was caught in 2017. On at least one occasion, he showed those pictures and videos to other children he also abused.
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Singapore-based Australian Boris Kunsevitsky, 53, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court of Victoria to sexually abusing dozens of children. (Photo: Esthemedica)
The Singapore Police Force said they are working with Australian authorities on the Singapore cases.
In a statement on May 24, they clarified that no police report had been lodged by any person in Singapore against Kunsevitsky and therefore, no investigations were initiated.
“Prior to his arrest in Australia in September 2017, the police had also not been informed by the Australian authorities that Boris was wanted by them, or that he was involved in any crime,” the force said.
CHILDREN ABUSED IN THE PHILIPPINES, INDONESIA
The court was told that most of Kunsevitsky’s crimes were against children in the Philippines – and one in Indonesia – and that he flew out of his base in Singapore to commit the offences.
“The offender was a prolific traveller. In his police interview, he explained that he travelled extensively for work,” Ms Breckweg said.
“Some of his offending occurred in Singapore, where he was based for most of the charged periods (January 2001 to September 2017).
“He also travelled regularly to the Philippines and to Indonesia, with most of the offending occurring in the Philippines. Often his trips to these Asian countries were brief and the arrival date coincided with the commencement of the offending.”
The court was told of how Kunsevitsky groomed his victims to perform sex acts on him and other children.
He would record these acts, which included himself having sex with children, and keep those videos in his hard drives.
One of those videos exceeded 35 minutes, the prosecution said, and some of them included persistent abuse of the same child.
Ms Breckweg also laid out how Kunsevitsky abused a 12-year-old boy in Indonesia. Images retrieved from his computer showed the victim sitting and eating McDonald’s takeaway food before he performed a sex act on Kunsevitsky. This boy was repeatedly abused over four months.
EXPOSED BY HIS OWN IMAGES
The first hint of Kunsevitsky’s crimes was in 2007, when German police identified 55 child pornography images of an Australian boy who had been groomed and abused by Kunsevitsky.
Of the images found, 49 were titled Aussie01jpeg to Aussie 39jpeg and had been shared on Microsoft Office Groove.
In 2008, German police referred the investigation to Australian authorities.
The boy was identified by Australian police in 2016 and an arrest warrant was issued for Kunsevitsky, but it could not be executed immediately because he was working in Singapore at the time, the court was told.
Singapore-based Australian Boris Kunsevitsky, 53, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court of Victoria to sexually abusing dozens of children. (Photo: Facebook/thammyquoctebally)
KUNSEVITSKY BEFRIENDED VICTIM IN TEEN CHATROOM
The court was also told how Kunsevitsky had befriended the Australian boy by posing as a 19-year-old on a “teen chatroom” in 2004.
Their chats grew to become sexual in nature, and Kunsevitsky asked to speak to the boy, who was 13 years old at the time, on a webcam to confirm he “wasn’t a cop”.
Kunsevitsky later picked the boy up from his home and drove to a friend’s house, where he put on child pornography on TV, including pictures of his abuse of Asian children.
He also had sex with the boy in his parents-in-law’s house, filming the encounter. Between the period of January 2004 and October 2005, he committed several sex acts with the Australian boy after grooming him.
Kunsevitsky was finally arrested on Sep 4, 2017, when he returned to Australia.
During the years between when the case was first referred from Germany to the day of his arrest, Kunsevitsky continued to abuse children around Southeast Asia.
When Australian authorities shipped over his belongings from Singapore, they found hard drives with more than 31,000 images and 4,550 videos detailing the abuse.
Some were more than 40 minutes long, the court was told, and involved the most serious kinds of child sexual abuse.
It also included pictures and videos of child pornography that he downloaded from other Internet users.
READ: Singapore-based Australian paedophile filmed himself sexually abusing dozens of children
When he was arrested, Kunsevitsky was found with a mobile phone that contained images of him engaged in sexual activity with a child.
When the police questioned him, Kunsevitsky claimed that he “helps with a couple of families and their children informally” and that he allowed the children to “hang out” at his hotel.
He claimed that the children were “slapping each other” in the hotel shower and that they had used his phone to take videos of each other. Kunsevitsky told the police he also deleted a photo taken by one of the children when he was asleep.
“He said he did not get aroused looking at the photos, he’s disinterested in any sort of pornography, and he has never engaged in any sex acts with children in or out of Australia,” the prosecutor said.
Kunsevitsky, who was diagnosed with paedophiliac disorder after he was arrested, has been remanded in custody and will be sentenced at a later date.
