A verdict can be expected this October in the child sexual abuse case that was unveiled in 2017 in Tápióság. The website elemi.hu tried to interview the families of the victims, but they declined, not wanting to open recently healed wounds and afraid of the perpetrator’s revenge. A friend of one of the families, however, was willing to tell what had happened since the cases came to light in the summer of 2017.

How it all came to light

It was three years ago: a 9-year-old girl was visiting her uncle in Tápióság. She was playing with the neighboring girls when her roller skates broke. The other children told her to take them to Uncle Sanyi, he must be able to mend them. She took the roller skates to the elderly man, the other girls stayed outside. The man, while mending the roller skates, started talking about sex. The girl sensed that something was wrong, she tried to leave the house, but Sándor Sz. put his hand into her panties. The shocked child instinctively shouted: “Leave me alone, you old faggot!” The man, surprised at such an assertive response, told her to get out immediately, which she did. In the street she told the others what had happened, to which they reacted: yes, he had done the same thing to them several times. In the evening the girl called her mother and told her everything.

The first shock was followed by filing a police report. It soon transpired that at least 6 girls had been sexually harassed, the youngest around 7 years old. Two of the families were close neighbors to Sándor Sz., in one he often babysat for the children, as he is the ex-father-in-law of the mother’s life partner.

The police told the parents that it was lucky the whole thing came to light, as later the perpetrator might even have raped the children, who were afraid to talk. It was also “lucky” that there were several victims; one single girl would have stood no chance of proving her case.

How it affected the victims

After being reported to the police, it took two weeks for the perpetrator to be taken away. The parents inquired almost daily how long they would have to live next door to the abuser of their daughters. The police eventually took Sándor Sz., perhaps because they received a hint that he was about to go away.

When the papers started writing about the story, the parents showed the articles to their children. One girl denied what happened, but three others called her a liar. It transpired that the child did not tell the truth because Uncle Sanyi had threatened to beat her up if she did. This was the reason they had not talked about this before.

The case left a lasting mark in the victims. The one who unveiled the perpetrator blames herself for what happened. Another one pushes boys away, though she is unsure of her sexual orientation, she is probably bisexual. The victim who lived next door to the child abuser was no longer able to stay in the village, she moved to Budapest to her relatives.

Yet another victim developed serious behavioral problems at school, getting into fights. The other children tortured and bullied her so much that she often went home crying. The boys kept asking her if she had been fucked, and others blamed her for having been raped, which increased her sense of shame. Especially the children tortured the victims – no wonder several of them moved away with their family or changed their school.

The events took a toll on the families as well. In one case, the parents’ marriage broke up as a result of the crime against their child. A mother was so affected by what had happened to her daughter that she developed panic attacks and could hardly get out of bed, let alone do chores around the house; she only got better when they moved away.

None of the children got any psychological help. The parents themselves, helpless and also deeply affected by the tragedy, tried to find support for their daughters.

 Trials and house arrest

The first forensic examination established that the children were telling the truth – but the parents have still not seen the text of this report, so they do not know what exactly happened to their daughters in Sándor Sz’s house. Two years after this, the judge ordered a second forensic examination, though formerly the parents had been promised that their children would not have to repeat the story of their humiliations. The parents have not seen this forensic report either, all they know is that it supports the defendant’s claim that he never molested the children.

The trials brought shocking results. On one of them a woman appeared who said she was the daughter of Sándor Sz’s former partner, Sándor Sz. had raped her and got her pregnant. At the latest trial, a witness statement of one of Sándor Sz’s friends was read out, who said the defendant had shown him pictures of naked children on his phone. The defendant himself admitted at one of the trials that a girl only visited him so he could “do it again” – but shockingly, this was not considered as admitting guilt.

Last November the court terminated Sándor Sz’s pre-trial detention and he could go home – possibly because he has several relatives working for the police. Since then he has been allowed to leave his home every week. Officially he is under house arrest and electronically tagged, but he often “forgets” to charge his tagging device and thus “disappears”. For a while, the parents of the victims tried to document his breaches of house arrest with photos that they submitted to the local police, but to no avail.

The perpetrator’s revenge

After Elemi.hu published the fact that the defendant had been set free, he reported the portal and the parents to the police for publishing personal data. No action followed, which the defendant was rather upset about at the trial.

Two years ago, a man who had been in prison with the defendant also reported the parents, claiming that they endanger their children, make them beg in the street, so the Guardianship Authority should remove them from their homes. The report included all the children’s personal data.

One of the mothers have been contacted on Facebook by a man called Béla Kis (a rather common name in Hungary), asking about her daughter and about when he could perform cunnilingus on her. The mother wanted to report him to the police, but she was told nothing would happen.

Blaming the victims

Several locals who know Sándor Sz. and his family claim that sexual harassment runs in his family: his father had abused children too, and his son-in-law told one of the mothers, his that-time partner: he wished it had been him who did it to her daughter but Sándor Sz. Several people said everyone knew the kind of family it was, implicitly blaming the mothers for trusting a well-known child abuser with their daughters and suggesting they were bad parents. So instead of being rejected, the sex offender is a full member of the community, while the parents still have not gotten over what happened to their children.