Pillar of Jewish community jailed for ‘despicable’ child sex acts

By Matei Clej, reporting from Harrow Crown Court 

Convicted paedophile Simeon Osen, 53, of Chigwell, was sentenced to five years and 11 months’ prison yesterday at Harrow Crown Court after admitting 13 counts of arranging and facilitating child sex offences.

Osen, who is a prominent figure in the Essex Jewish community, is the former CEO of Ronacrete, a family-run construction company, and known as a key benefactor of Chabad in Buckhurst Hill. 

During the course of 2012, he arranged live sex shows with underage girls in the Philippines over Skype.

The charges arising from Osen’s internet activities are the result of an investigation which saw him convicted in 2013 of multiple child sex offences. These included four counts of engaging in sexual activity with a girl between the ages of 13 and 17.

To protestations from the girl’s family, Osen received a suspended sentence on that occasion. They referred the sentence to the Attorney General for its leniency however, without success.

The same family members of the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were in court yesterday. 

Rhiannon Sadler, for the prosecution, told the court how laptops belonging to Osen were found to contain 41,000 chat messages revealing how he procured young Philipino girls to be sexually abused live on Skype.

In explicit video footage recovered, Osen directed prepubescent girls aged 11, 12 and 13, to expose themselves.

Payments totalling £5,880, made to people involved in child exploitation in the Philippines, were traced back to Osen’s bank account. 

Osen’s solicitor, Mitchell Cohen, conceded the ‘despicable and disgusting’ nature of the acts. In a letter to the judge, Osen expressed remorse towards the girl he abused in person, and also to the foreign children who suffered as a result of his online offending.  

In sentencing, Judge Martyn Barklem said, ‘These children were several thousand miles away but they were not objects to be used as though they were dolls to act out fantasies for your sexual gratification. They were real children, real people.’

‘No right-thinking member of society can look at the behavior reflected in this indictment other than with complete revulsion.’

Putting Osen’s deeds in the highest sentencing category, the judge remarked on Osen’s complicity with others in targeting vulnerable children in a poor country, his age compared to that of his victims and the fact that such explicit act were involved. 

For his early guilty plea, the Judge gave Osen five years and 11 months in custody, with 51 further days deducted to account for time spent on curfew.

Osen is also barred for life from accessing the internet on a device that does not retain a record of all web activity. He is already on the Sex Offenders’ Register indefinitely, and is banned from having unsupervised contact with young girls. 

Speaking after the sentencing, a victim’s family member who did not wish to be named  said: ‘We’re satisfied that justice has been done, but we are disappointed at the low sentence. We were expecting seven to eight years and in reality he’ll be out in half the time.’

She added: ‘We’re satisfied that no child is going to have to suffer as the children that he’s abused, whether it’s here, in person, or over the internet. Hopefully it’s one less evil man on the streets.’ 

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