LL Camps paedophile ‘abused 36 children in Madrid school after changing name’
Ben Lewis, who co-ran LL Camps in Bushey, was convicted in the UK in 2016 and is now accused of further offences in Spain.
Police in Spain have alleged that a paedophile convicted in the UK abused 36 children in Madrid after changing his identity to work as a teacher.
Ben Lewis, co-founder of LL Camps in Bushey, was handed a two-year prison sentence in 2016 after naked images of three and four-year-old girls were discovered on his mobile phone.
He is now alleged to have faked documentation to work in a school in Madrid, where it is claimed he abused children aged between four and eight. Although a Spanish police statement did not name Lewis, officials said the suspect was previously “sentenced in his country of origin to a two-year prison sentence for possession of images of child sexual exploitation”.
Spain’s National Police said the suspect had falsified documents which would have revealed a history of child abuse and changed his name to gain employment.
This allowed the suspect to take advantage of his status as a teacher in order to “generate an enormous amount of material that he disseminated in hidden paedophile-themed forums” on the dark web, said officials.
An inquiry was opened last year into the alleged offences when Australian detectives notified Spanish officials that a network of paedophile material could be based in Spain.
An operation was launched to trace the suspect. Police say the material led them to believe that the offender was working in a Madrid school, and that the images were taken on a phone that used an English operating system.
After identifying the school, officials ran background checks on all those who worked there and discovered that one of them appeared to have falsified documents to allow him to work with children.
Lewis is also alleged to have worked as a caregiver for children at home. His home was raided, where officials say they found abuse material on 10 different devices.
According to reports in the Spanish press, Lewis is now in El Soto prison, outside Madrid, awaiting trial.
The news comes after it was revealed last month that Lewis was facing an investigation in the country, having allegedly changed his name to Ben David.