English teacher locked up for 30 years

A former English teacher in Shanghai has been sentenced in US federal court to 30 years in prison for molesting children in Shanghai and the US, and making child pornography.

The defendant, Hector Orjuela Jr, 47, from the US, pleaded guilty in October 2013 to two counts of engaging in and attempting to engage in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place, according to a press release from the US Department of Justice. He was also charged with one count of producing child pornography.

Orjuela admitted to molesting two girls and attempting to molest a third last year in Shanghai and the state of Maryland, the press release said. All three girls were under the age of 12.

The defendant was deported to the US in December 2012 after accusations surfaced that he had molested young girls, according to a report in the South China Morning Post. Prior to his deportation, Orjuela had spent years teaching at international schools in Shanghai.

In July 2012, Orjuela traveled to Maryland, where he molested a girl and produced a piece of child pornography, according to the press release. The Department of Justice did not disclose how he met his victim.

The next month, he returned to Shanghai to molest a girl and attempted to molest another. He traveled back and forth between Shanghai and Maryland in November, continuing to molest the two girls.

Orjuela had been working at the German School in Shanghai until he was dismissed in the autumn of 2012 due to accusations that he molested a 5-year-old girl, the report said.

The girl and her twin sister were not students at the school, according to a past report in the South China Morning Post.

Another American teacher, David D McMahon, a former colleague and friend of Orjuela, was also taken away by Shanghai police last June.

McMahon has been accused of molesting four girls and two boys at the Pudong campus of the Lycée Francais de Shanghai, local police said. He took the children separately to the library and out-of-the-way parts of the school under the pretext that he wanted to check their homework.

The French and German schools share a campus, and Orjuela and McMahon taught at both schools, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.