Childrens home closed after abuse

THOOTHUKUDI: A children’s home near Nazareth in the district was closed by the Social Welfare Department on Thursday, after some inmates complained to the officials that they were molested by the administrator.Little Angels’ Children Home, registered under the Social Welfare Department and functioning at Mookuperi near Nazareth, had 34 inmates, of which 13 were boys and 21 girls and were aged between 6 and 17. Most of them were from poor families and hailed from Thoothukudi, Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli and Dharmapuri districts, District Social Welfare Officer Muthu Nayagam told Express.Sathankulam DSP R Rajagopal said that a 12-year-old girl from MGR Nagar in Thoothukudi, an inmate of the home, had told her parents that the home administrator, Stephen Joseph (57), had been sexually harassing her. Following this, her father Rajan visited the Home on Wednesday and confronted Joseph. A verbal altercation followed and Rajan hit Joseph with an iron rod. A badly-injured Joseph was admitted to a hospital and on a complaint from him, the Nazareth police registered an FIR and arrested Rajan.Meanwhile, other girls of the Home, with the help of a nun, complained to the District Social Welfare Officer that they had been sexual harassed by Joseph. On a complaint from the district social welfare officer, police registered an FIR and arrested Joseph. It is learnt that Joseph had separated from his wife, a government nurse. “Stephen used to molest the girls in the Home by threatening them,” he said.“Prior to this incident, we had visited the Home several times, but the girls never said anything about the harassment,” said an official of the Social Welfare Department.