Former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has revealed why he nominated the paedophile director of the children’s home in Bicske for a high state honour.
Péter Magyar, Hungary’s prime minister, today published a document proving that the director was nominated for the award in a submission bearing Orbán’s signature. Proceedings had already been brought against him in 2011, yet the nomination went ahead on the recommendation of Zoltán Balog, then minister for human resources.
Orbán brushes off question
Asked today in Kötcse why he had nominated the director of the Bicske children’s home in 2016 – he has since been convicted of paedophile offences – Orbán replied that someone had put his name forward and that the press should ask the person responsible.
Magyar had earlier published the nomination document, which bears the name of Orbán, who was prime minister at the time, as the signatory. It said the director deserved the honour for his work educating disadvantaged children and preparing them for independent lives.
If you missed – Sexual abuse, starvation, squalor and accident hazards: Orbán’s government concealed the reality of Hungary’s children’s homes
The scandal surrounding János Vásárhelyi erupted in 2016, after a former resident of the Bicske children’s home took his own life, having grown tired of nobody believing him. Vásárhelyi was convicted in 2019, but the first official complaint and police investigation against him dated back to 2011, after two employees of the home reported that several children had accused him of sexually abusing them. Police closed the investigation in 2012, citing a lack of evidence.
Nomination came from Zoltán Balog
“It was the same Zoltán Balog who recommended the paedophile director of the Bicske children’s home for a state honour to Viktor Orbán, and who later secured a presidential pardon from Katalin Novák for Endre Kónya, an accomplice in the paedophile abuse,” Magyar wrote on Facebook on Saturday.
Paedophile Hungarian director to be released from prison: one abuse victim died by suicide
Balog’s name keeps recurring again and again in this case. One has to wonder what was his personal motivation in securing an honour and then a pardon.