The Dutch national who was arrested last week in Virac for overstaying in the country is reportedly facing criminal charges for pedophilia in Davao City and his home country.
A reliable source told the Tribune that Jan Cornelis Stuurman, 71, fled to Catanduanes after one such case was allegedly filed in a Davao City court.
It is claimed that he operated a website he used as a platform to sell photos of naked boys.
He reportedly stayed for three years in a barangay about 10 kilometers from the población before moving to a boarding house in Calatagan Tibang sometime ago and befriended boys between the age of 10 to 12.
A barangay official said that the Dutchman gave the children food and sometimes gave them a cake and brought them to a fastfood outlet during their birthdays.
He allegedly asked the kids to sleep over in his room, the official claimed.
Last Oct. 14, 2022, elements of the Bureau of Immigration headed by Immigration Officer II Adelmo Rubio Jr., officer-in-charge of the Fugitive Search Unit, together with operatives of the Regional Special Operations Unit-Regional Intelligence Division5 (RSOU-RID5), the Catanduanes Provincial Intelligence Unit (CATPIU), the Catanduanes 1st Provincial Mobile Force Company (PMFC) at Virac Municipal Police Station (MPS) raided the Dutchman’s refuge, a boarding house about 10 meters from Real St.
The apprehension was covered by Mission Order No. 2022-014 issued by BI Commissioner Norman Tansingco.
According to IO II Warren Kristoffer Berjuega, Stuurman has been moving from one safe house to another over the last six years, eluding immigration officers who had been looking for him.
He was escorted by the BI agents to Manila for deportation proceedings the following morning after being booked and detained at the police station during the night.
The Tribune source claimed that his arrest was based on a deportation case filed against him in July 2016 by a Dutch citizen who apparently accused him of engaging in pedophilia in the Philippines.
On the same day the complaint was filed, a memorandum was sent to then OIC-Intelligence Division Chief, Gen. Charles Calima Jr. requesting for the issuance of a Mission Order against Stuurman.
(It may be recalled that during his stint as Catanduanes police provincial director, Calima was injured in an ambush when the car he was driving, with a Municipal Trial Court judge and the Comelec provincial director as passengers, was fired upon by New People’s Army guerillas in San Andres town.)
Just a week later, the Office of the Provincial Prosecutor in Davao filed criminal charges against Stuurman for the sexual exploitation of three Filipino minor children of ages 9, 11 and 13 years in violation of Republic Act 9208 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003, as amended by RA 10364 (Expanded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2012), RA 7610 (Special Protection of Children Against Abuse, Exploitation and Discrimination Act) and RA 9775 (Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009).
Subsequently, then Department of Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre issued a memorandum to include Stuurman in the Bureau’s Lookout Bulletin.
Two months later, the immigration bureau ordered the inclusion of the respondent’s name in the BUI Watch List for being an undesirable alien.
In Virac where he hid to escape arrest in Davao, Stuurman apparently assumed another identity as one “Jim Brown”, the name he used when he rented a room at the boarding house owned by Arlene Reyes along Real St. in Calatagan Tibang.
Among the 19 items seized by the police during the Oct. 14, 2022 search of the room was a travelling box marked with the address “Sto. Cristo St., Virac, Catanduanes.”
Also confiscated as evidence were six boxes of portable hard disk drives, two other portable HDDs, a Nikon DLSR camera with three lenses, a gaming laptop with accessories, a portable speaker, two spy cameras and five small plastic boxes containing pink round granules suspected to be chemical-based stimulants.
A subsequent inquiry by barangay officials of Stuurman’s activities in his room where some of the boys he befriended slept over did not uncover any untoward incident.
The boys reportedly said nothing was done to them by the foreigner while they were asleep.