LAHORE - The 50-year-old tutor arrested Wednesday for raping and filming young Lahore schoolgirls last night told The Nation he had abused them for “sex education”. In an exclusive interview at Green Town police station, Hussein Ahmed Khan confessed he had sexually assaulted as many as 20 young girls over a six-year period, – all the victims are under 13.

Detectives raided his home and found more than 30 films and photographs showing the tutor raping girls as young as ten. In one clip, the tutor could be seen in the nude sexually assaulting a naked victim. Another video showed him dancing with a 10-year-old girl. 

Detectives are now widening their investigation after Hussein admitted he had abused girls in several academies he had worked at throughout Lahore in the last six years. In a break from a police interrogation, he spoke to The Nation of his disgrace and regret. 

He “felt shame,” he said, and “should have not committed this crime. I am sorry.”

“I think there were some ten to 20 girls, my students with whom I had relationships. I have been teaching students for many years,” he added.  He denied, however, that he had raped any of his victims. “I just tried to educate the children about sex. I performed many sexual acts with the students on camera but did not rape them,” he confessed. 

His claim was rejected by detectives who said he can be seen raping a young pupil in one of the videos.

The clips, photographs and other evidence from his home academy have been sealed and will be produced as evidence at his trial. Police have now secured the clips to stop them being sold or uploaded to child porn websites, detectives said. The father of one of the victims said the tutor had tried to blackmail him when he confronted him with his daughter’s allegations. 

“My daughter was terrified and upset as she returned from the tuition centre. She said she would never go back to the academy. She told us of her agony after we assured her of all-out help,” he said.

“When we approached him to record our protest, the tutor demanded money and threatened to upload clips on the Internet material on the internet if the police were informed,” he added. Police said the accused had used the clips to blackmail his victims and force them to bring other girls to his academy. 

“Once he had threatened a girl to bring her 11-year-old friend at his academy otherwise he would upload her clips on the websites,” one investigator said. Police said the accused, who is a science graduate, had been running a private academy at a rented home for the past two and a half years. His wife left him some years ago. 

“He had been running such academies in different parts of Lahore for the last six years,” SP Marwat said. The accused has been handed over to the investigation cell for further inquiries. According to their report, the neighbourhood surrounding the home where he ran his private academy has been gripped by fear and terror has since the abuse emerged and anxious parents have removed their children from schools and private education academies. “The children are scared and terrified because of the tutor’s actions. They need psychological treatment and rehabilitation,” the police report said. 

The arrest of Hussein Ahmed Khan and the discovery of his large collection of child abuse videos emerged barely two weeks after more than 280 children were found to have been drugged, raped, and beaten by a child porn gang in Kasur, 60 kilometres from Lahore in north Punjab. Police in Kasur faced nationwide condemnation when it emerged that the abuse had continued for more than eight years without any action taken against the gang.

There is no evidence to link the two scandals but the number of film clips involved and the tutor’s access to “dozens” of young girls at his academy suggests the scale of abuse may be far bigger.