This story is frightening and almost impossible to believe, but it’s true. It concerns a little girl, then just three years old, who was allegedly abused by a ring of paedophiles with high positions in the Lithuanian government and the police.
The girl’s father tried fighting for justice the legal way – by going to the police, contacting child services, going to state prosecutors – to no avail, the Lithuanian authorities rejecting his accusations. Then he went public, and his story captured the public’s imagination, stirring much resentment toward the country’s elites.
It started in 2007 when Drasius Kedys discovered that his daughter – only known by the initial D – had been sexually abused by three persons on a number of occasions during the time she was in the care of her mother Laimute Stankunaite.
Kedys started proceedings against Stankunaite in order to gain custody of his daughter. He also videoed the girl as she explained in detail how the alleged abuse occurred. Her testimony led him to three names: Judge Jonas Furmanavicius, businessman Andrius Osas and a third person named Aidis.
Kedys tried to press charges against Furmanavicius and Osas, but his claims were rejected several times. Yet he maintained that he would fight for his daughter by all possible legal means – starting with making his evidence public. That was the only way to stop the paedophiles, he said.
On 5 October 2009 the story took a shocking turn when Judge Furmanavicius and Violeta Naruševiciene, sister of Laimute, were found murdered. Drasius Kedys disappeared that same morning.
His personal gun was found beside Violeta Naruševiciene’s body, though it had not been fired. Experts confirmed that Furmanavicius and Naruševiciene were shot with a different gun. Nevertheless, Kedys was the main suspect.
His story came to an end on 17 April last, when his body was discovered near a lake in his hometown Kaunas. Another gun was found beside him, which experts declared was the murder weapon.
But police did not initially contact Kedys’ relatives, claiming they “did not recognise that the body found was of Drasius Kedys”. Instead they invited Laimute Stankunaite to recognise the body, which was only identified by dental records.
Lithuanian authorities later conducted an official examination; no independent experts were allowed. The official take on his death was that he had choked and frozen to death on his own in the woods. He was also found in an ‘angel pose’, hands crossed on his chest with the body laying face down.
Later private and independent experts confirmed that the death of Kedys was caused by violence. His shoes were clean despite the fact that the place where the body was found is a swamp. But the authorities have rejected this evidence.
A remarkable 5,000 people attended his funeral on 24 April, showing their support for a father who they see as having sacrificed his own life in his fight against paedophiles.
Since then, their attentions have turned to the care of Kedys’ young daughter, who was put in the custody of her mother Stankunaite despite an open case against Osas, who is known to have connections with her. The judge in this decision apparently paid no attention to this fact, nor accusations that Stankunaite made an income by selling her daughter to paedophiles.
People have even taken to gathering around the Kedys home – where the girl is under the care of Kedys’ sister Neringa Venckiene – to prevent her return to Stankunaite. They fear that she will be persuaded to recant her statements and that justice will not be served.
The Lithuanian nation has been highly confused, scared and disgusted by these events. Many now feel that the only way to fight for their children’s safety is to fight with bare hands and risk their lives. Their calls of protest are not just for Kedys’ little girl, but against all corruption in Lithuania.
Drasius Kedys is now in all of our hearts. He has become a national hero, one who fought for what was right and died for what he believed in.
It’s much more than can be said for those who run the country in the eyes of most Lithuanians.
Greta Braždžionyte is a Lithuanian living in Dublin
