Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban on Friday vowed severe retribution against anyone deemed accusing his government of having engaged in a coverup of sexual abuse and trafficking at a state-run children’s home in Budapest by its hardcore pro-Orban director, Bloomberg reports.
The scandal last year felled Hungary’s President Katalin Novak (Orban’s official title is Prime Minister), who resigned after news broke that she had quietly in April 2023 pardoned Endre Konya, the former deputy director of a state-run children’s home who had been convicted and had by then already served his three years in the clink for covering up director Janos Vasarheyli abuses and pimping out of girls. Thus it wasn’t a commutation but that Konya he had pressured the victims to retract their valid accusations against Vasarheyli – who was sentenced to eight years and is due out in 2026/2027 – makes him definitely not the type of offender who should ever have been pardoned.
Yes, hint fucking hint to Orban’s buddy in the White House and his friend Ghislaine, but back to Budapest where the scandal did not die with Novak’s political career and has now reached Orban’s top lieutenant Zsolt Semjen. Bloomberg’s reporting does not include any specifics of how Semjen was connected and whether it was just the pardon or something worse. What the article does make clear is that this is apparently a source of legitimate panic for Orban and Fidesz’s multi-decade grip on power with elections coming up next year and opposition Tisza party led by former Orban acolyte Pete Magyar surging ahead in the polls. Two have already been arrested over what the regime calls a “foreign meddling” operation to propagate the accusations of Semjen’s involvement in the sex trafficking ring – at least one victim of which is publicly known to have committed suicide.
“Every member of the cabinet is innocent,” Orban told state radio Friday, adding “Pedophilia is the most serious crime there is. If someone accuses another of pedophilia without evidence or facts, that is a severe crime in and of itself.” Well at least he’s not calling the sex trafficking ring a hoax.
Magyar still saw right through the act and pointed out that even when it’s a bad look for the regime they’re still going to use it to justify further repression. Why not, right? “The government’s communication has betrayed that they are in panic,” Magyar wrote on his Facebook page.