Paris -
A 75-year-old French humanitarian worker goes on trial on Friday in Paris, accused of raping three deaf boys in Indonesia between 1997 and 2004, a charge he denies.
Gerard Carayon, a longtime resident of the Javanese capital Yogyakarta headed a non-governmental organisation which helped children in distress, including some who worked at his house.
In 2004, a French diplomat in Jakarta alerted Indonesian police about suspicions that Carayon was sexually abusing children in his house or at a hotel.
A probe was launched and the boys told an Indonesian teacher they had been raped or abused and sometimes given money in exchange for sex.
Carayon was arrested at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport in 2008 while returning from Cambodia. He was released after 18 months in detention in March 2010 under a judicial review but disappeared, sparking an arrest warrant.
He was then arrested in August and detained again.
Suspected child abuse offenders are being increasingly judged in their own countries for offences committed abroad following changes in legislation in nearly 40 countries. - Sapa-AFP