Beauty pageant organiser arrested for sexually abusing contestants
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The organiser of Miss Rwanda beauty pageant has been arrested on allegations of sexually abusing contestants, the authorities have said.
The arrest of Dieudonné Ishimwe, the chief executive of Rwanda Inspiration Back Up, the company that organises the contest, comes just a month after this year’s edition.
Mr Ishimwe has not responded to the accusations against him.
The Miss Rwanda pageant is one of the most followed events in Rwanda.
An employee of the organising company told the BBC that four girls who contested last year and in this year’s edition had made complaints to investigators before his arrest.
“While the case was still under investigation, he was arrested on Monday”, she told the BBC under a condition of anonymity.
A state investigator is quoted by local media as saying that Mr Ishimwe “is suspected of sexual abuse charges towards Miss Rwanda contestants on different occasions”.
Leading one to sex acts “by force, threats, trickery or by use of authority over that person” is punishable by up to 15 years in prison in Rwanda.
The spokesperson of Rwanda Inspiration Back Up, who is the winner of Miss Rwanda 2019, resigned last week.
-BBC
ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson
[email protected] An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.
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