A British man arrested in France for staging a wedding to a nine-year-old girl at Disneyland Paris is a known predatory paedophile who is on the run from UK justice, it emerged today.
The 39-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was on Tuesday charged with various imprisonable offences.
Park staff were shocked to see him with a Ukrainian child, along with her family and around 100 guests, on Saturday as they turned up for a ‘pretend wedding ceremony’.
Now, prosecutors in Meaux, east of Paris, have confirmed the man was known in Britain ‘for sexual offences against minors’.
A statement reads: ‘He is registered on the British sex offenders register and is currently wanted at the national level by the judicial authorities of his country of origin, for failing to comply with the obligations arising from said registration.’
The man is described as the ‘mastermind’ of the wedding stunt, and has been charged with ‘fraud’, ‘breach of trust’, ‘money laundering’ and ‘identity theft’.
Disneyland management allowed the ‘wedding’ bookers to privatise part of the Disneyland site at Marne-la-Vallée at a cost of around £115,000.
It then emerged that the ‘bride’ was a nine-year-old girl – something that Disneyland employees only realised on the day, according to prosecutors.
The role of the bride was played by a nine-year-old Ukrainian girl, accompanied by her mother.
In addition to the 39-year-old, three other people were arrested – the child’s mother, a 41-year-old Ukrainian woman, a 24-year-old Latvian woman who played the role of the bride’s sister, and finally, a 55-year-old Latvian man who also took part in the ‘ceremony’.
The girl’s mother allegedly told investigators that she wanted to organise a ‘day worthy of a princess’ for her daughter.
The entire event was due to be broadcast live on social media, according to prosecutors, with ‘extras’ recruited online to play family.
Organisers asked Disneyland to keep the whole event ‘confidential’.
Senior management say they were ‘deceived’, with a Meaux prosecuting spokesman saying: ‘The organiser assumed the identity of a Latvian national and used false documents to secure the conclusion of the contract for the privatization of the park.’
The ‘wedding ceremony’ was scheduled to take place at dawn as private events such as weddings at the theme park are organised outside public opening hours.
A Disneyland Paris source said that the event was ‘soon shut down’ and that guests were stopped from entering the premises.
A medical examination of the young girl ‘bride’ found that she had not suffered any violence.
A source who was recruited to act as a ‘wedding guest’ said: ‘We all thought we were going to attend a wedding.
‘Everyone was stunned when we realised what was really going on. Disneyland acted extremely professionally – they canceled everything as soon as they realised the bride was a child. It was all very shocking.’
Another one of the recruited ‘extras’ described scenes of ‘panic’ backstage as the shocking revelation was made to attendees.
‘I saw the Disney staff leave, on the verge of tears. And this gentleman passing behind me said, in English, “The girl is 9 years old, we’re stopping everything!”‘, she told Le Parisien.
