Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Thursday that there will be no mercy for paedophiles, adding that he had filed a constitutional amendment to prevent a pardon from being granted to perpetrators of crimes committed against minors.
PM Orbán said on Facebook that he had submitted the amendment proposal on behalf of the government, adding that it was his personal belief that there must be no mercy for paedophiles. He said a debate on the powers of the presidential pardon had arisen, adding that “what’s needed now is not to be lawyerly but to establish clarity with an unequivocal decision”. He said he had five children and six grandchildren, adding that if anybody touched them, his first thought would be that “they must be cut in half, they must be cut into pieces”. The opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) has written a letter to Pope Francis regarding President Katalin Novák’s pardon of a former deputy head of a children’s home in Bicske, near Budapest. Ahead of the Pope’s visit last April, Novák granted a presidential pardon to, among others, the former deputy director of a children’s home in Bicske convicted of being an accomplice in paedophile crimes. DK group leader Olga Kálmán told an online press conference that the letter was delivered to Michael W Banach, the apostolic nuncio to Hungary. Kálmán said DK hoped the Pope would “find a way to express our common belief that citing a servant of Jesus cannot pave the way for cooperation with sin and sinners”. She said DK strove to protect children and would not allow “paedophile-stroking Katalin Novák and the Orbán government to set free further paedophile criminals”.