A West Valley City man was arrested Thursday on charges related to sexually exploiting minors in Tonga while working as a teacher in the Polynesian country.
William James Purdy, 28, of West Valley, was indicted in Pennsylvania on July 16 for allegedly abusing minor boys in Tonga, where he traveled in 2017 to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; while there he allegedly sexually abused ”multiple minor boys,” according to a press release by the U.S. Department of Justice. Purdy apparently returned to the island country in 2019, where he taught at a school in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, and allegedly “groomed and sexually abused” boys.
“The defendant in this case chose to travel abroad under the guise of good intentions and then sexually exploited and abused children who had been trusted to his care,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in a post on social media…