page_title: Neringa Venckienė
section_title: Pedophilia case
hierarchical_section_title: Neringa Venckienė / Pedophilia case
caption_attribution_description: Venckiene and her niece
context_page_description: Neringa Venckiene is a Lithuanian judge, politician, writer, and a former member of the Seimas of Lithuania. She was allegedly involved in exposing a pedophile ring with high-ranking officials involved. After receiving death threats, she fled to the United States in 2013 and asked for political asylum. On November of 2019, she was extradited back to Lithuania, where she awaits her trial.
context_section_description: Venckiene's brother, Drąsius Kedys (b. 1972), and his former girlfriend, Laimutė Stankūnaitė (b. 1986) had an out-of-wedlock daughter in February 2004. The couple split up in 2006. His former girlfriend originally obtained the custody of the girl. But later gave custody to the father, stating that she could not afford to take care of the child.
  On 29 November 2008, Kedys submitted a formal complaint to the police, claiming that Andrius Ūsas, an advisor to the speaker of the Parliament, paid Stankūnaitė to sexually molest his daughter. On this basis, in December 2008, Kedys obtained full custody of his daughter with no visitation rights for Stankūnaitė, but the courts repeatedly confirmed that Stankūnaitė had no case to answer, thus dismissing Kedys' allegations against his former girlfriend as unsubstantiated. The pre-trial investigation against Ūsas, nevertheless, continued. In February 2009, Kedys further pressed accusations against Violeta Naruševičienė, a sister of Stankūnaitė, claiming the former had allowed men to molest his 4-year-old daughter. In July 2009, Kedys also accused Jonas Furmanavičius, a district judge, and an unidentified individual known only as Aidas, of partaking in the molestation. All of those people (except for the unidentified Aidas) professed their innocence, and in turn accused Kedys of slander, criminal libel, and death threats.
  In 2009, frustrated with the lack of progress in official investigations and convinced that the case was being deliberately stonewalled, Kedys sent out some 200 DVDs to Lithuanian politicians, media outlets, and law-enforcement agencies, featuring homemade video footage of his daughter's explicit testimony against three "uncles". He promised to send out the subtitled version to Members of the European Parliament. Many sources criticized Kedys, who acted as the cameraman, for asking his daughter leading questions and heavily editing the film (it contains some 50 segments filmed over nine separate occasions).
  Four separate commissions determined the girl's testimony to be truthful. But some critics argued that Kedys coached the girl to falsely testify.
  On 5 October 2009, Furmanavičius and Naruševičienė were shot dead in Kaunas. Kedys became the prime suspect. On the same day, a nationwide search for Kedys was announced, which was soon followed by an announcement of an international search, as he was thought to have left the country shortly after the murders. Kedys' blind friend Raimundas Ivanauskas and his wife Eglė Barauskaitė were charged with accessory to murder. In 2016, Barauskaite was found to be innocent, Ivanauskas was found guilty and sentenced to 8 years in prison.
  The custody of the girl was given to Kedys' sister Venckienė.
  The story caused an uproar in Lithuania, much of the public siding with Kedys: in the public mind, the case was seen as largely a father's futile attempts in pursuing justice and trying to protect his daughter, and by being driven to desperate measures by anger at the injustice. Others questioned whether the killings were in fact commissioned by Kedys himself.
  In February 2010, General Prosecutor Algimantas Valantinas resigned over public criticism of how he handled Kedys' case.
  After six months of police search, Drąsius Kedys' body was found near Kaunas Reservoir on April 20, 2010. According to the official report, the cause of death was "choking on his own vomit" whilst being heavily intoxicated. However, his relatives were convinced that Kedys had been murdered, pointing to some wounds on his body, and the fact the there was no vomit found on the scene.
  On April 24, the body of Kedys was buried in Jonučiai cemetery. According to various media reports, some six to ten thousand people from across the country attended the ceremony.
  In May 2010, the court gave custody of the girl to the biological mother Stankunaitė. Outraged by this decision, according to different sources, up to 2000 people surrounded Venckiene's home and would not let the police pass.
  Ūsas, the main suspect in the pedophilia case, was officially charged with sexual mol
caption: Venckiene and her niece