The poet and the predator

Along the dusty, potholed back streets of Kathmandu, Cathal O Searcaigh is as familiar as he is in Ireland. The backward, politically volatile Himalayan nation of Nepal is his self-declared home away from home, and he has arguably achieved as much recognition there as in his native country - but for very different reasons.

In Ireland, the 53-year-old is lauded as one of the finest living writers in the Gaelic language, revelling in his nickname of 'Guru of the Hills' after the rugged Donegal landscapes where many of his lyrical poems about love, loss and yearning are set. In Kathmandu, however, he has earned notoriety rather than fame - and he has won it not as a poet or an artist, but as a sexual predator who repeatedly enticed teenage boys to his bed, allegedly with a mixture of affection, money and the promise of a new life overseas.

For more than a decade, O Searcaigh would stay in Nepal for months at a time, checking into a HK$90 a night room at the Buddha Hotel in Kathmandu's Thamel tourist district, where he would satisfy the two driving passions of his life: writing poetry and pursuing relationships with young men.

His semi-permanent presence in the Nepalese capital only came to an end when his liaisons with teenagers were exposed last year by an Irish filmmaker. A year on, as police investigations in both Ireland and Nepal grind to an apparent halt, the case has raised troubling questions about the extent of sex tourism in Nepal and whether tougher laws are needed to protect its young people.

Effectively exiled from his adopted home as the controversy rages on, O Searcaigh makes no secret of his homosexuality. He makes no apologies either for the string of young lovers he took in Kathmandu, saying he gave them money for their studies and that all were 16 or above, the legal age of consent.

In an interview in Ireland last month, he painted his affairs as consensual and loving, insisting the gulf in age was not an issue in homosexual relationships. 'I believe firmly I have an ability to be an emotional contemporary of people who are much younger than me,' he said, arguing it was an ability shared by many gay men.