The chairman of the Ulster Scots Agency has said that a man who has been charged with child sex offences in the US was not the body's chief executive.
The Sunday Tribune reported that 62-year-old Mr John Stan Mallon, was arrested in Chicago after going to meet what he believed was a 14-year-old schoolgirl whom he had contacted in an on-line chat room. The "girl" was in fact an officer with the Chicago police department's child exploitation unit and Mr Mallon, who was in the US on Ulster Scots agency business, was arrested outside the hotel where he had arranged to meet her.
Mr Mallon, a retired civil servant, has appeared in court twice and was charged with the federal offence of crossing a state border for the purpose of having sex with a child, as well as using the Internet to coerce a child into having sex. If convicted he could face 15 years in prison.
The Ulster Scots agency, along with Foras na Gaeilge, come under the umbrella of the North-South Language Body, established under the Belfast Agreement. The chairman of the agency, Lord Laird, said he had expected to meet Mr Mallon in Washington last Tuesday where they were to hold and attend a series of St Patrick's Day functions with US politicians.
He said that Mr Mallon had not travelled to Chicago at the agency's expense. "What he does on his own time going to a city at his own expense is his own affair," he said.
Lord Laird denied that Mr Mallon, a former senior employee of the North's Industrial Development Board, was the agency's chef executive officer, saying this post had yet to be filled. "He was a temporary fill-in guy doing some administrative work," he said.