A former missionary to Haiti has been sentenced to 40 years imprisonment, followed by 25 years of supervised release, for child sex tourism.

Daniel Pye, 36, from Ashdown, Arkansas, ran an orphanage in Jacmel, Haiti, with his wife Leann between 2006 and 2012. He was convicted in November 2017 on three counts of abusing children.

The institution provided shelter, food and school tuition to children whose families could not afford to care for them. However, Pye would regularly abuse the female children, including girls as young as six, both at the orphanage and at the beach.

Pye had previously told the court during questioning that he had 'tried to be a dad' to the children and had taught them to swim. However, several of them testified that he had abused them.

The charges against him were filed after a long investigation interrupted by Haiti's disputed election in 2015 and the troubled political situation in the country, which made it unsafe for investigators to travel there.

Pye spent five months in jail in Haiti in 2011 because of a land dispute before a judge there dismissed charges against him.

The couple left the country in 2012 and the orphanage's operations were eventually transferred to Texas-based Builders Without Borders, according to the Miami Herald.