[Izumi]

An accused Australian child predator and fugitive who went by the nickname “Wombats” is locked up in an Oklahoma jail accused of sexually assaulting children in Australia, the US and possibly Europe.

Oklahoma authorities said Trevor Rombouts’ youngest alleged victim was a two-week-old baby in Victoria.

The 52-year-old has been on the run since Victorian police issued warrants for his arrest in the late 1990s.

“This clearly is a predator,” Detective Lieutenant Jillian Phippen, of the Tulsa Police Department’s special victims unit in Oklahoma, told AAP on Wednesday.

Tulsa detectives began investigating Rombouts last year when a victim in Oklahoma came forward to say Rombouts had assaulted her for several years when she was younger.

Lt Phippen said the investigation found Rombouts followed the same predatory pattern of moving in with women who had young children and then assaulting the children.

Two of Rombouts’ alleged US victims were in Oklahoma.

A third was in Texas.

“Once we started looking at it my detective was like, ‘there’s going to be more victims just because of his behaviour and how he was treating the victim’,” Lt Phippen said.

“Once he started diving into the investigation that’s what happened.

“We found more victims who were able to come forward and tell their story.

“We reached out to Australia where he lived and we received information back saying he had been looked at there for child molestation as well. Our red flags went up and we knew this was a predator and he was not going to stop.”

The investigation also found Rombouts had lived in Europe and he might have victims in Belgium, Lt Phippen said.

They tracked Rombouts down in Joplin, Missouri on Monday and took him into custody.

The Australian warrants from the 1990s relate to the alleged abuse of three children aged five-years-old, four-years-old and a baby just two-weeks-old.

Tulsa prosecutors have charged Rombouts with two counts of child sexual abuse and two counts of lewd molestation.