Cambodia's Child Sex Crackdown

via Khmer NZ

By KEVIN DOYLE/PHNOM PENH

Thursday, Oct. 05, 2006

In his 17 years on the Cambodian police force, Keo Thea has seen a lot. But nothing quite prepared the deputy chief of Phnom Penh's anti-human trafficking police for the raid on the home of German national Karl Heinz Henning in August.

At Henning's apartment, tucked away in a leafy neighborhood favored by foreign aid workers in the Cambodian capital, Keo Thea sifted through the country's largest-ever haul of hardcore child pornography. Amongst the bondage gear, handcuffs, whips and battery-operated sex aids, Keo Thea's unit found soft cuddly children's toys. There was also video and photographic cameras, and 18 videotapes, each one hour long, depicting the S&M-style rape and torture of young local children by the tall, gaunt 61-year-old and another German, Thomas Engelhardt, 42, who was arrested a day later. Eight computer hard drives were also bagged for the court. (Karl Heinz Henning's lawyer has denied his client's guilt and the Phnom Penh Municipal Court prosecutor said that Engelhardt told the prosecutor that he had probably taken drugs at the time and didn't know what happened.)

"It was very disturbing," Keo Thea recounted on a recent morning at his small unit's headquarters. A father of two, the 35-year-old deputy police chief, who looks older than his years and stockier than most Cambodians, had just returned from Miami, Florida, where he had given evidence in the case of a U.S. national arrested and deported from Cambodia on child abuse charges in 2004.

"I am sending a message to pedophiles to not come here. I promise you, you will be arrested and sent to jail in Cambodia or you will be extradited and jailed in your own country," he said.

Strong words, and he means it. But to fulfil that promise, Keo Thea has his work cut out. Not only are resources tight to fight child trafficking, especially in the rural provinces, but the courts in Cambodia are notoriously corrupt, and whether they actually carry through with prosecutions is entirely another story.

Cambodia has been a haven for foreign sexual predators since the U.N. brought peace to the war-ravaged country in 1993, and more recently, since its neighbor Thailand started its own crackdown on child sex abuse over the last couple of years. But the arrest of at least eight alleged foreign pedophiles since the beginning of this year may signal that Phnom Penh is finally getting serious about stopping the sexual abuse of children.

The arrests began in February with U.S. national Michael John Koklich, 49, who was apprehended after plowing his motorcycle into a police barricade — and badly injuring Keo Thea's leg in the process — as he tried to escape arrest. Koklich was charged with having sex with children in a Phnom Penh slum and deported to the U.S. He defended himself to reporters by saying that he only had sex with the children for "a very short period."

Those working to protect children in Cambodia agree that the police force has recently shown a far stronger commitment to targeting pedophiles. But it's not just law and order that is doing the trick. A new political will to root them out is the result of diplomatic incentives and pressures, both the carrots of international donors and the stick of the U.S. State Department, say child protection workers.

Cambodia's generous donor governments and international organizations have invested a substantial amount of money in anti-trafficking and child protection training for Cambodian officials. But the stick came in 2005 when the U.S. State Department, fed up with the impunity enjoyed by traffickers here, relegated Cambodia to it lowest tier 3 rating on its global trafficking report. Cambodia was lumped in with Burma, Cuba and North Korea, and Washington threatened sanctions against Phnom Penh for its inability to comply with "minimum standards" to combat human trafficking and convict officials involved.

Chastened by its international dressing-down, Cambodia's police started to make a number of high-profile arrests, including:

- In April, a German national was charged with sexually abusing young homeless boys in the coastal resort town of Sihanoukville; the man has strongly denied the charges. The same month, a Belgian national, who claims he is innocent, was arrested at his Phnom Penh guesthouse with a 13-year-old boy; according to Cambodian police, he had previously been jailed in Belgium on sex abuse charges.

- U.S. citizen Michael Joseph Pepe, 53, was arrested in June and charged with sexually abusing girls ranging in age from eight to 13 years. Pepe, who has remained silent since his arrest, is still in a Cambodian prison awaiting deportation to the U.S.

- Most recently, U.S. national Terry Darrell Smith, 55, was arrested in Phnom Penh on Sept. 20. He had been charged by Cambodian police with sexually abusing (and filming 10 hours of footage of the abuse) two girls, 13 and 14, at his "Tramp's Palace" bar in Sihanoukville. The girls had been allegedly held as sex slaves for five months by Smith and his 26-year-old Cambodian girlfriend before they were rescued by police, who were tipped-off by the low-key but highly effective U.S.-based anti-pedophile organization International Justice Mission. Smith's Cambodian lawyer has denied the charges against his client.

Already by June of this year, Cambodia was elevated slightly on the latest State Department tables to a tier 2 "watch list." Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said that the government has its sights set even higher. "We don't want to stay on tier 2. We want to go to tier 1," he said. "We have the political will. Cambodia will not be a place for child sex tourists."

When it comes to Cambodia's new hard line, the writing is on the wall — literally. Posters on display at the airport warn foreign visitors that abusing children will be paid for with as many as 20 years in prison. Some posters tout the slogans "Turn a sex tourist into an ex-tourist" and "Abuse a child in this country, go to jail in yours." Child predator message boards on the Web have also taken note, said the IJM investigator who staked out Smith's bar and spoke on condition that his identity remain a secret due to the nature of his undercover work.

"Two years ago, Cambodia was the number one destination for pedophiles," the investigator said. Now, he added, the Web sites identify the country as a risk. Cambodia is still a destination for child abusers but it has been surpassed in the last two years by even more lawless places such as the Dominican Republic, Bosnia and Guatemala.

"Ten years ago they would come here with impunity to do what they want and leave," the investigator said. "They are still coming to Cambodia but... they've got to be a little bit smarter."

For Chanthol Oung, executive director of the Cambodian Women's Crisis Center, the recent arrests are a cause for celebration. But, she says, it's far too early to declare a victory against pedophiles.

Rather than cease coming to Cambodia, pedophiles will become smarter and also harder to track, as they branch out of Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville and into the provinces, such as the tourist town of Siem Reap and free-wheeling Koh Kong and Poipet on the Thai border, she warned. The majority of the country's rural areas don't have a specialized anti-trafficking and juvenile protection force like that operated by Keo Thea in the capital.

And though the government may have the political will to combat pedophiles, it will also need to allocate physical and legal resources, Chanthol Oung said. Pedophiles are adapting to the new regime, and are working together in networks for safety and studying the loopholes in Cambodia law that could see them walk free if they are arrested, Chanthol Oung warned. "They are still coming, but they are being smarter," she said. Which means the authorities will have to stay even smarter if they are to have more success rooting out "tourists" who are no longer welcome.