By Carrie J. Sidener
Published: January 06, 2011
Credit: Kim Raff/The News & Advance
Gary Reynolds spoke at an international law enforcement conference in Cambodia to talk about child sex trafficking.
It wasn’t until the tail end of his career that Gary Reynolds encountered a case that changed him.
The law enforcement officer was serving as chief of police in Winchester when his department investigated the abduction of a 13-year-old girl.
She had been groomed by a man she met on the Internet. He abducted her and sexually assaulted her at a local hotel.
“That was when I first became aware of the Internet being used for the sexual exploitation of children,” Reynolds said.
“I’ve seen catastrophic crashes, fatal traffic accidents, stabbings, shootings, and yet when I see images of children being sexually assaulted. … It sticks with me more than anything else.”
When Reynolds retired, he came to work for the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office as part of the Southern Virginia Internet Crimes Against Children task force, known locally as Operation Blue Ridge Thunder.
He also became involved in the nonprofit Safe Surfin’ Foundation, whose mission is to educate the public about Internet-related crimes against children and provide communities with the information to protect children from Internet predators.
Reynolds began to look into the sexual tourism trade in foreign countries. He soon became an adviser to the Intergovernmental Child Cyber Control Organization, which works to protect children on the Internet through education.
Child sexual exploitation happens in every economic, social, ethnic and religious group, according to the organization’s website. The Internet provides a more anonymous way to seek out and exploit children for pornography, sex acts and sexual tourism.
That association led Reynolds last month to a United Nations conference in Cambodia involving representatives of 52 Asian nations, where he spoke about international sexual tourism and how the Internet is used typically by American men to facilitate sexual relations with children in those countries.
Safe Surfin’ and the Cambodian government paid for Reynolds’ expenses.
“It was very eye-opening for me,” he said. “I went into downtown Bangkok and I was able to observe firsthand children on the street corners offering themselves up for prostitution.”
“It’s obscene to see police officers standing on the corners where this was occurring and yet taking no action to stop it,” he said.
Nations with thriving sex tourism industries also suffer from widespread poverty, high illiteracy rates and limited employment opportunities.
Poorer nations rely on tourism and can end up turning a blind eye to the crimes.
Pimps go to the farms in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand and offer families $500 cash, telling parents they are taking the child to a major city to give them a job and an education. Those children end up in a life of prostitution.
“I was told for a young girl or boy who was inexperienced, the Johns are charged up to $10,000,” Reynolds said.
The vast majority of those who travel to these countries to pay for child prostitutes are white men from North American and European countries. They are typically over the age of 35 and are professionals or retired.
“A lot of people just don’t understand how often this goes on,” he said. “We have laws in the U.S. that prohibit Americans from going to other countries to engage in sexual acts with minors. But it is very hard for us to enforce them in other countries that provide little support.
“Many laws are almost impossible to enforce because of limited resources.”
He hopes that his work can help prevent more children from falling victim to such predators.
“I considered it a personal honor to speak there. I hope it makes a difference.”
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