Infrastructure development and increased tourism mean exploitation of children is on the rise

Svay Pak children watching cartoons at The Sanctuary. (Photograph by: Courtesy Brian McConaghy , Ratanak International)

Part Five: What's to be done?

Infrastructure development and increased tourism mean exploitation of children is on the rise

March 23, 2012
By Daphne Bramham
Vancouver Sun

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Preschool-aged victims may be off the streets, but Cambodia is still a destination of choice for sexual predators.

Even though the country prosecuted more child sex offenders last year than in 2010, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child raised a red flag.

“The committee is seriously concerned that child sex tourism has been increasing in recent years and that an alarming proportion of children are exposed to sexual violence and pornography especially through the Internet,” it said in a June 2010 report.

It expressed “deep concern that thousands of children are exploited into prostitution ... and that rape of children is on the rise.”

Road and air access has improved and each year more people are drawn to the Angkor temples, beaches and, yes, to brothels, massage parlours and karaoke bars that act as fronts for prostitution.

In 2010, 2.5 million people visited Cambodia, according to the World Tourism Organization. Visits to Southeast Asia as a whole increased 12 per cent. In the first six months of 2011, tourism was up another 26 per cent.

Later this year, a super-highway between India and China will open. Running through Laos, northern Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, it will connect two economic super-powers and two countries where population control policies have led to a severe shortage of women and girls.

“It’s a juggernaut hitting us head-on,” says Helen Sworn, international director of Chab Dai, a coalition of Christian, non-governmental organizations in Cambodia.

“When I found out about it I thought we’re done for. I thought of Africa where HIV/AIDS, trafficking, unsafe migration, all follow the highway routes.”

Each day, an estimated 500,000 trucks will travel the highway, which was financed by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. A boon to the regional economy, Sworn believes it also will be a boon to human traffickers.

Social upheaval isn’t part of the funding agencies’ equation. No money has been set aside for government programs to address the problems.

That needs to change, says Sworn. Major infrastructure projects — particularly those funded by international agencies — ought to be viewed through the lens of child protection.

It’s a difficult balancing act since a key to protecting children is poverty alleviation in countries like Cambodia where the arithmetic of daily life is brutal. A third of Cambodians survive on less than $1 a day. Textile workers average $61 a month. Gasoline costs more than $1 a litre. And those ubiquitous, 15-cc motorcycles? They cost about $1,500.

Add in half the population that’s 18 or younger and the need for economic growth is clear.

The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) recently launched the three-year, $7.5-million, Project Childhood in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand with two aims: to protect children and prevent child exploitation.

World Vision, a non-governmental organization, will deliver the prevention programs; the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime and Interpol will work on improving national and international law enforcement.

Prevention focuses on raising awareness about the tactics of travelling sexual predators. If community members know that predators groom their victims by befriending their families and them, the theory is that they will be more cautious.

The initiative also targets the majority of tourists.

“We want to provide them with the knowledge that some things make children more vulnerable,” technical director Afrooz Kaviani Johnson said in a telephone interview from Bangkok.

“Vulnerable children are attracted to begging and selling on the street and that attracts predators. So, we’re going to be suggesting that tourists think carefully about how to spend their money. Rather than giving money to beggars or to street-sellers, they should look at other opportunities to support them through groups that work to improve the lives of children.”

She noted the non-profit, Friends International operates restaurants in several countries as training sites for street kids. Another, Hagar International, runs a café called Bloom in Phnom Penh that turns out extraordinary cakes served at the Royal Palace.

Travellers need to be responsible, says Johnson. They should look for hotels, airlines and tour operators that have signed on to the international code of conduct forbidding child sexual exploitation.

“People need to use their consumer power to influence change,” she said. “Everybody needs to feel that child protection is their business.”

Seila Samleang used to teach. Now, he spends his days investigating child sex offenders in his role as country director for French-based Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE).

Samleang disagrees with the characterization of his country as a sex-tourism destination. But he admits he is weary of investigating and prosecuting foreigners, especially ones who have previous convictions in their home countries. Although he’s well aware of western sensitivities to human rights, Samleang wants governments to quit issuing passports to convicted pedophiles.

He’d also like developed countries to take over cases if the Cambodian courts release foreign sex offenders on bail. But rather than doing that, Samleang says some embassies — which he declined to name — are more likely to protect their citizens than prosecute.

Both Samleang and Patrick Stayton of the International Justice Mission are lobbying for better sharing of information between countries. They want an international sex offenders registry and agreements requiring countries to notify others whenever convicted sex offenders leave home.

“This is not a Cambodia problem alone,” says Samleang “It is a global problem.”

Canada amended the Criminal Code in 1997, allowing for the prosecution of Canadians for sex offences committed abroad. It is among the 44 countries that have such legislation. Absent from the list are Korea, Japan and Russia — major sources of sex tourists to Cambodia.

Only five Canadians have been convicted using that legislation and even Insp. Sergio Pasin of the Canadian Police Centre for Missing and Exploited Children agrees that they were caught more by accident than design.

Unlike the United States which initiates investigations online and abroad and makes frequent use of its sex tourism legislation, Canada’s response is largely reactive. If a Canadian Border Service officer finds child pornography in the luggage of a returning Canadian — as one did with Kenneth Klassen — police respond.

That’s changing. Pasin is formulating a national plan for action against the commercial sexual exploitation of children. It will be ready later this year. Such plans are described as “the first tangible indication of a country’s commitment,” according to the advocacy group, ECPAT International, an acronym for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes.

On March 24, World Vision Canada launched its three-year End Child Slavery campaign (www.endchildslavery.ca). It focuses on educating Canadians about child exploitation in both the sex trade and forced labour and helping them to become more informed consumers. And it includes a petition urging Prime Minister Stephen Harper to ensure that the national plan will “address the needs of trafficked children and the reasons why they are so vulnerable to being trafficked both at home and abroad.”

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson declined a requested interview. Instead, press secretary Julie Di Mambro and Carole Saindon, a media relations officer, emailed responses to questions.

Although Canada has first-rate sex tourism legislation, the government’s position is that the primary obligation for prosecuting child sex offenders rests with the country where the offence is committed.

Canada did enact legislation in December, requiring Internet service providers to report any websites that make child pornography available to the public and any suspected sex offenders to the RCMP’s Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

A year ago, it also expanded the Sex Offender Registry so that Canadians convicted of sexual offences abroad are now included and requires convicted sexual offenders entering Canada to report to police within seven days and have their names added to the registry.

But, registered sex offenders are eligible for passports and they aren’t banned from travelling. The United States also doesn’t ban registered sex offenders from travelling. However, it stops anyone who has been convicted for “sex tourism crimes” from getting a passport.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that registered sex offenders will be welcomed by other countries. A Canadian travelling to the United States, for example, would be refused entry.

But not all countries have shared access to criminal conviction records. And some countries simply don’t ask.

Cambodia, for example, requires visitors to buy a visa. But the application doesn’t ask about previous criminal convictions. And there are plenty of countries where no visa is required and immigration officials take little more than a perfunctory look at passports before stamping approval.

John Wrenshall is a good example.

A decade after the former Scout leader from Calgary served a one-year jail sentence for sexually abusing choir boys, he moved to Bangkok. There, for eight years, he ran a brothel, buying children as young as four, “training” them and then selling them to other travelling sexual predators.

Now 64, Wrenshall was sentenced last February to 25 years in a U.S. prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to engage in sex tourism, produce and distribute child pornography. He was arrested in London after fleeing Thailand en route to Canada and was extradited to the United States.

Canadian judges can impose travel bans and even ban offenders from holding passports. But Pasin is not aware of any cases where such orders have been made.

A British judge didn’t shy from doing that in January. He imposed a five-year, worldwide travel ban on sex tourist Nicholas Griffin, who was extradited from Cambodia after serving a year in jail for committing indecent acts on seven boys ranging in age from seven to 12. The 54-year-old had set up an orphanage near Siem Reap where he abused the children. He was arrested in October 2011 when he arrived in London and police reopened an investigation into allegations that he had molested boys in his Scout troop before moving to Cambodia.

No charges were laid. But the judge still issued the ban after Griffin told police that he’d likely go abroad again since he had no job prospects in Britain.