Verdict in key child-sex trial at risk

Michaeal Joseph Pepe (Photo: AFP)

Attorneys for an ex-Marine convicted of abusing underage girls in Cambodia say a Vietnamese interpreter was having an affair with a federal agent, undermining their case.

November 20, 2010

By Scott Glover

Los Angeles Times

A costly and emotionally charged child sex case in which prosecutors traveled to Cambodia and paid to fly frightened young victims to the United States is under fire by defense attorneys amid allegations that court interpreters were biased in favor of the prosecution.

One of the interpreters assigned to the case of Michael Joseph Pepe admitted being involved in a sexual relationship with the lead investigator around the time the case went to trial in May 2008, according to documents filed in federal court in Los Angeles.

Pepe, a retired U.S. Marine captain who was working as a teacher in Cambodia, was convicted of having sex with seven girls ages 9 to 12. The girls, speaking through Vietnamese and Khmer interpreters, testified that Pepe drugged, bound, beat and raped them in his compound in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital.

After Pepe's conviction, prosecutors discovered and disclosed the relationship between interpreter Ann Luong Spiratos and Gary J. Phillips, a special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Following the disclosure, Pepe's defense attorneys asked U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer for a new trial, arguing that the "secret … sexual relationship" between Spiratos and Phillips resulted in skewed interpretations by Spiratos and a colleague, which aided the prosecution and undermined the defense.

"Only after Mr. Pepe was convicted did the defense learn that the Vietnamese language interpreter was not the disinterested interpreter that she appeared," wrote deputy federal public defender Charles C. Brown. "We now know that what the jury heard during the trial was not what the witnesses said but what the interpreters said they said." Brown argued that Spiratos' alleged bias spread to another interpreter she brought in to work on the case.

As a result of the controversy, Pepe's sentencing has been postponed. The motion for a new trial has been pending before Fischer for nearly four months.

Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, said prosecutors hired experts who reviewed the translations after the trial and found no substantive differences between witnesses' testimony and what the interpreters said aloud in court. He said some of the interpretations questioned by the defense experts were done by an interpreter other than Spiratos who had no reason to put her career at risk by manipulating witnesses' testimony.

In a recent interview with The Times, Spiratos said her interpretations were unbiased.

In a hearing earlier this year, Fischer expressed concerns about the objectivity of a defense expert who was critical of interpretations by Spiratos and a fellow interpreter she brought on to help with the case. Fischer ordered prosecutors and defense attorneys to meet and attempt to reach an agreement about what discrepancies — if any — exist between the testimony and translations in order to help her decide how to proceed with the case.

The defense's new trial motion also hinted at improper conduct by one of the federal prosecutors on the case. According to the court papers, Phillips, the ICE agent, said that Assistant U.S. Atty. John Lulejian encouraged him to become involved with Spiratos. [The prosecutor and agent are not named in the court filing, but sources close to the case have confirmed their identities.]

"Wait till you see who I hired … she is Vietnamese and is very hot," Phillips said the prosecutor told him, according to a declaration he submitted to the court.

Phillips said Lulejian twice told him he should "take care" of Spiratos, an apparent reference to having sex with her, according to court papers. Phillips added that Lulejian himself was "enamored" with Spiratos and that the prosecutor showed him photographs of her that he had on his phone.

Phillips, who is the subject of an ongoing internal investigation by ICE, declined to comment through an agency spokeswoman.

Lulejian also declined to comment for this article. According to the court papers, he said he had a "professional and platonic" relationship with Spiratos and did nothing to facilitate a romantic relationship between her and Phillips.

The issue has tainted what was once a celebrated case within the Department of Justice. The prosecution team, including Phillips and Lulejian, was given distinguished service awards last year by Atty. Gen. Eric Holder for its work on the case. The situation also seems to have angered Fischer, who refused to allow defense attorneys to file their motion under seal.

"This case received media attention — at least some of which was initiated by the government. This prosecution consumed a significant amount of public funds," the judge wrote in July. "Concealing the basis for the motion — or the ruling — would promote distrust of the judicial process."

Lulejian said that when he came to suspect last year that Phillips and Spiratos had been involved in a sexual relationship, he contacted the U.S. attorney's ethics office, according court papers. Prosecutors conducted an investigation and disclosed the results to the defense.

The timeline of the relationship between Spiratos and Phillips is somewhat vague. Both filed sworn declarations with the court, but those documents are under seal, meaning they are not available for public review. According to Brown's new trial motion, Phillips stated in his declaration that the relationship began "sometime after the start of the trial or near the end of the trial." The agent recalled several instances of being romantic with Spiratos, including one time after he accompanied the victims to Disneyland and another that "possibly" occurred before one of the girls took the stand. Spiratos wrote that she began a friendship with Phillips during the trial but that it did not become intimate until early June, shortly after the verdict.

Brown wrote that Spiratos' relationship with the lead investigator went "beyond creating the unsavory appearance of impropriety." Spiratos and her colleague, he wrote, "secretly allied themselves with the [prosecution] witnesses and unfairly bolstered their testimony and at the same time sabotaged the defense."

An expert hired by the defense to analyze the interpretations done at trial found numerous discrepancies between what interpreters said aloud and the witnesses' actual testimony, court papers state.

In one instance, a girl's statement: "I didn't sleep because I was afraid of him," was translated to: "I meant that I wouldn't let him insert his penis in my vagina," defense experts said.

Some of the allegedly bogus interpretations were "at times so divergent from the actual responses that they cannot simply be attributed to good faith misunderstandings," Brown contended.

Mrozek, the U.S. attorney's spokesman, said prosecutors will be filing a detailed response to the defense allegations regarding the interpretations in coming weeks.

Spiratos said in an interview this week that she was unaware at the time of the trial that her relationship with Phillips outside of work represented a conflict of interest. She said she could not remember whether they had been intimate prior to the verdict.

"I would be a liar if I said, 'no,' " she said.

She insisted that her relationship with Phillips had no bearing on her work or on that of the other interpreter she hired for the case. Since her relationship with Phillips was disclosed, she said, she has been denied work in the federal courts — decimating her once successful business — and that Phillips and Lulejian have turned their backs on her.

"I lost everything," she said. "I feel like I'm a scapegoat. It takes two, right? Not just me."

Worse, Spiratos said, is the delay in Pepe's sentencing and uncertainty surrounding the case.

"Those little kids don't deserve this," she said.

scott.glover@latimes.com

Oxnard man faces 210-year sentence for sexually abusing Cambodian girls

Six of the seven girls who were drugged, beaten and raped at his Phnom Penh compound were brought to the U.S. to speak at his sentencing hearing. Former ambassador urges maximum penalty.

September 26, 2008
By Scott Glover
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer (California, USA)

Mussomeli, who stepped down from the post last month, wrote that corruption, lack of respect for the rule of law, and the trafficking of women and children "have created a breeding ground where pedophiles can integrate into the expatriate community and prey on the weak and defenseless."

The young girl stood at the podium in a cavernous federal courtroom in downtown Los Angeles, 8,000 miles and a world away from her native Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

A prosecutor offered her a wooden footstool to stand on so she could better see the judge, but the girl declined.

She eyed the defendant, a retired U.S. Marine captain who had done unspeakable things to her and six other girls. He was seated just a few feet away with a smirk on his face.

The girl, 14, rocked back and forth, seeming to summon the courage to speak, and then, in a voice so faint it could barely be heard, she did.

"I don't want any other children to be like us," she told U.S. District Court Judge Dale S. Fischer through a translator. "Please don't allow this to happen again."

The girl spoke during a sentencing hearing for Michael Joseph Pepe, 53, of Oxnard. Pepe was convicted in May of having sex with seven Cambodian girls age 9 to 12. He faces a maximum sentence of 210 years in federal prison.

Pepe was working as a teacher in Cambodia when he hired a prostitute to procure the children from their families, according to testimony in the three-week trial. The victims, six of whom were flown to the United States to testify, said Pepe drugged, bound, beat and raped them in his compound in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital. In addition to the victims' testimony, prosecutors showed jurors restraints, sedatives and homemade child pornography seized by Cambodian National Police during a raid of Pepe's residence in 2006.

Cambodian police began investigating Pepe after receiving complaints of suspected child sexual abuse in the house where he lived. U.S. authorities later joined the investigation at the request of their Cambodian counterparts.

All of the victims were in court Thursday, but it took some coaxing from Fischer to get them to speak.

"I don't want you to be afraid," the judge told the girls, one of whom clutched a fluffy pink teddy bear. "This is a safe place."

Then, one after another, they got up and said a few words. Some stole nervous glances at Pepe as they spoke.

"What he did to me, it's very painful," said one girl in a striped dress. Another, with long black hair and a sweet voice, told the judge: "I just want to say thank you that you helped me find justice."

Social workers who are helping to care for the girls in Cambodia told Fischer the youngsters probably would be traumatized for the rest of their lives, particularly in a culture in which victims of sexual abuse are stigmatized.

"The culture that they live in considers these children as refuse now," said Don Brewster, who runs a mission in Cambodia that helpssexuallyabused children. "They have a life sentence of overcoming what their culture thinks of them."

After Brewster spoke, Fischer again addressed the girls.

"Nothing that happened to you is your fault," the judge said through a pair of translators who conveyed her message to the girls seated in the courtroom gallery. "You are all very brave and strong to come here and testify."

Pepe, who was dressed in white jail jumpsuit, did not speak during the hourlong hearing.

He is expected to be sentenced Nov. 4, after Fischer has had an opportunity to weigh the victims' statements and other issues in the case, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Patricia A. Donahue, the lead prosecutor in the case.

Among the materials the judge probably will consider is a letter from the former U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, Joseph A. Mussomeli, asking that she impose the maximum sentence.

Mussomeli, who stepped down from the post last month, wrote that corruption, lack of respect for the rule of law, and the trafficking of women and children "have created a breeding ground where pedophiles can integrate into the expatriate community and prey on the weak and defenseless."

He added: "A well-publicized and strong sentence will send a clear and unequivocal signal that this illicit behavior will not be tolerated."

Los Angeles jury convicts ex-Marine in sex tourism case

Thursday, May 29, 2008
The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - A retired Marine captain was convicted Thursday of having sex with pre-teen girls while working as a teacher in Cambodia.

A federal jury found Michael Joseph Pepe guilty of seven counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places. The federal law targets people who go overseas for so-called child sex tourism.

During trial, six girls who were between 9 and 12 at the time of the abuse testified that Pepe drugged, bound, beat and raped them. Pepe was arrested in Phnom Penh in 2006 by Cambodian police investigating the sexual abuse allegations.

Prosecutors said Pepe forced the girls to give him massages and oral sex when they came home from school. Pepe would also give the girls a date rape drug before having sex with them, Assistant U.S. District Attorney Patricia Donahue said during trial.

Pepe, 54, of Oxnard, faces up to 210 years in prison when he is sentenced in September.

Deputy Federal Public Defender Carl Gunn said he might file an appeal after sentencing.

During trial, Gunn argued the assaults were committed by a prostitute and her boyfriend who had access to Pepe's house.

Former Marine captain on trial for allegedly raping Cambodian girls

Michael Joseph Pepe at his arrest in Cambodia (Photo: AFP)

05/09/2008
From wire services
Posted by The Long Beach Press Telegram (Calfornia, USA)

Opening statements are expected today in the downtown Los Angeles trial of a jailed ex-Marine Corps captain accused of raping girls as young as 9 years old while living in Cambodia.

Michael Joseph Pepe, 54, is charged with seven counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places. The federal law that Pepe allegedly broke allows the prosecution of those accused of engaging in child sex tourism.

Pepe faces up to 30 years' imprisonment if he's convicted. He has pleaded not guilty to all counts.

Prosecutors allege that Pepe raped seven preteen girls at his Phnom Penh home beginning in the late fall of 2005 and ending shortly before his June 2006 arrest by the Cambodian National Police. In February 2007, he was extradited to Los Angeles -- the last U.S. city he spent time in before returning to Cambodia after visiting his daughter.

The alleged victims are expected to testify at his trial.

Pepe, who moved to Cambodia in 2003 and married there, allegedly paid a prostitute a finder's fee to bring him young victims, typically between the ages of nine and 15.

He also paid the young girls' families a fee and monthly stipend for access to the girls for sexual gratification, prosecutors said. In one case, the prostitute admitted receiving $10 for finding a young girl, whose family received $300, prosecutors said.

Agents who searched Pepe's home found rope and cloth strips used to restrain the victims, prosecutors said. They also found mind-altering drugs, condoms, Viagra, children's clothes and newspaper articles about pedophiles, prosecutors said.

Pepe's computer contained hundreds of images of nude and semi-clothed children, in some cases bound, performing various sex acts, prosecutors claim.

One witness expected to testify in Pepe's defense is Dr. Michael Maloney, a defense witness in the 1980s McMartin Preschool child molestation trial.

In that trial, Maloney criticized police interview techniques of the alleged victims. He testified that they elicited erroneous information that the children had been sexually abused.