Part Two: Some of the lucky ones get rescued

Svay Pak, Cambodia: The top floor of the building is the crime scene where police investigators gathered evidence used to convict Canadian sex tourist Chris Neil. Neil, from Maple Ridge, B.C., is currently serving time in a Thai prison. (Photograph by: Courtesy, Ratanak International)

Trauma counseling, education and training help Da and Sophia recover.

March 23, 2012
By Daphne Bramham
Vancouver Sun
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

It’s a long climb up three flights of steep, narrow steps on an outdoor stairway flanked by a wall topped with razor wire.

Even after reaching the apartment door, there’s another flight of stairs. At the top, a narrow landing separates the bathroom and kitchen — little more than a sink and a counter top — from a large single room.

It’s a typical Phnom Penh apartment. The main room has a bed and a mattress on the floor and an ironing board. A wide tiled balcony in front is filled with laundry drying on racks.

Until recently, Da and Sophia had never imagined such luxury.

The sisters — now aged 22 and 18 — and their 17-year-old brother are Vietnamese, but they grew up in a village called Svay Pak, only 11 kilometres from the Cambodian capital.

Part Three: Former RCMP investigator a beacon for change

Svay Pak, Cambodia: Former RCMP forensics expert and Ratanak International’s founder – Brian McConaghy – stands outside a former brothel. It was the first crime scene he went to in the village and it’s where he helped Vancouver police collect evidence needed to convict Canada’s first sex tourist, Donald Bakker. (Photograph by: Courtesy, Ratanak International)

Brian McConaghy founded Vancouver-based Ratanak International, which helps rescue and educate former sex slaves

March 23, 2012

By Daphne Bramham

Vancouver Sun

SVAY PAK, Cambodia

A few years ago, sex tourists trolled the brothels of this dusty village looking for sex with children and willing to pay a premium for virgins and children as young as three.

Little girls with lipstick no longer strike sexy poses along the main street. But pimps still come and collect their girls and boys from a kids’ club run by a non-profit group in a former brothel on that same street.

Agape International Mission runs that program. It also runs a school, retraining for girls rescued from the sex trade, a medical clinic, and a gym for boys and young men (some of whom are pimps and brothel owners).

Vancouver-based Ratanak International provided the seed money and continues to fund a third of all the programs.

In November, Ratanak’s founder, Brian McConaghy, came to take a look at the most recent rental, a former brothel that will be converted into a clothing factory.

Cambodian village has disturbing reputation for child sex slavery

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/23/world/asia/cambodia-child-sex-slaves/?hpt=wo_mid

Cambodian village has disturbing reputation for child sex slavery

These two Vietnamese girls, aged eight and 10, were found after a raid on a brothel in the Cambodian village of Svay Pak, near Phnom Penh. --REUTERS

Sun October 23, 2011
By Sara Sidner, CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• One former sex slave says she was 5 or 6 years old when she was approached by a man
• "No one could help me," she says
• Don Brewster and his wife operate a rehab center for child sex slaves
• "Just yesterday we rescued a 5-year-old girl," Brewster says

SVAY PAK, Cambodia (CNN) -- Svay Pak has a disturbing reputation. The village outside Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh is known as a place where little girls are openly sold to foreign predators looking for sex.

One of the girls who was sold into the sex trade told CNN that before she could read she was working in a brothel.

"I was about 5 or 6 years old," she said. "The first man said to me, 'I want to have sex with you.' At the time I didn't know what to do. No one could help me."

Dozens of girls have had the same experience in her neighborhood.

Armed with love and laughter, Granite Bay missionaries take on child sex trade in Cambodia

Students crowd into a classroom to learn English at Rahab's House in Svay Pak, Cambodia. Fourteen members of Granite Bay's Bayside Church spent two weeks this summer working at a former brothel converted into a community center by a Rocklin couple. (All photos: BRYAN PATRICK bpatrick@sacbee.com)
Chang Thy Mean, 24, a former child prostitute rescued by a U.S. nonprofit, now makes $70 a month as a tailor. "I felt my life had no value," she said. "I'm happy now."

Monday, Aug. 16, 2010
By Stephen Magagnini - smagagnini@sacbee.com
The Sacramento Bee (California, USA)

"Police here do not cooperate – they don't like us" Chanta Hem, Cambodian pastor at Rahab's House

SVAY PAK, Cambodia – Two white vans roll up to a converted brothel at 8:30 a.m., and 14 Sacramento-area soldiers of Christ spill out to battle a barrage of physical and spiritual ailments.

They'll minister to pimps, dope peddlers and parents who seem to love alcohol and gambling more than they love their children, whose bodies are sold nightly for as little as $3 – less than the price of a bowl of grapes.

Waves of those children and their brothers, sisters and cousins inundate the missionaries with hugs, smiles and laughter. Little girls fly into their arms to be held.

"This hell hole is now a place of joy!" exclaimed Barbara Wilson, a trauma counselor leading the team from Bayside Church in Granite Bay. "Three years ago there was nothing here – now there are 150 kids."

The Bayside missionaries – teachers, computer experts, moms, a nurse and a respiratory therapist who each paid $3,500 to get here – spent 14 days this summer at Rahab's House, a former brothel named after a biblical prostitute who gave sanctuary to Israeli spies. A Rocklin couple have converted the brothel into a nonprofit community center, which now houses a free medical clinic, school, church and kids club.

"My main mission is to use love as a weapon, because none of the other methods are working," said Gilbert Acevedo, a beefy, tattooed youth pastor who pumps iron with young men – some of them pimps – at the Lord's Gym across the street from Rahab's House.

Wilson said a pimp who entered Acevedo's "Svay Pak Strong Man" contest promised not to sell girls under 18.

The slow transformation of Svay Pak from the pedophile capital of Cambodia into a fulcrum of hope was launched by Don and Bridget Brewster, who moved from Rocklin to Cambodia in 2005 to save the children after seeing a TV special on child sex slaves here.

Their nonprofit, Agape International Missions, now comprises Rahab's House, the Lord's Gym, a cafe and bakery that employs former sex workers, and the Agape Restoration Center – the initial shelter they created in Phnom Penh for 120 girls rescued from Cambodian brothels. The center has a pool, a school, a dormitory and house moms.

In 2007, the Brewsters trained their sights on Svay Pak – a slum of about 5,000 people six miles north of Phnom Penh, where girls as young as 3 are for sale.

The couple started their ministry there in a brothel that had been closed after two girls died in the "virgin room" and several others died of AIDS, Bridget Brewster said. The back door is cemented shut, and the rooms look like cells, but the building now shelters rescued teens.

A five-story brothel was under construction next door, but the Brewsters partnered with the Ratanak Foundation of Canada to convert it to Rahab's House.

"This was designed to be the best little whorehouse in Svay Pak," said Bridget Brewster, who runs Rahab's House.

Children flock to the kids club to play games with the Bayside team, make Play-Doh elephants, take guitar lessons and learn songs, computer skills, English and Bible stories.

"It's amazing how much you can do with just smiles and laughter," said Michele Dawson, one of the missionaries from Bayside.

Sex trade persists

But at night, many of the children still are sold for sex, said Don Brewster.

The sex trade has created a climate of abuse, he said. Before the Sacramento team arrived, two 12-year-old boys in Svay Pak confessed to raping a 10-year-old Vietnamese girl after watching pornography on a cell phone, the Phnom Penh Post reported. Police did not charge the boys because they are under 14, the newspaper reported.

The girl is now at Agape Restoration Center.

"Police here do not cooperate – they don't like us," said Chanta Hem, the Cambodian pastor at Rahab's House who translates for the missionaries.

Before the Brewsters and other missionaries began to shut down brothels, the pimps paid off police every morning, Hem said.

At least three of Hem's 31 disciples – Cambodian youth who volunteer 40 hours a week for Agape – were sold into prostitution by their parents. Others were raped.

A foreigner pays $300 to $3,000 for a virgin depending upon how pretty she is, Hem said.

Nearly every family in town has sold their girls, Hem said. And traffickers bring more girls bought or stolen from families in rural Vietnam.

"They love money more than the kid," he said. "For gambling, alcohol, drugs."

Cambodia has strong anti-trafficking laws. Don Brewster said he knows of 15 mothers in prison for selling their daughters. "But the traffickers don't get sent to prison, and neither do the fathers," he said.

For $10, some village leaders will change a family birth book to make a girl 16, the legal age of consent, Brewster said. In his office on the top floor of Rahab's House overlooking a field of garbage ringed with clotheslines running from corrugated shacks, Brewster produced a map indicating 11 brothels "that are holding pens for pre-pubescent girls," he said. "There's a group of us who go out and confront pedophiles."

Cambodian authorities, with the FBI and nongovernmental organizations, occasionally catch U.S. pedophiles. Five girls the Brewsters helped rescue testified in Los Angeles against Michael Pepe, a former U.S. Marine convicted in 2008 of molesting seven girls while working part time as a professor at a Cambodian university.

Cambodia is 98 percent Buddhist, and monks are often afraid to take on traffickers. Luis CdeBaca, the State Department's top official in the war on trafficking, said Christian missions are working effectively with Cambodian authorities.

He has been to Svay Pak twice. "I remember a feeling of hope," he said. "That this is not insoluble, that there are Cambodians and foreign folks who want this to change."

The efforts to transform

The strongest weapons in the Brewsters' arsenal are love and good will.

A pimp who exercised at the Lord's Gym daily said he "was raping his own 5- and 9-year-old sisters and the police were doing nothing, so we got custody," Don Brewster said. "We told him, 'We hate what you do, but we want to be your friend.'

"Then at church one Sunday, he stands up and says 'I know what I'm doing is wrong and I'm not going to do it anymore.' We got him a $50-a-month construction job, and he's doing OK."

One 100-degree day during the Bayside missionaries' visit, a cool young woman in a red pantsuit and Dalmatian-print shirt appeared at Rahab's House to design new curtains.

Chang Thy Mean, 24, a former prostitute, learned tailoring at Agape Restoration Center and now makes Hawaiian shirts that Don Brewster wears.

Mean previously sold cakes on the streets of Phnom Penh for 7,000 Cambodian riels a day – $1.65. "It wasn't enough to eat," she said. So at 15, she sold herself in Svay Pak.

A foreigner in his 50s paid $300 for her virginity. "I screamed in pain, and he stopped," she said. "The next time I prepared myself."

Mean sent about $400 home monthly, "but I don't know where the money's going." After five years Mean was rescued by International Justice Mission, a U.S. nonprofit, and sent to the Agape Restoration Center.

"I felt my life had no value. I never thought about my future," she said.

Volunteers at Agape taught her to sew – and to dream. "My dream is to be married, have two kids and have my own shop," said Mean. She is now engaged and makes $70 a month.

At the Bloom Cafe and Bakery, 20 Agape girls earn $120 a month. They recently made a sugar house for the Australian Embassy.

Girls as young as 5 are brought to Agape Restoration Center. Every two months, seven girls visit their moms in prison and take them food and shampoo. "I want to do a class on parenting and marriage," said Bridget Brewster.

Several hundred Cambodians show up daily for free medical care provided by registered nurse Allison Seay and her husband, respiratory therapist Steve Seay of the Bayside team.

"They have aches, pains, high blood pressure, really weak bones, females have vaginal issues," Allison Seay said.

They leave with vitamins, medicine and an invitation to church on Sunday.

Missionaries change, too

At the Bayside Christian team's 7 a.m. service on the roof of the Star Royal Hotel, Steve Seay prayed, "Give us the strength to do our best, and may the seeds that we plant here have a ripple effect."

The Bayside team returned home with a plaque noting their service to the people of Cambodia. The team had visited brick factories, bringing rice, face masks, sandals and candy to emaciated 13-year-olds who look 7.

"In America we're so spoiled," said Roma Moffard, the team's co-leader. "And here they're so joyful with what they have."

Wilson said, upon her return, that in the two weeks in Cambodia she formed relationships with the children and realized she could give them hope.

"It's definitely changed my perspective on what I want to do with my life," said Wilson. "My idea of retirement right now is what I can do to serve people around the world."

Her next stop: India in November.
---------
Bee researchers Pete Basofin and Sheila A. Kern contributed to this report.

In Cambodia, American Evangelicals Fight to End Child Sex Trafficking

Christian Volunteer: 'There Is a Deep Fulfillment in Laying Your Life Down for Somebody Else'

By DAN HARRIS, ALMIN KARAMEHMEDOVIC, AUDE SOICHET and SIDNEY WRIGHT IV
ABC News (USA)

SVAY PAK, Cambodia, March 21, 2010 — Clay Butler, a 27-year-old evangelical Christian from California, points to a group of children playing in the street and said, "I know kids in that group who are being trafficked. I know the situations, I know the brothels that they're in."

Butler runs a community center in the village of Svay Pak, the epicenter of Cambodia's raging child sex trafficking epidemic. It's a place where, on any given night, many of the children will be sold -- by their own parents -- for sex with strangers.

He is one of many American Christians who have come to this impoverished, war-ravaged country to protect some of the world's most vulnerable children.

"I think the most exciting part of Christianity is living it out," Butler said. "This stuff is not fun at all, but there is a deep fulfillment in laying your life down for somebody else."

Other Americans Christians are practicing an even more daring version of their faith. A group called the International Justice Mission regularly sends undercover agents into the brothels to gather video evidence. The group then works with local police to bust suspected sex tourists, oftentimes American men.

They also rescue child sex slaves like Bella, a 15-year-old who says she was forced by pimps to have sex every day.

Bella was sold into slavery by her mother. In Cambodia, it can be astonishingly easy to buy a child from the family. During a recent visit to Cambodia, ABC News was able to negotiate -- in broad daylight -- with the mother of a 15-year-old girl. The mother said she was willing to sell her daughter to a foreigner for marriage.

When asked how much it would cost, the mother answered, through a translator, "It's up to you."

In response to a question about whether her daughter had been with another man before, she said, "No, no, no. If you don't trust you can take her to the hospital& for a medical examination."

So why is it so easy to buy a child on the streets of Cambodia? Poverty is one explanation, but some Christians say the ghosts of history play a role.

Pastor Has Seen Cambodian Child Sold to Pay for Superficial Items

Cambodia endured a massive genocide in the 1970s, during which children were forced to spy on and even execute their parents -- and the educated and religious communities were nearly wiped out.

Pastor Don Brewster, who runs a shelter for former child sex slaves and works with Clay Butler, said he believes that Cambodia now suffers from a moral vacuum.

"These families will take a loan to buy a TV which they can never pay," Brewster said. "They can't feed themselves, never mind buy a TV, but they know, 'Hey, I've got my ace in the whole. I can sell my daughter.'"

Bella, the 15-year-old rescued by the International Justice Mission, is now staying at Pastor Brewster's shelter, where she said she is finally getting help.

CPP officials celebrate 07 January … in Svay Pak!?!?

CPP's 7th January Heaven celebration in Svay Pak calls for an inauguration?

04 January 2010
DAP News
Translated from Khmer by Komping Puoy

Svay Pak, Phnom Penh – In the evening of 03 January 2010, inside the Heng Meng Huy ice factory located along National Road No. 5, in Svay Pak village (also known as Phnom Penh’s red lantern district), Svay Pak commune, Russey Keo district, a celebration was held to commemorate 07 January, the day of the second birth. The festivity was presided by General Ek Somrith Dy, the personal advisor of Hun Xen and deputy army chief of staff, Ly Son, the CPP MP from Kampong Speu province, as well as local officials and several other CPP party members.

Kong Kim Heng, the ice factory owner, declated that the reason he held this celebration was in gratitude and to thank the CPP leaders, because without these leaders toppling the KR regime (KI-Media note: Wasn’t it the Vietnamese army that toppled the KR regime? Too much partying in Svay Pak made the CPP supporters forget all their history?) on 07 January, he wouldn’t be here today.

Ly Son declared that 07 January is the second birth (KI-Media note: Could it be a second birth (i.e. reincarnation) for the CPP officials following a detour to the Svay Pak 7th Heaven … oops, sorry, we meant 7th January Heaven?) of our people, in particular for him and his family, because without 07 January, he wouldn’t be here. Not only that, his family wouldn’t be able to survive and the black shirts (KR soldiers) would have killed them all.

Through Film "Holly," the Pervasive Nature of a Perverse Trade

By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Original reports from Washington
30 November 2007

"Holly," a feature-length film that screened in Washington Wednesday, tells a gritty story of Cambodia's rampant sex trade through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl and the Western man she tries to convince to marry her, or at least rescue her.

The story, which was filmed across Cambodia's brothel districts, including the notorious Svay Pak, paints a vivid, raw picture of the trade, which continues to thrive in across the country, thanks to corruption and collaboration by police, crime syndicates, traffickers and thugs.

Guy Jacobson, who produced and co-wrote the film, said he was inspired to act by the film after he was approached in 2002 by a clutch of young girls, some as young as five years old, soliciting him for sex. The scenario was appalling and incited him to action, he said. It became a verbatim scene in the film as well.

Holly (Thuy Nguyen), a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl who has been trafficked to Svay Pak, meets a card gambler named Patrick (Ron Livingston), and tries to convince him to marry her. He says she's too young and sets out to learn how he might save her. Along the way, he learns how pervasive the practice is and how hard it is to bring a girl out of it.

The US State Department estimates 800,000 people are trafficked internationally each year, and millions more within national borders are sold into the sex industry. Human trafficking earns millions of dollars per year for corrupt officials and organized crime syndicates.

Jacobson said he received death threats as he tried to make his film, and had to hire 40 men armed with AK-47s to protect him and his crew as they shot.

"When we arrived in Cambodia, we got a call from Interpol saying, 'You guys are crazy. You are in the most dangerous place in the world, making a move about this issue…. Get the hell out of Cambodia,'" he said.

"We were at war trying to make this film," he said.

Interpol's chief officer in Cambodia, Brig. Gen. Keo Van Than, declined to comment on specific threats, saying he was not in his position at the time. "It seems there is not threat," he said.

The two-hour film contains many scenes of drama and suffering, showing police in uniform associating with owners of the brothel and extorting of money, on duty.

Ministry of Interior spokesman Lt. Gen. Khieu Sopheak said the film had "two faces," one to reflect reality and another to harm police credibility.

No country has a perfect police force above corruption, he said. "The Ministry of Interior has always taken legal action for individual police officials who commit illegal acts," he said.

The film also shows foreign tourists who find sexual entertainment under Cambodia's red-lights, where goons who protect brothels "arrest" girls in public without fear and where legal action is non-existent.

Holly and Patrick are stuck in a world with few solutions and few answers. Holly asks Patrick to buy her out of the brothel for $1,000, saying she loves him and wants to marry him. She tries to escape by other means, and, in once scene, literally finds herself in a mine field. Patrick does what he can but finds himself as mired as Holly.

"The movie will be very helpful to people around the world who are ordinary citizens, to make them stop and realize that it is the demand for commercial sexual exploitation which makes it possible for pimps, exploiters, traffickers and corrupt officials to do the harm that they do," said Ambassador Mark Lagon, director of the US State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, who opened the screening in front of about 300 audience members.

A Vietnamese student from Georgetown University in the audience who asked not to be named said the film portrayed the "horrible" reality of human trafficking in Southeast Asia but said she was reminded that the trade is everywhere.

Governments need to take the issue more seriously, she said.

Bill Livermore, a representative of LexisNexis, which helped support the film, told VOA Khmer that in the last five or ten years, organized crime was growing "rapidly" and was very profitable, helped along by human trafficking.

The US government meanwhile has put Cambodia on a watch list of governments that are not doing enough to curb trafficking. Cambodia was sanctioned as one of the worst offenders at one time, but it has made some arrests in recent years of sex traffickers.

Lagon welcomed the recent arrest of a Russian businessman in Sihanoukville on charges of debauchery, but he said the US wanted to see better enforcement of trafficking laws.

"That's a step forward," he said, "but we want to see more."

'Holly' details Cambodia sex trade

Independent film focusing on lives of child prostitutes opens today in Long Beach

11/22/2007
By Phillip Zonkel, Staff Writer
Long Beach Press Telegram (Long Beach, California, USA)

In March 2002, Guy Jacobson, on vacation near Phnom Penh, Cambodia, was surrounded by 15 girls, aggressively soliciting him for prostitution.

One 5-year-old girl told Jacobson, "I yum yum very good."

She begged Jacobson for money and said the madam of her brothel would beat her if she returned empty-handed.

Jacobson gave the girl $20, and she left.

But Jacobson didn't forget.

That encounter is recreated word for word in the new independent film "Holly," which opens today at the Edwards Long Beach Stadium 26, among other locations. The film is about a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl who has been sold by her impoverished family and smuggled into Cambodia, where she is forced to work as a prostitute.

Holly is played by 17-year-old Thuy Nguyen, a Westminster High School senior.

Jacobson wrote the film's script with director Guy Moshe.

"I was horrified to find it wasn't an isolated case," says Jacobson, one of the film's producers, during a recent telephone interview from his New York City residence. "When I realized how much of a global problem it is, a light bulb went off and I decided to write a movie about it."

The numbers are huge and reach into all countries.

Every year, more than 1 million children, women and men around the world are sold into sexual slavery, according to UNICEF.

The U.S. State Department estimates 800,000 victims are trafficked across international borders annually with 17,500 sold in the United States. Nearly 30 percent of the victims are between the ages of 9 and 15, and some are as young as 5 or 6 years old.

The $12 billion sex slave trade is the third most profitable criminal industry, behind only narcotics and weapons, according to Interpol.

In "Holly," Patrick (Ron Livingston, "Sex and the City"), is an American card shark and dealer of stolen artifacts, who, for many years, has lived emotionally numb in Phnom Penh. Then he meets Holly (Nguyen), a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl, in a red-light village inhabited by child prostitutes.

The girl has been sold by her impoverished family and smuggled across the border to work as a prostitute.

Holly's virginity makes her a lucrative object, and when she is sold to a child trafficker, Patrick embarks on a frantic search to bring her to safety.

For Nguyen, a Vietnam native who moved to Westminster in 2003, working on the film was an eye-opening experience.

"I had heard about human trafficking in general, but didn't know much about it," says Nguyen, who was 14 during film production.

Filmed on location

"Holly" was shot on location in Cambodia, including several scenes in actual brothels and Phnom Penh's infamous Svay Pak, also known as K 11 (it's 11 kilometers from Phnom Penh). For years, that notorious red-light village has been the premiere destination for thousands of child molesters and sex tourists coming to Cambodia to prey on children, some as young as 5 years old, for as little as $5.

For her research, Nguyen, who was 14 at the time, met with a 16-year-old Vietnamese girl who was a former child prostitute.

The girl told Nguyen that before working in the K 11, she had been raped by her stepfather and uncle.

"It was really sad to hear about her life," Nguyen says. "But it helped me to understand my character better and what these kids go through."

While on location, Moshe was troubled at the open acceptance of child trafficking and slavery.

"It's horrifying how these things happen and people just go about their daily lives," Moshe says during a recent phone interview from Hollywood. "That's more shocking than anything."

Difficult, dangerous

The 190-day production schedule for "Holly" began in January 2005, and it seemed like no one in Cambodia wanted "Holly" made.

Less than 12 hours before the first day of shooting, Moshe - with an armed bodyguard - sat in a hotel lobby counting $60,000 in cash to a local gangster - also with an armed bodyguard - to secure the release of the film's sound equipment.

During filming in and around the K 11, which is reported to be owned by the Vietnamese mafia, the cast and crew worked under heavy protection from guards armed with AK-47s.

Moshe, 33, says he knew ahead of time filming would be difficult and potentially dangerous, but "I went out and did it anyway. It was a job that had to get done." No one was hurt during production, he says.

At the end, a lot of people made the film for more than cinematic reasons.

"This is a crime against humanity," says Jacobson, who helped form www.redlightchildren.org, a grassroots initiative to increase awareness and inspire immediate action against the child sex trade. "Many of us don't look at `Holly' as simply a film. We were trying to make a difference with the film."

"I'm glad I was a part of this movie," Nguyen says. "It will help people be more aware of human trafficking."

Southeast Asia's sordid secret [-especially in Cambodia]

A myriad of factors means the exploitation of children for sex is thriving across the region

Thursday November 01, 2007
Story by LYNNE O'DONNELL
Bangkok Post

The arrest in Thailand of a Canadian man suspected of having sex with young boys has focused international attention on a sordid industry that peddles children to paedophiles across Southeast Asia. Grinding poverty, poor policing and no shortage of demand ensure that exploitation of children for sex thrives throughout the region.

Despite some high-profile prosecutions of child sex abusers, experts say lack of cooperation among governments is hindering efforts to keep children safe from paedophilia.

The arrest of teacher Christopher Paul Neil, 32, was the culmination of an unprecedented appeal from Interpol for public help in finding him.

Mr Neil is accused of sexually assaulting 12 boys and posting 200 pictures of the crimes on the internet.

His case is the latest to draw attention to the fact that children are readily available in Southeast Asia for sexual predators who travel from the West for the sole purpose of having sex with minors.

Probably the highest profile offender is former rock star Gary Glitter - real name Paul Francis Gadd - now in a Vietnamese prison convicted of committing obscene acts with two girls, then aged 11 and 12.

Campaign groups say much of the demand for child sex is homegrown and accuse authorities of often turning a blind eye, or even colluding in the abuse.

Lack of public awareness is compounded by lack of data, and punishments are rarely harsh enough to act as a deterrent.

Even those caught and sentenced can often have their punishments downgraded by paying off their victims and accusers, experts say.

''There is a lack of awareness in the general public, and there is a lack of awareness among certain government officials,'' said Alexander Kruger, a child protection specialist at Unicef in Thailand.

In Indonesia, authorities do not see the children as victims but prosecute them as illegal sex workers, said Arist Merdeka Sirait, who heads the National Commission for Child Protection group.

Indonesia has had a national action plan in place since 2000, and an anti-human trafficking law was introduced in 2006.

But experts say that even where laws exist, implementation is often ineffective.

Mr Sirait estimates that about 40,000-70,000 Indonesian children fall into the sex trade each year, two thirds of them trafficked abroad, while the group Ecpat, which campaigns against child prostitution, says Vietnamese children are being sent to Cambodia, China, Malaysia and Taiwan for abuse.

After decades as a haven for child sex tourists, Cambodia is cracking down, arresting or deporting at least two dozen foreigners since 2003.

But the country's most notorious child sex market, a brothel village near Phnom Penh allegedly closed in 2004, still operates, albeit driven underground and more difficult to monitor.

Cambodians make up a large percentage of paedophiles, according to rights groups in the field, but domestic paedophilia is treated as an ordinary crime rather than a social problem.

Australia and Japan, sources of child sex tourists, have dealt with the issue in vastly different ways.

In Japan, criticised as the world's main producer of underage pornography, the number of prosecutions involving child prostitution and pornography has risen in recent years - peaking at 1,080 cases in the first half of last year.

But, said Keiko Saito, a Tokyo-based Ecpat official: ''The government has done nothing to stop sex tourists from Japan.''

One Japanese man was sentenced to prison after having sex with a 15-year-old Cambodian girl and posting pictures on his homepage last year but his sentence was suspended after he paid the girl compensation.

By contrast, Australia introduced laws in 1994 allowing Australians engaging in child sex overseas to be prosecuted at home, with jail terms of up to 17 years.

The Philippines has one of Asia's most widely-used anti-child prostitution laws which has led to the arrest and conviction of child molesters and paedophiles.

Rights groups estimate there are around 1.5 million street children, of whom more than 30,000 have been prostituted, in many cases by their parents.

Update: Children from sex ring 'have a future'

Click on the photo to view Dateline video
Inside a sexual slavery ring in Cambodia - New developments in the hidden camera investigation exposing the trafficking of young children (Photo: Dateline NBC)

New developments in the hidden camera investigation exposing a child sexual slavery ring in Cambodia

TRANSCRIPT

Aug 8, 2007
By Chris Hansen
Correspondent
Dateline NBC (USA)

This story aired Aug. 8, Dateline NBC. Contains adult subject matter.

Phnom Penh - The moment we stepped outside our hotel in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, we were greeted with this offer.

Driver: Many, many, many girls.

Dateline: Many girls?

Driver: Yes.

Dateline: How young?

Driver: Young, maybe, uh,... 12.

Twelve year olds for sale? Sounds shocking, but when we arrived in this village called Svay Pak, we met a young pimp selling even younger girls.

Po: New girls, too much for you.

How young?

Po: Eight, eight.

Along with a human rights investigator, we followed the pimp through the village alleys into a room filled with kids.

Po: New girls, new girls.

Some so young they could be in kindergarten.

At one brothel after another, there were dozens of children -- all for sale.

This girl told us she's nine.

This one ten. Both said they knew how to perform oral sex.

And they gave us a price in U.S. Dollars.

Girl: One girl, 30.

Dateline: One girl 30, and two girls?

Girl: Sixty.

We also found foreign tourists visiting Svay Pak, but most weren't eager to tell us why.

Dateline: So what do you do down here chief?

Visitor: Um, I have a friend down, here to eat.

Dateline: Uh-huh.

Visitor: Uh.

Dateline: You come down to Svay Pak to eat?

Visitor: Um, no it's nice, just a nice area.

This American doctor did admit on hidden camera he came for sex -- not with the very young girls, but with teenagers.

Jerry A: I mean, 15, 16 and older. Maybe a 14-year-old might sneak in if you can't tell the age, but you know I don't take the little, the really little ones.

We were in Cambodia with Gary Haugen, a former federal prosecutor who runs a human rights group called the International Justice Mission.

Gary Haugen: This is the kind of brutal ugliness that is sort of hard to open your eyes to. But once you do, I think as a human being, you’ve got to take responsibility for it.

Haugen and his team devised a plan to rescue the children in Svay Pak and put the adults exploiting them behind bars. With pressure from the U.S. government, they persuaded the Cambodian police to take action.

We went undercover inside a brothel with the human rights investigators.

Robert: This is Lam and Viet, and Dao?

When the police raided...

(girl screams)

Dateline: It's okay. Be good girl. It's okay. It's okay.

Thirty-seven girls were rescued that day. Many were under the age of 10.

A dozen suspects were arrested. Four were convicted and given prison sentences ranging from 5 to 15 years.

Our report has had a far-reaching impact, not only in Cambodia, but a continent away in Vancouver, Canada.

In January 2004, police were investigating a complaint that a man named Donald Bakker had beat up a prostitute in this park and videotaped the crime.

Ron Bieg: The whole entire incident had been taped.

Chris Hansen: Videotaped?

Ron Bieg: Yes.

Even more disturbing, Vancouver police detective Ron Bieg told us that authorities found videotapes Bakker shot of himself on a trip in Asia of having sex with very young girls.

Chris Hansen: And we're talking about seven, eight, nine year old kids?

Bieg: Yes … We were blown away by it.

These are images of Donald Bakker's child victims. Canadian authorities wanted to prosecute Bakker for those overseas sex crimes, but they didn't know who the victims were or where the crimes took place -- until Bieg tuned in to our report on Cambodia. He couldn't believe his eyes when he began to look closely at the video.

Ron Bieg: We see rooms that look eerily similar to the rooms in Bakker's videotape.

Chris Hansen: Some of the children looked to be--

Ron Bieg: Similar.

Chris Hansen: Similar. That's a pretty good break.

Ron Bieg: It was a godsend.

Bieg explained to us how he compared images from our broadcast with Bakker's tapes.

Chris Hansen: So you were able to match, for instance, this piece of furniture here to a piece seen in the tape confiscated from Bakker.

Ron Bieg: Exactly.

And an even closer look at our tapes reveals other details that matched: this window, these posters on the wall...

Chris Hansen: It turns out that some of the girls seen on Bakker's video performing sex acts on him were seen being rescued in our story.

Ron Bieg: Yes. Four of them. That was the break that we needed.

Donald Bakker pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting seven girls in Cambodia and three adult prostitutes in Vancouver.

He was sentenced to seven years in prison.

And he was not the only individual to face justice after our original story.

Possibly because of all the attention, Cambodia has begun to crack down on foreign sex offenders.

Investigator: Hey, Terry.

Like Terry Smith.

Last year he was running a bar in a beachfront town in southern Cambodia.

Bob Mosier of the International Justice Mission said his group heard that Smith was selling young girls for sex and was allegedly also raping them himself.

Bob Mosier: He would show these children pornographic videos. And when, after watching the videos, he would have these children perform these sexual acts on him. As training.

Mosier sent in undercover investigators as customers.

Smith apparently told the girls to dance for the customers, first with their clothes on and then, shockingly, with their tops off.

The human rights group took the evidence to the Cambodian authorities.

This police officer arrested Smith and his girlfriend and says he found tapes Smith made of himself in several Asian countries.

Cambodian police official [translation]: I believe that he didn't violate only these girls here. I believe he violated many other girls.

It also turned out that Smith was a convicted sex offender in the United States and was wanted in Oregon.

The Cambodians agreed to turn him over to U.S. authorities.

Last October, U.S. Marshals escorted Terry Smith home to the U.S. to finally face those charges back in Oregon.

Last month, Smith was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Since we first started reporting on this issue four years ago, the changes in Cambodia, in many ways prompted by human rights advocates like Gary Haugen, have been profound.

Gary Haugen: The difference is dramatic. And it should be a sign of hope for other countries that struggle with the problem of sex trafficking.

He's especially proud of what's happened with some of the girls his group has helped rescue.

Gary Haugen: Just a few weeks ago I was able to see for the first time some of those youngest girls that we rescued and they talked to me about how one wanted to become a lawyer. And one wanted to become a translator. And one wanted to go into computers. And this is a transformation that one can appreciate only if you've ever seen the undercover video of what was being done to these children inside these brothels. They have a future.