Repeat sex offender nabbed in Cambodia

A 72-year-old man is one of several Minnesota sex criminals believed to have fled the country.

March 4, 2011

By JAMES WALSH

Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St Paul, Minnesota, USA)

Loren Clayton Oulman was like many American expatriates looking for a fresh start in Asia. He ran website ads in Korea and China, offering his services as a teacher or consultant. He lived in Cambodia and traveled to India, Bangkok and Myanmar, searching for opportunities.

But he is also a convicted sex offender who'd fled Minnesota. Thanks to his Internet ads and a new international initiative, the U.S. Marshals Service captured Oulman in January and, last week, returned him to a cell in Minnesota. He had spent more than a year abroad and been featured on "America's Most Wanted."

Oulman, 72, is one of a several known sex offenders who have fled Minnesota for other countries, according to the Marshals Service -- just some of the thousands across the country who evade monitoring. Investigators hope a new initiative, dubbed "Project Sentinel/Operation Guardian," helps make foreign soil less of a haven for U.S. sex criminals.

"It's about child safety," said Deputy U.S. Marshal Matt Moran, who coordinates sex offender investigations for the Minnesota office. "Here, and in other countries."

Cambodian court convicts US sex offender again

January 28, 2010

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - An American man already serving a 10-year prison term for sexually abusing a teenage girl has been sentenced to three more years for a second offense.

Phnom Penh Municipal Court Judge Chhay Kong on Thursday found Michael James Dodd of Washington, D.C. guilty of soliciting sex from a 15-year-old girl and handed him the new sentence.

Last August, the same court sentenced Dodd to 10 years in jail and ordered him to pay 20 million riel (US$4,878) in compensation to a 14-year-old girl after finding him guilty of soliciting sex with her.

Meng Sotheary, Dodd's lawyer, said the court's latest decision was not legally sound but based solely on police reports and the girl's testimony.

California sex offender faces new charges in Cambodia

Friday, May. 22, 2009
Sam Stanton
The Sacramento Bee (California, USA)

Formerly a patient at Atascadero State Hospital, he is suspected of molesting four young boys

Jack Louis Sporich was living an idyllic retirement, splitting his time between a luxury condo in Sedona, Ariz., and a sprawling home he was having built in a tourist mecca in Cambodia.

The 74-year-old retired engineer appeared to have escaped his past, which included his classification as one of California’s most dangerous sex offenders, one who authorities suspect may have molested more than 500 young boys over the years.

Now, officials say Sporich, who won his release from Atascadero State Hospital in May 2004 without spending a single day in treatment, may have reoffended.

He has been charged in Cambodia with indecent acts against minors in a case involving four young Cambodian boys, according to an official in Phnom Penh whose organization helped investigate Sporich.

Cambodian news accounts of his arrest indicate Sporich denied the allegations, which included the claim he lured the children — ages 9 to 13 — to his home with toys and candies. The Cambodia Daily reported he also attracted youngsters by dropping dollar bills in the street.

He was arrested Feb. 2 and remains in custody in the tourist town of Siem Reap, according to Seila Samleang, executive director of Action Pour Les Enfants-Cambodia.

APLE-Cambodia is a nongovernmental organization that works closely with Cambodian police to target foreign pedophiles who exploit youngsters in that country, and Sporich had been under investigation by the group.

Samleang said in an e-mail to The Sacramento Bee the charges are misdemeanors punishable by a prison sentence of one to three years.

Sexual exploitation of children has been a problem in Cambodia for years, where the age of consent is 15.

Todd Melnik, the defense attorney who won Sporich’s release from Atascadero, said he knew nothing of the Cambodia charges. An e-mail to Sporich this week seeking comment did not receive a response.

Troubling history

Sporich is no stranger to charges of sex with kids.

He spent nine years in prison after his conviction in Ventura County on seven counts of lewd acts upon children under 14. Then, he was committed to Atascadero State Hospital as a “sexually violent predator” deemed too dangerous to be released upon completion of his sentence.

David Lehr, a Ventura County defense attorney who originally prosecuted Sporich, said he may have had as many as 500 victims, and he typically befriended boys through their parents and offered to take them on camping trips.

The parents frequently would pay Sporich for gas and the time he spent on the trips, Lehr said last week.

“If I had to pick from a list of former and current SVPs, he would be, by far, the first one I would be most concerned about,” Lehr said in an interview for a 2006 series of stories in The Sacramento Bee about sexually violent predators.

Sporich was released from Atascadero in May 2004, after two juries were unable to agree on whether he would reoffend, and he immediately moved to Arizona, where the only requirement he faced was that he register as a sex offender once a year.

He is not listed on the current sex offender registry maintained by the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

Sporich’s case was highlighted in The Sacramento Bee’s series, which revealed it was far easier for offenders to win release from Atascadero by refusing treatment than by undergoing the lengthy treatment program designed to prevent them from reoffending.

After The Sacramento Bee’s series, lawmakers introduced a number of proposed improvements to the system and voters later that year overwhelmingly approved Proposition 83.

That measure increased prison sentences for habitual and violent offenders and did away with the requirement that sexually violent predators be allowed a trial every two years. Instead, they now can petition annually for a hearing, but the burden of proof is on them to convince a court they no longer pose a threat.