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Exporting Debauchery: International Sex Trade
Robert Riggs
(CBS 11 News) DALLAS Peace Corps volunteers, foreign aid workers and missionaries have been the most visible ambassadors from the United States to the world for the last 50 years. **But the U.S.A. is quickly adding a fourth to the list: pedophiles. According to figures from the non-profit humanitarian relief organization World Vision International, Americans account for a quarter of sex tourists worldwide and 80 percent of sex tourists in Latin America. **
It is an issue that has been getting a lot of attention of late. John Mark Karr appeared in Sonoma County Superior Court Sept. 14, charged with five misdemeanor counts of possessing sexually explicit photographs of children. The court appearance came after his high-profile plane trip from Thailand where he worked as a school teacher. **And the arrest and imprisonment of Dallas dentist Phillip Todd Calvin last year demonstrated that the problem of international sex tourism is very much a local concern. **Calvin’s arrest was part of an FBI sting operation using a website for a fake travel company to lure pedophiles. Federal agents intercepted Calvin and two other members of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), waiting on a dock, expecting to be taken by boat to a safe haven in Mexico to meet boys for sex. Calvin was charged with conspiring to travel in interstate and foreign commerce for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a minor and traveling for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a minor. Calvin pled guilty to the first charge and was sentenced to 24 months at Seagoville Federal Correctional Institution. He is scheduled to be released in November. Arnold Bell, who heads the FBI’s child pornography task force, describes the online marketing of sex tours. “We see these things veiled as ultimate tours and things like that. They don’t explicitly say what it is, what you are going to do, but the predators know.” According to the indictment in Calvin’s case, the requests were specific – underage boys between 12 and 13 years old. Bell explains that stiff penalties for pedophilia in the West are sending Americans and western Europeans abroad in search of sex with children. “They feel that the legal infrastructure is not in place in some of these other countries and there’s easier access to kids.”
Thailand, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Mexico and Costa Rica are all popular destinations for pedophiles. The combination of high poverty rates and lax enforcement of child sex laws make them a perfect haven for sexual predators. Cambodia has become another hotspot for sex tourists in recent years as a result of a confluence of events. Neighboring countries Thailand and Vietnam have taken tougher stances against sex crimes at the same time Cambodia’s tourism industry has exploded. It is made even more attractive to pedophiles because child prostitutes are cheaper in Cambodia than Thailand. Action Por Les Enfants is one organization making a small dent in the scourge of sex tourism in Phnom Penh – the capital of Cambodia and ground zero in the Cambodian sex trade. The group’s president, Thierry Darnaudet, says he began investigating suspected foreign pedophiles after a trip to a public pool in 1994. The water was filthy, but it was the interaction between the adults, six or seven westerners, and children swimming in the pool that disgusted Darnaudet. “They were talking about playing with the penis of the guys and having sex with them,” Darnaudet recalls. “I went to two NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations dedicated to child advocacy) and said, ‘Do you know what is going on?’ And everybody knew, but nobody was really doing anything about it.”
cbs11tv.com/topstories/local_story_258204200.html
Robert Riggs
(CBS 11 News) DALLAS Peace Corps volunteers, foreign aid workers and missionaries have been the most visible ambassadors from the United States to the world for the last 50 years. **But the U.S.A. is quickly adding a fourth to the list: pedophiles. According to figures from the non-profit humanitarian relief organization World Vision International, Americans account for a quarter of sex tourists worldwide and 80 percent of sex tourists in Latin America. **
It is an issue that has been getting a lot of attention of late. John Mark Karr appeared in Sonoma County Superior Court Sept. 14, charged with five misdemeanor counts of possessing sexually explicit photographs of children. The court appearance came after his high-profile plane trip from Thailand where he worked as a school teacher. **And the arrest and imprisonment of Dallas dentist Phillip Todd Calvin last year demonstrated that the problem of international sex tourism is very much a local concern. **Calvin’s arrest was part of an FBI sting operation using a website for a fake travel company to lure pedophiles. Federal agents intercepted Calvin and two other members of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), waiting on a dock, expecting to be taken by boat to a safe haven in Mexico to meet boys for sex. Calvin was charged with conspiring to travel in interstate and foreign commerce for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a minor and traveling for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a minor. Calvin pled guilty to the first charge and was sentenced to 24 months at Seagoville Federal Correctional Institution. He is scheduled to be released in November. Arnold Bell, who heads the FBI’s child pornography task force, describes the online marketing of sex tours. “We see these things veiled as ultimate tours and things like that. They don’t explicitly say what it is, what you are going to do, but the predators know.” According to the indictment in Calvin’s case, the requests were specific – underage boys between 12 and 13 years old. Bell explains that stiff penalties for pedophilia in the West are sending Americans and western Europeans abroad in search of sex with children. “They feel that the legal infrastructure is not in place in some of these other countries and there’s easier access to kids.”
Thailand, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Mexico and Costa Rica are all popular destinations for pedophiles. The combination of high poverty rates and lax enforcement of child sex laws make them a perfect haven for sexual predators. Cambodia has become another hotspot for sex tourists in recent years as a result of a confluence of events. Neighboring countries Thailand and Vietnam have taken tougher stances against sex crimes at the same time Cambodia’s tourism industry has exploded. It is made even more attractive to pedophiles because child prostitutes are cheaper in Cambodia than Thailand. Action Por Les Enfants is one organization making a small dent in the scourge of sex tourism in Phnom Penh – the capital of Cambodia and ground zero in the Cambodian sex trade. The group’s president, Thierry Darnaudet, says he began investigating suspected foreign pedophiles after a trip to a public pool in 1994. The water was filthy, but it was the interaction between the adults, six or seven westerners, and children swimming in the pool that disgusted Darnaudet. “They were talking about playing with the penis of the guys and having sex with them,” Darnaudet recalls. “I went to two NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations dedicated to child advocacy) and said, ‘Do you know what is going on?’ And everybody knew, but nobody was really doing anything about it.”
cbs11tv.com/topstories/local_story_258204200.html