September 30, 2009
By John A. Hall
The Boston Globe (Massachusetts, USA)
PEDOPHILES and their victims dominate the media: Roman Polanski has been arrested and faces extradition to the United States for raping a 13-year-old girl more than 30 years ago; Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was abducted at age 11 from in front of her house in South Lake Tahoe, has been rescued after being held for 18 years by a registered sex offender.
What has received less attention, however, is that American pedophiles pose a grave risk to children outside the United States. They are routinely provided passports, which allow them to travel internationally to search for fresh victims away from scrutiny and US law enforcement. This practice needs to end.
The problem is significant. Worldvision, an international relief and development organization, estimates that as many as 2 million children are entangled in the commercial sex trade worldwide. Americans are estimated to encompass roughly 25 percent of all sex tourists. While Asian countries, including Thailand, Cambodia, India, and the Philippines, have long been prime destinations for Western child sex tourists, Costa Rica, Brazil, Mexico, and Central America are also emerging as destination countries.
The response of destination countries to child sex tourism has been largely ineffective. Although many have passed legislation that criminalizes sexual exploitation of children, these laws often remain unenforced against foreign tourists. Efforts to combat child sexual exploitation often run into conflict with the governments’ efforts to promote the tourism industry. Police corruption is widespread, and indeed local police are often implicated in the criminal activity.
American embassies have traditionally been reluctant to interfere with the activities of US citizens, legal or otherwise. In 1998, I visited the US Embassy in Phnom Penh in an attempt to report an American who was taking pre-adolescent girls to his room and paying them for sex. No embassy official would meet with me. An Interpol officer later laughed at my naivete: Why would I think that the US Embassy would want to cause a scandal just to protect some underage Cambodian girls, he asked?
In the last decade, however, there has been a dramatic shift in Washington’s response to child sex tourism. The PROTECT Act of 2003 greatly expanded the basis for criminal liability in several ways, and broadened the government’s prosecutorial power by allowing the prosecution of US citizens and residents who engage in sexual acts with children while abroad regardless of when they formed the intent to do so. The Act also abolished the statute of limitations for crimes involving children, and criminalized attempts to commit the crime.
Washington has also begun working closely with destination countries to counter the threat posed by American pedophiles. For example, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement has 52 ICE Attaché Offices in 32 US embassies around the world to investigate US citizens and residents engaging in child sex tourism.
In one promising initiative - dubbed “Operation Twisted Traveller’’ - the US Embassy in Cambodia, with the ICE attaché agent, has begun working closely with Cambodian law enforcement agencies to collect evidence against identified American pedophiles adequate to support prosecution in US courts.
Last week Operation Twisted Traveller bore fruit: Three Americans were deported to the United States to face criminal charges for alleged sex crimes committed against children in Cambodia, and a fourth American was just arrested.
Such programs are obviously important, but are they adequate? Can ICE really be expected to effectively track and investigate the hundreds of convicted American pedophiles who travel overseas every year? If a country becomes too risky for American pedophiles, won’t they simply move on to other countries similarly beset by poverty, weak or corrupt law enforcement, and disinterested local officials?
Better, perhaps, would be for Washington to remove the ability of convicted pedophiles to travel overseas. We uphold restrictions on felons owning firearms, voting, and even residing in certain geographic locations. Yet we provide convicted child molesters and rapists with the passports they need to travel overseas as sex tourists.
Prohibiting convicted pedophiles - individuals convicted in American courts of specific sex crimes involving children - from obtaining a passport or traveling outside the United States would be a significant step toward protecting foreign children from American sexual predators.
John A. Hall is an associate professor at Chapman University School of Law, in Orange, Calif., and a research fellow at the Center for Global Trade & Development.
What has received less attention, however, is that American pedophiles pose a grave risk to children outside the United States. They are routinely provided passports, which allow them to travel internationally to search for fresh victims away from scrutiny and US law enforcement. This practice needs to end.
The problem is significant. Worldvision, an international relief and development organization, estimates that as many as 2 million children are entangled in the commercial sex trade worldwide. Americans are estimated to encompass roughly 25 percent of all sex tourists. While Asian countries, including Thailand, Cambodia, India, and the Philippines, have long been prime destinations for Western child sex tourists, Costa Rica, Brazil, Mexico, and Central America are also emerging as destination countries.
The response of destination countries to child sex tourism has been largely ineffective. Although many have passed legislation that criminalizes sexual exploitation of children, these laws often remain unenforced against foreign tourists. Efforts to combat child sexual exploitation often run into conflict with the governments’ efforts to promote the tourism industry. Police corruption is widespread, and indeed local police are often implicated in the criminal activity.
American embassies have traditionally been reluctant to interfere with the activities of US citizens, legal or otherwise. In 1998, I visited the US Embassy in Phnom Penh in an attempt to report an American who was taking pre-adolescent girls to his room and paying them for sex. No embassy official would meet with me. An Interpol officer later laughed at my naivete: Why would I think that the US Embassy would want to cause a scandal just to protect some underage Cambodian girls, he asked?
In the last decade, however, there has been a dramatic shift in Washington’s response to child sex tourism. The PROTECT Act of 2003 greatly expanded the basis for criminal liability in several ways, and broadened the government’s prosecutorial power by allowing the prosecution of US citizens and residents who engage in sexual acts with children while abroad regardless of when they formed the intent to do so. The Act also abolished the statute of limitations for crimes involving children, and criminalized attempts to commit the crime.
Washington has also begun working closely with destination countries to counter the threat posed by American pedophiles. For example, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement has 52 ICE Attaché Offices in 32 US embassies around the world to investigate US citizens and residents engaging in child sex tourism.
In one promising initiative - dubbed “Operation Twisted Traveller’’ - the US Embassy in Cambodia, with the ICE attaché agent, has begun working closely with Cambodian law enforcement agencies to collect evidence against identified American pedophiles adequate to support prosecution in US courts.
Last week Operation Twisted Traveller bore fruit: Three Americans were deported to the United States to face criminal charges for alleged sex crimes committed against children in Cambodia, and a fourth American was just arrested.
Such programs are obviously important, but are they adequate? Can ICE really be expected to effectively track and investigate the hundreds of convicted American pedophiles who travel overseas every year? If a country becomes too risky for American pedophiles, won’t they simply move on to other countries similarly beset by poverty, weak or corrupt law enforcement, and disinterested local officials?
Better, perhaps, would be for Washington to remove the ability of convicted pedophiles to travel overseas. We uphold restrictions on felons owning firearms, voting, and even residing in certain geographic locations. Yet we provide convicted child molesters and rapists with the passports they need to travel overseas as sex tourists.
Prohibiting convicted pedophiles - individuals convicted in American courts of specific sex crimes involving children - from obtaining a passport or traveling outside the United States would be a significant step toward protecting foreign children from American sexual predators.
John A. Hall is an associate professor at Chapman University School of Law, in Orange, Calif., and a research fellow at the Center for Global Trade & Development.
0 comments:
Post a Comment