Cambodia's Child Sex Crackdown

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Those working to protect children in Cambodia agree that the police force has recently shown a far stronger commitment to targeting pedophiles. But it's not just law and order that is doing the trick. A new political will to root them out is the result of diplomatic incentives and pressures, both the carrots of international donors and the stick of the U.S. State Department, say child protection workers.

Cambodia's generous donor governments and international organizations have invested a substantial amount of money in anti-trafficking and child protection training for Cambodian officials. But the stick came in 2005 when the U.S. State Department, fed up with the impunity enjoyed by traffickers here, relegated Cambodia to it lowest tier 3 rating on its global trafficking report. Cambodia was lumped in with Burma, Cuba and North Korea, and Washington threatened sanctions against Phnom Penh for its inability to comply with "minimum standards" to combat human trafficking and convict officials involved.

Chastened by its international dressing-down, Cambodia's police started to make a number of high-profile arrests, including:

- In April, a German national was charged with sexually abusing young homeless boys in the coastal resort town of Sihanoukville; the man has strongly denied the charges. The same month, a Belgian national, who claims he is innocent, was arrested at his Phnom Penh guesthouse with a 13-year-old boy; according to Cambodian police, he had previously been jailed in Belgium on sex abuse charges.

- U.S. citizen Michael Joseph Pepe, 53, was arrested in June and charged with sexually abusing girls ranging in age from eight to 13 years. Pepe, who has remained silent since his arrest, is still in a Cambodian prison awaiting deportation to the U.S.

- Most recently, U.S. national Terry Darrell Smith, 55, was arrested in Phnom Penh on Sept. 20. He had been charged by Cambodian police with sexually abusing (and filming 10 hours of footage of the abuse) two girls, 13 and 14, at his "Tramp's Palace" bar in Sihanoukville. The girls had been allegedly held as sex slaves for five months by Smith and his 26-year-old Cambodian girlfriend before they were rescued by police, who were tipped-off by the low-key but highly effective U.S.-based anti-pedophile organization International Justice Mission. Smith's Cambodian lawyer has denied the charges against his client.