American pedophile jailed for 10 years in Cambodia
Print Edition
CAMBODIA yesterday sentenced an American man to a decade in jail for sexually abusing girls as young as five, the latest effort to punish foreign pedophiles in the impoverished country.
Brian Naswall, the 53-year-old CEO of Aero Cambodia, a small aviation firm based in Phnom Penh, was arrested in May last year in a park in the city in the company of three girls, one of whom he was engaging in sexual activity with.
He has been living in Cambodia for 12 years and is married to a Cambodian woman.
Since he was detained, a total of nine victims have accused Naswall of abuse.
Naswall denied the charges during his trial and claimed the case was “fabricated.”
But Phnom Penh’s city court yesterday found the American guilty of engaging in child prostitution and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.
The court also ordered Naswall to pay US$16,000 in compensation, which will be split among eight victims.
The director of Action Pour Les Enfants, an NGO that hunts down suspected foreign pedophiles in Cambodia, called for Naswall to be deported after he serves his sentence. “We applaud the ruling. It is reasonable and acceptable,” APLE director Seila Samleang said.
A member of Naswall’s legal team told reporters that his client would appeal the ruling.
Poverty and poor law enforcement have made Cambodia a magnet for foreign pedophiles, but over the past decade authorities have been cracking down on sex offenders.
Cambodia’s reputation as a child-sex hub attracted global attention in 2002 when British glam rocker and serial pedophile Gary Glitter was deported over suspected sexual offences. The country launched a drive in 2003 to shed its reputation as a haven for foreign pedophiles.
Dozens of foreigners have since been prosecuted for child sex crimes but there are still wide gaps in policing.
A landmark study released last month by a coalition of 70 child protection agencies looking at child sex abuse around the world said that while some successes have been made in Southeast Asia, pedophilia remains an “enduring phenomenon that has plagued the region for several decades”.
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