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SEX OFFENDER

French sex abusers get ‘lenient’ punishment

A Cambodian court on Tuesday handed two Frenchmen partially suspended two-year prison sentences for sexually abusing teenage boys, a punishment criticised as too lenient by the victims' lawyer.

Published: 2 October 2012 09:49 CEST

Denis Page, 63, and Jean Vidon, 67, were arrested on October 25th last year for paying for sex with the boys aged 15 and 17 in a hotel room in northwestern Battambang province.

The court ordered them to serve one year in jail from the day of their arrest and suspended the remaining year, meaning they could soon be released although the boys could appeal the verdict.

"I'm not satisfied because the sentences are lenient. I will discuss it with my clients and we may appeal," said the victims' lawyer, Hong Sambath.

The court also ordered the French nationals to pay each victim four million riel (around $1,000) in compensation and be deported after serving their time.

During their trial, the defendants denied having sex with the boys and said they had brought them to their hotel to perform massages, according to anti-paedophile group Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE), which monitored the case.

APLE also said Page had prior rape convictions in France, where he is on a sex offender registry list, and was also sentenced to one year in jail on paedophilia charges in Thailand in 1997.

Dozens of foreigners have been jailed for child sex crimes or deported to face trial in their home countries since Cambodia launched an anti-paedophilia push in 2003 in a bid to shake off its reputation as a haven for sex predators.

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SEX CRIME

Sex offender behind anti-paedophile site

The man behind a paedophile name-and-shame website that publishes details of mostly foreign-born sex offenders has himself been jailed for sexually exploiting a minor, according to Swedish media reports.

Published: 21 December 2012 10:51 CET

“So? What’s the problem? You’re not allowed to atone your sins, is that what you mean?” the 48-year-old told the AFtonbladet newspaper when confronted with the information.

The site he runs targets mostly foreign-born sex offenders.

An investigative journalism group, Researchgruppen, decided to look closer at the site, which the anti-fascism magazine Expo has called among the nastiest of all websites popular with sympathizers of the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrat party.

The group revealed that the 48-year-old had been jailed for sexually exploiting a minor and had also been convicted of sexually assaulting several children.

The attacks took place when the man babysat and when he worked at a middle-school.

The verdict stated that the victims had suffered anxiety and had to go to therapy for many years after the assaults.

The man is also convicted of possessing child pornography, vandalism, and violent assault. His rap sheet stretches all the way up to 2010.

His colleagues on the site do not have clean slates either.

A 42-year-old associate, who runs the name-and-shame site’s finances, has over half a million kronor in debt. He has previously been convicted of account fraud.

The site’s webmaster, meanwhile, has been convicted of drunk driving.

And one of its most active contributors is known to police for smuggling alcohol into Sweden from Germany.

Part of the site’s “business model”, the journalists revealed, is to take payment from the people whose names and faces appear on the site and want the information removed.

“So what? If that’s what we are up to, that what we’re up to, we do what the hell we want. We’re the ones putting our time and money into this, aren’t we?” the 48-year-old told Aftonbladet.

He did not deny that posts were removed after payment, but neither did he confirm it.

He did say, however, that taking such payment would not qualify as blackmail as the site never actively demanded money from anyone.

The Local/at

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