Bars and people on the Soi Cowboy Street, Thailand, taken in 2014
Sex Tourism targeted at children has been a global issue for decades. Tourists from western nations have taken advantage of the systematic loopholes of third-world countries and the cross-border nature to sexually abuse children overseas. Some governments and NGOs have taken action to track these sex offenders, but there is still a long way to go.
By: Yanzhao Chang, Staff Editor
An Overview of International Child Sex Offenses
In March 2022, a special operation led by the New Zealand government rescued 146 children and arrested over 200 men, charging them with a total of 1248 offenses. This operation began in 2019 and involved 12 countries. Most of these cases revolved around internet sex offenses. This represents a tremendous victory in the fight against the sexual exploitation of children but has had only a limited impact. Many more children out there do not have this fortune.
Transnational child sex abuse is a longstanding issue facing the global community. While the internet greatly contributed to the global rise of child abuse and pornography, the situation became even worse during the COVID period. According to INTERPOL (The International Criminal Police Organization), the rising number of child abuse images circling on the internet peaked in 2021. The volume of documents waiting for review has become overwhelming in recent years, requiring more cooperation and efforts from police authorities worldwide.
However, internet-enabled sexual offenses are only a fraction of transnational sex abuse. There are many more crimes out there that are hard to track. For example, child pornography through the internet is typically a crime that requires international cooperation as many sex offenders and dark network administrators hide behind multiple fake IPs throughout the world. Furthermore, Child Sex Tourism, especially the Extraterritorial Sexual Exploitation of Children, is still rampant in developing countries and the sexual exploitation of children remains a global issue. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimated that over 2 million children are affected each year, most of whom are from third-world countries. The prevalence of this crime means that each year, hundreds of Americans are convicted for transnational child sex tourism in third-world countries. In some countries where national economies rely heavily on exploiting women and children, the government will even encourage this kind of tourism, providing more opportunities for sex offenders. Most of the child sex offenders are situational child sex tourists, meaning that they will take the opportunity to have sexual interactions with minors if there is one presented. In many cases, these situational child sex tourists would not go back to the tourist country ever again, which made them abuse minors from a superior position without any moral stresses.
Although nations and international organizations are aware of this horrible situation, there are several difficulties presented for law enforcement agencies.
Problems Facing Law Enforcement
First, child sex abuse may be facilitated by the indifference of the local government. Many sex offenders choose countries that are generally poorer and have a highly commercialized sex industry, which operates with the government’s blessing. This creates an environment that makes it easier for sex predators to find targets. In Thailand, for example, many girls are pushed to become sex workers because they have to take on family responsibilities or are forced to do so. Some girls need to make some “quick cash” to pay back family debts (often owed to drug dealers). These systematic disadvantages provide sex offenders, especially those “rich western tourists,” an excellent opportunity to prey on these vulnerable children. Admittedly, many host countries are fully aware of this situation but choose to acquiesce or even encourage the continued development of sex tourism because this industry generates a lot of revenue. The indifference of local governments fuels this crime and makes it harder for local children to receive the necessary legal aid they need.
Second, the difficulty in tracking transnational crimes allows sex offenders to easily avoid punishment. To help combat this, countries have given themselves extraterritorial jurisdiction over sex offenders who committed sex tourism outside the territory. For example, the British government passed the Sexual Offenses Act of 2003, which enabled the United Kingdom to criminalize oversea child sex abuse in its home courts. In 2010, a UK citizen named Barry McCloud was jailed for life after he committed sex offenses against a 10-year-old Indian girl several times. In 2013, a UK citizen named David Graham was jailed for 21 months after he committed sex offenses against a 15-year-old Cambodian boy. In both cases, British authorities apparently responded quickly and effectively in catching the predator. However, cases like these two are rare due to the difficulty of tracking sex offenders overseas and underreporting nature of this kind of crime. For example, in McCloud’s case, British police were already investigating him as he had downloaded child pornography within the UK territory. The sex offense he committed in India was only revealed after police started investigating his child pornography charges. In this case, McCloud was not a situational child sex tourist but a pedophile. This will not help us in discussing the most common type of child sex offense.
Perhaps the case of Graham is more educational and typical. In Graham’s case, Graham was filmed on the street by local NGOs. Even so, it was only after police in the UK were alerted by the Cambodian national police, that they started investigating and tracking Graham. The UK police had no jurisdiction nor means to track citizens overseas so these arrests were the result of external factors. Both McCloud and Graham’s cases are atypical because there were coincidences and a little bit of luck. Often cases are overwhelmed by the complexities of legislation and extraterritorial jurisdictions, allowing many sex offenders to avoid facing up to their crimes. We also need to note that sole legislation efforts in home countries would not help the situation as international cooperation would be necessary to make these laws work. Moreover, most victims in third-world countries lack legal protection. The systematic disadvantage of their socio-economic status and moral shamefulness may also prevent them from disclosing their experience, making it harder to track those offenders.
The Tools We Have
As for now, there are no single measurements that can be viewed as a “solution,” but due to the nature of the crimes, multinational collaboration will clearly be necessary. The issue of conflicting laws is one of the significant reasons why some governments take no action on child protection. Countries that choose to honor their own traditions and customs would follow domestic ordinances over international laws. Sometimes these ordinances may contradict international human rights consensus. With no internationally agreed-upon standard the burden of policing has been transferred to sex offenders’ home countries. While tracking crimes is an issue, many international organizations have managed to build a platform to alert home countries’ police. Additionally, many NGOs have taken action in third-world countries with systematic loopholes to implement child protection measures. For example, in the classic case, United States v. Clark (2006), an NGO based in Cambodia, Action Pour Les Enfants, found that Michael Lewis Clark, a U.S. citizen, sexually harassed minor boys after being reported to them by street teens. After the U.S. federal government published The PROTECT Act of 2003, Clark was the first American charged with criminal offenses after committing sexual abuse overseas to children. Compared to complicated and time-consuming tracking processes solely by home police authorities, local NGOs can build a bridge to fill the information gap between the destination country and the home country. Another advantage of NGOs is that they have an active presence in the local community, making it easier to locate crimes and criminals.
We must also be conscious that sex tourism and other sexual exploitation of children are beyond legal criteria. Author Ron O’Grady believes “poverty may be a consequence of population pressures, a lack of natural resources, an overspending military and a compulsive drive for rapid modernization whose so-called ‘trickle-down benefits’ fail to reach those who need them most.” Poverty is considered the root of sex tourism and other exploitation behaviors. Multinational collaboration, extraterritorial jurisdiction, or the strong presence of NGOs may only be the cure for wounds, but they are definitely not the panacea to end this industry.
Yanzhao Chang is a second-year student at Columbia Law School and a Staff member of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2020. During the summer of 2022, he interned at the Legal Aid Society, Juvenile Rights Practice, where his work focused on child abuse cases in New York county.