Southeast Asia remains magnet for sexual predators

Bangkok — A police warrant issued for a Canadian accused of sexually abusing children comes hard on the heels of arrests of other alleged sex offenders, highlighting concerns that Southeast Asia is a magnet for sexual predators.

Despite strengthened laws and lobbying efforts by child protection groups, child pornography and child sexual abuse continue to flourish in the region.

Several Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, are popular with pedophiles due to lax law enforcement, corruption in the justice system and the easy availability of young boys and girls who are forced into prostitution by poverty.

Police in the Thai beach resort town of Pattaya issued an arrest warrant for Canadian Orville Frank Mader, 54, after an eight-year-old Thai boy said he had been lured to his room and then sexually abused. Police say they believe Mr. Mader abused at least three other boys.

Mr. Mader was arrested by police in Cambodia in 2004 on charges of sexually abusing two boys, ages 11 and 14, but the case apparently did not go to court. Cambodian officials said at the time that he used to teach English in Japan. His current occupation is unknown.

Mr. Mader was initially identified as from Kitchener, Ont., but it's believed he has not lived in the city for decades. Relatives have said they believe he has lived in Vancouver.

The issue of Western pedophiles was freshly spotlighted earlier, with the Oct. 19 arrest of Christopher Paul Neil of Maple Ridge, B.C., on charges of having sex with several young Asian boys. Thai police captured Mr. Neil after Interpol initiated an unprecedented worldwide appeal to identify and apprehend him.

Interpol began its manhunt after finding about 200 pictures on the Internet of Thai, Cambodian and Vietnamese boys being sexually abused by a man whose face was digitally obscured.

After German police computer experts unscrambled the photos so the man's face was recognizable, Interpol circulated them publicly. Tip-offs led them to name Mr. Neil as a suspect. He has been charged with child sexual abuse, and remains in police custody.

The charges against Mr. Neil have not been proven in court.

On Wednesday, police said they may begin making background checks on foreign teachers in Thailand, who have been implicated in several cases.

“It shouldn't be enough to wear white shirts and have a university degree. We need to know their background,” said police Col. Apichart Suribunya, head of Thailand's liaison office for Interpol, the international police agency.

Mr. Neil has also worked as a teacher in Asia, as has Paul Cornelius Jones, 39, a Briton who was arrested Tuesday after police raided his Bangkok apartment and found a computer containing photos of naked boys and girls.

Thai police acted on a tip from their British counterparts, who alleged Mr. Jones had been sending photos of naked children to Britain over the Internet, said Col. Apichart. The British government's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre said he was a registered sex offender in his homeland.

Mr. Jones has been charged with distributing pornographic photographs of children under age 15, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, police said.

“This is not a new problem,” Montri Sinthawichai, a child rights advocate for Thailand's Foundation of Children's Protection, said Thursday. ”These few high-profile cases involved Western men. We have a lot of cases that involve Thai teachers, too.

In another recent case, a 74-year-old British man was arrested for allegedly sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy. Hundreds of photos and pornographic videos of naked boys and men were found when Alan Charles Mawson, of Barrow-in-Furness, was arrested on Oct. 23 in his apartment in Pattaya, said police Capt. Sorakit Thanyasri.

Mr. Mawson was charged with sexual abuse of a child under 15. He denied the charge, Capt. Sorakit said.

Thailand and Cambodia figured in another case announced Wednesday by French police.

They said they arrested 20 people in October as part of a European-wide crackdown on people who shared child pornography over the Internet, and three of those rounded up were suspected of having abused children during trips abroad.

Three of the French suspects were believed to have appeared in child pornography shot abroad, principally in Cambodia, said police, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.

A former French doctor who moved to Thailand after being thrown out of France's order of doctors was a suspect, police said. He was taken into custody when he returned to France recently, police said.