US sex offender given 10 years in jail in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) --

A Cambodian court sentenced an American man on Wednesday to 10 years in prison for sexually abusing a teenage girl.

Phnom Penh Municipal Court Judge Chan Madina found Michael James Dodd of Washington, D.C. guilty of soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl. He was arrested in October 2008 at his rented house in the capital, Phnom Penh, in the girl's company.

Dodd was also ordered to pay 20 million riel ($4,878) in compensation to the girl's family.

Florida's Department of Law Enforcement lists the 60-year-old Dodd as a sex offender and details his last registered address as Syracuse, New York. The department's Web site says he was convicted in July 2002 of sexual abuse of a child.

Cambodia has long been a magnet for foreign pedophiles because of poverty and corruption in law enforcement. But the country's police and courts have stepped up action against sex offenders in recent years.