FBI: Alleged Sex Tourist Returned to Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES -- A man who taught English in Cambodia and who is accused of traveling outside the United States to have sex with children arrived back in the United States Monday in FBI custody.

Michael James Dodd, 59, was brought back to the United States by members of the FBI's Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement (S.A.F.E.) Team, a multi-agency task-force dedicated to crimes against children.

The FBI first began investigating Dodd when members of the S.A.F.E. Team traveled to Cambodia in 2008 to meet with law enforcement officials there.

According to a criminal complaint filed against Dodd in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in January, Dodd taught English in Cambodia for students between the ages of 13 and 45 years old.
Dodd was arrested by the Cambodian National Police in October 2008 for an illegal sexual relationship with a 14 year old girl.

According to the complaint, Dodd admitted to an FBI agent during an interview that he traveled to Cambodia because he wasn't allowed to teach school in most places due to a previous sex offense.

Dodd also admitted, the claim states, to having sexual relations with a female minor and to paying the victim's family $50 every two weeks so he could visit with, and eventually marry, the girl.

He also admitted he paid other children to have sex with him in the area where he lived in Cambodia.

Dodd was convicted in a Cambodian court of sexually abusing the girl, and was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Previously, Dodd was arrested in 2001 in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (Saipan) for inappropriately touching thirteen underage female students at an elementary school where he worked.

He served time in prison, and was then put on probation for 15 years and ordered to pay fines and register as a sex offender.

Dodd will have an initial court appearance in Los Angeles on February 23rd.

If convicted of foreign travel to have sex with a child, he faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.