Man gets prison for overseas sex with teen

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- An American has been sentenced to 104 months in a U.S. prison for having a long-term relationship with a teenage girl while he was teaching in Cambodia.

A federal judge in Los Angeles Monday also ordered Michael James Dodd, 61, to pay the girl $9,500 restitution, the Los Angeles Times reported. He pleaded guilty in September to traveling overseas to have sex with an underage person.

Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, said Dodd had a sexual relationship with the girl, then 14, for about five months in 2008 while he was teaching in Phnom Penh. Dodd gave her family $200 a month and food, although Mrozek said Monday it was unclear the family knew he was having sex with the teenager.

"There shouldn't be any suggestion that he was renting the girl or the family was prostituting her out," Mrozek said. "Although there is no question that this girl and her family lived in impoverished conditions that are really hard to imagine."

Dodd served 16 months of a 10-year sentence in Cambodia before he was extradited for prosecution under U.S. law.