"I am not a tourist attraction. It’s a crime to make me one."

Billboard ad campaign by World Vision and the U.S. State Department

Press Coverage

Prosecution of sex tourists cumbersome

October 30, 2007

By Barry Brown

TORONTO - Authorities are reviewing ways of prosecuting so-called “sex tourists” after the arrest in Thailand of Christopher Paul Neil – a 32-year-old Canadian who became the object of an international manhunt after German police authorities deciphered computer images of him purportedly sexually abusing children as young as 6.

Paul Gillespie, who ran the Toronto police’s child-exploitation unit until 2006, said the practice of traveling to poverty-stricken countries to procure sex with children “is one of the most underreported and disgusting crimes.”

“Men, typically from Western nations, regularly travel to sex-tourism destinations, where they can find vulnerable targets,” he said.

Now vice chairman of the Toronto-based Kids Internet Safety Alliance, Mr. Gillespie said: “It’s embarrassing that we don’t know how big the problem is in Canada because no one has studied it.”

Various agencies and officials agreed there has been no comprehensive study of sex tourism anywhere, despite a growing realization in the 1990s that the practice amounted to global criminal activity.

The United States passed legislation in 1994 and again in 2003 making it a crime for American citizens and residents to exploit underage sex in foreign countries even if it is not a crime in those countries. In 1997, Canada passed its own law, and now 32 countries have similar laws against sex tourism.

Increasingly, destination countries like Thailand, Costa Rica, Cambodia and Brazil are trying to stop the crime. So far, 113 of 164 countries have signed an international protocol to end human trafficking.

In 2004, the humanitarian group World Vision, together with the State Department, sponsored a series of billboard ads in Costa Rica, Thailand and Cambodia showing the eyes of a child and the caption, “I am not a tourist attraction. It’s a crime to make me one.”

© 2007 The Washington Times, LLC.

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