A French national with an arrest record spanning 16 years and three countries – including two arrests in Cambodia – was sent to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday over the alleged abuse of three boys in Daun Penh district’s Chey Chumneah commune, police said.

Lieutenant-Colonel Kea Thea, chief of the Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Police, said Jacques Phillippe Alberitini, 70, had been arrested on Monday after complaints by three boys ranging in age from nine to 13.

“Three boys have filed complaints to the police that they were sexually abused by him,” Kea Thea said.

Alberitini is charged with the purchase of child prostitution and indecent acts against minors.

Samleang Seila, country director of the NGO Action Pour Les Enfants, said Alberitini had invited the boys, who worked as scavengers, into his house to collect cans, forced them to undress and abused them.

Alberitini was arrested in 2004 and 2008 on abuse charges, but later released.

He had also been arrested in 1998 and 2000 for abusing boys in Thailand’s Chonburi province and Pattaya, but was released after the complaints were dropped.

He had been questioned in Paris three times over abuses victims said were committed between 1979 and 1981, but not charged because of the crimes’ statute of limitation.

Samleang Seila said Alberitini had been able to evade authorities for so long because of his familiarity with Cambodian procedures.

“He’s been very slippery with the justice system,” he said, giving the example of how three of the four victims dropped their complaints in 2004.

One of the boys, now 18, revealed that Alberitini had adopted him.

To contact the reporter on this story: Buth Reaksmey Kongkea at [email protected]