With Internet porn fueling the desires of sex offenders and allowing predatory pedophiles

to share information, Cambodian police, NGOs and justice officials have received

a crash course in fighting sex crime online.

A training course, from October 10 to 21, had 130 participants, including police

from the Department of Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection, NGOs working

on children issues and Ministry of Justice officials, said British Ambassador David

Reader.

Leading the course were members of the Serious Sexual Offenses Unit of Britain's

National Criminal Intelligence Service and from the Pedophile Online Investigation

Team of the UK National Crime Squad.

The training gave participants a fundamental understanding of the technologies used

to exploit children and showed how those same technologies can be used to investigate

crimes against children.

"The British as well as Cambodian governments are concerned about the scale

of child prostitution and child sex abuse - including online abuse," said Reader

by email on October 25. "We expect to reduce the attractiveness of Cambodia

as a risk-free center for child sex abuse and related crimes."

Un Sokunthea, the head of the Ministry of Interior's Anti-Human-Trafficking and Juvenile

Protection Department, participated in the workshop, but when asked to comment on

the training hung up the phone.

Pornography on the Internet and on videos is increasing the desire for men and boys

to commit sex crimes, said Oung Chanthol, the executive director of the Cambodian

Women's Crisis Center (CWCC).

A CWCC report said 72 percent of the 282 cases of human trafficking reported in the

first 10 months of this year involved victims under the age of 18.

"We have learned that serious sexual crimes against children are increasing

and are increasingly being committed by under-age children," Chanthol said.

Only an estimated seven percent of rape victims went to court; most cases were resolved

when the perpetrator promised to marry his victim or pay compensation of around $100,

Chanthol said.

This tradition of out-of-court settlement was exacerbated by a lack of law enforcement

and poor use of investigative technologies such as sperm analysis to identify the

offender, she said.