Dateline NBC 01/23/04

[thaite]

The Jan. 23, 2004 (that's tonight) episode of Dateline NBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/) will air coverage of human rights activists pulling 'sting' operations on child prostitution brothels in Cambodia.

Saw a preview this morning of an American doctor getting busted on the show. Watch it or tape it if you can.

[Faithless]

They need to pull these type of sting operations everywhere.

What happens to the kids afterwards?

[moJo]

i think i've seen a news documentary on a similar sting operation elsewhere. thanks for the heads up, i'll be watching it.

[thaite]

Dunno. In the interview i saw this morning with one of the activists, he said they took 37 kids out that sting, but didn't mention what they did with them afterwards. Maybe sold them on the American adoption market.

Seriously, I hope they address that in the show tonight.

[hooligan]

The Jan. 23, 2004 (that's tonight) episode of Dateline NBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/) will air coverage of human rights activists pulling 'sting' operations on child prostitution brothels in Cambodia.

Saw a preview this morning of an American doctor getting busted on the show. Watch it or tape it if you can.
CSB?

[hooligan]

i won't be able to watch :( someone want to update this thread on the details?

[mr. x]

yah, they need to show these johns man, so that people are like "John? but but...u said u were playing golf!!!"

[nonamerasian]

The intro just came on.

It's not mostly teens that shows on the sex trade in Asia usually focus on. So far, it looks like they are focusing on younger kids, as young as five.

They are showing the bastard's face, thank goodness.

[nonamerasian]

The kids are sickeningly young. They didn’t focus on teen girls much until the last few minutes of the show.

One of the pimps is fifteen and his mother gets some of the prostitution money.

Like other businesses, there were log books, but they were logs on these children. The adults kept track of which girls were virgins and which knew how to perform oral sex and knew how many times some have done it.

There were two young sisters who had done nothing at the beginning of the investigation. A few weeks later, the little one, Li (5?), had performed oral sex twice. The not too much older one performed oral five times.

The people in the business say things like “yum-yum” (oral sex) and “boom-boom” (intercourse).

Unlike other shows that I’ve seen that show the sex trade in Asia, many of these little kids looked excited to yum-yum and boom-boom for money.

There weren’t men standing around with canes and belts, nor were they chained and locked in closets as I’ve seen before.

A nine-year-old prepared a bed for sex. Other girls were brushing their hair. Others were talking in broken English.

With the exception of the novices, they were smiling and telling the undercover reporters how much it would cost with how many girls. One of the little ones, I’m not sure if she was the nine-year-old, told him that if he didn’t like the oral sex, he wouldn’t have to pay to entice him to take the offer.

At the end there was a raid of a couple of houses. They suspect that the pimps were tipped off, so the raid didn’t go as expected.

Some of the girls got away. Most were crying and confused.

There are cops with a hand in the business, so the cops themselves are difficult to trust. They arrested one who said that for $150, he’d protect the undercover reporter.

Sad thing is that at one hospice, the guy managing the place said that 40% of the girls in his place return to the trade.

There was a 14-year-old, though, from Vietnam. She was tricked into going to Cambodia on her way to school. She was told to go to the country to work in a café to raise money for her family. I think she was beaten into prostitution once there. She was returned to her family in Vietnam after she was rescued.

There was an American guy, a doctor, who was having sex with teens in Cambodia. He gave the undercover reporter advice and a price range for the girls.

He thought he was somewhat protected from U.S. international law stating that Americans abroad having sexual activities with the under-aged could be held accountable because the law previously stated that the American would have to go to the foreign country with proven intent of doing so.

Little did he know, the law has changed.

They showed him tape of himself and he claimed that he was drunk or drugged when taped.

The pathetic bastard.

[deez nuts]

CSB?


it only costs me two sheeps, a chicken and a pig.

[applehead]

that much!?

[hooligan]

shit like this makes me mad and sad.

[applehead]

i'm surprised you guys never heard of this.
i've read many articles featuring groups
in india that smuggle young Tibetan women out
of prostitution rings.

[hooligan]

i'm surprised you guys never heard of this.
i've read many articles featuring groups
in india that smuggle young Tibetan women out
of prostitution rings.
it's not that i haven't heard about it, it's more like hearing about it again. : \

[pfc beansprout]

maaan...saw it today....shit made me reeeal sad....awful.........

[ChairmanMah]

really sad..what is so wrong with that country and others like it that they are so poor? no motivation? initiative?

[mr. x]

fucking corruption too. cops are no help

[Faithless]

Very interesting link that looks like something from thate Dateline show:

http://www.trekshare.com/index.cfm?p1=121&tripid=6455

[Faithless]

It's not a new story, however. Thing's been going on for years.

CNN story from 2000 on the subject... (http://www.cnn.com/2000/ASIANOW/southeast/09/18/cambodia.pedophile/index.html)

[moser]

Dumbest question of the program: Why should America get involved in stopping this?

When the pimps and those being trafficked (sp?) all know how to speak English, and that most of those being serviced by the children are middle aged (mostly white?) Americans, it has to be pretty bloodly obvious why. There would be no supply if there was no demand.

[kitty]

really sad..what is so wrong with that country and others like it that they are so poor? no motivation? initiative?

i highly doubt that. more like they are shut out of the global economy by expoloitative countries like first world western ones. thus the entire country is poorer than here... no education or jobs or opportunities for citizens to show that motivation and initiative.

[mr. x]

Dumbest question of the program: Why should America get involved in stopping this?

When the pimps and those being trafficked (sp?) all know how to speak English, and that most of those being serviced by the children are middle aged (mostly white?) Americans, it has to be pretty bloodly obvious why. There would be no supply if there was no demand.

bingo, parts of america ARE involved.

[Faithless]

Interesting articles about one guy's attempt to secretly "buy the freedom" of a couple of Cambodian teens:

Girls for Sale (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/opinion/17KRIS.html)
I asked Srey Mom what her freedom would cost. Payment of about $70 in debts to her brothel owner, she said. Two girls in her brothel had been freed after they found boyfriends who paid their debts, she said, and she spoke of her longing to see her sisters and the rest of her family in her village on the other side of Cambodia.

"Do you really want to leave the brothel?" I asked.

"I love myself," she answered simply. "I do not want to let my life be destroyed by what I'm doing now."

That's when I made a firm decision I'd been toying with for some time: I would try to buy freedom for these two girls and return them to their families. I'll tell you in my column on Wednesday what happens next.


Bargaining for Freedom (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/21/opinion/21KRIS.html)
...
I woke up her brothel's owner at dawn, handed over $150, brushed off demands for "interest on the debt" and got a receipt for "$150 for buying a girl's freedom." Then Srey Neth and I fled before the brothel's owner was even out of bed.

But at Srey Mom's brothel, her owner announced that the debt was not $70, as the girl had thought, but $400.
...
With Srey Mom sobbing in her room and refusing to be freed without her cellphone, the other prostitutes — her closest friends — began pleading with her to be reasonable. So did the brothel's owner.

"Grab this chance while you can," the owner begged Srey Mom. But the girl would not give in. After half an hour of hysterics about the cellphone, I felt so manipulated that I almost walked out. But I finally caved.

"O.K., O.K., I'll get back your cellphone," I told her through the door. The tears stopped.

"My jewelry, too?" she asked plaintively. "I also pawned some jewelry."
...

[mr. x]

geeze, its a nice gesture but theres so much manipulation involved. i mean u couldnt be sure if u were actually doing the right thing freeing her (im sure freeing some would yield them a better life) cuz who knows whats gonna happen to her next. and then theres the pimps and the madames. should just punch em in the face and take off

[Faithless]

geeze, its a nice gesture but theres so much manipulation involved. i mean u couldnt be sure if u were actually doing the right thing freeing her (im sure freeing some would yield them a better life) cuz who knows whats gonna happen to her next. and then theres the pimps and the madames. should just punch em in the face and take off
Well, can you imagine trying to free them all?

The TV news story, I believe, said that there were some 30,000 kids. It would take millions to free them all.

BTW: Here are some of those "ugly American pedophiles":

Cambo crackdown (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/international/asia/18CAMB.html?pagewanted=all)
In the United States, a new law allows Americans charged with sexually molesting children overseas to be tried in federal court. Since it went into effect on April 30, eight United States residents have been arrested abroad and placed in federal custody on various charges involving illegal sexual conduct with minors, two of them from Cambodia.

The first was Michael Lewis Clark, a 69-year-old Seattle resident, who was sent back to the United States on Sept. 9 for trial on charges of sexual misconduct with minors. He has been indicted on charges of engaging in sexual conduct with two Cambodian boys, ages 10 and 13.

On Nov. 15, Cambodia deported a second American, Gary Evans Jackson, another Seattle resident. He has been charged with three counts of traveling abroad and engaging in illegal sexual conduct with minors.

The fight against child prostitution became a major campaign last summer, when the minister of tourism, Veng Sereyvuth, declared, "the pedophile is Cambodia's most unwanted visitor."

Using money from a $250,000 Unicef program, the Cambodian National Police established juvenile protection units in the seven Cambodian provinces where the problem was most acute.

In addition to the police program, private groups join in the scrutiny of tourists suspected of coming to Cambodia in search of sex with minors.

"We have an observation network," said Hang Vibol, executive director of Our Home, a private group that shelters street children. He said his group was monitoring the cases of 43 foreign visitors, 10 of them Americans. Financed largely by French and Spanish donations, the group prepares cases for the police.

Mr. Vibol said information from his group led Cambodian officials last week to charge Blake Alan Respini, a 47-year-old Californian, with raping two underage boys in his hotel room.

Also in early January, Frank Kent, 47, also of California, was charged with debauchery after the police said he was taking pornographic photos of a 15-year-old girl in his hotel room. The American authorities are monitoring both cases for possible trial in the United States.

"Before, we used to inform the police 10 or 20 times before they would act," Mr. Vibol said. "But now that is changing."

[bluemonq]

geeze, its a nice gesture but theres so much manipulation involved. i mean u couldnt be sure if u were actually doing the right thing freeing her (im sure freeing some would yield them a better life) cuz who knows whats gonna happen to her next. and then theres the pimps and the madames. should just punch em in the face and take off
what im wondering is how much it would take to free the average person...it would be interesting the next time a george soros or ted turner wants to give away a billion dollars to secretly disburse money into sting groups...though it's a pipe dream i guess.

[Kuchana]

what im wondering is how much it would take to free the average person...it would be interesting the next time a george soros or ted turner wants to give away a billion dollars to secretly disburse money into sting groups...though it's a pipe dream i guess.

Or to see celebrities doing something to change it, maybe giving some money here and there as angelina jolie has done? she promised a 1/3 of what she makes to helping out the refugee crisis. If only there were more celebrities who felt the same way.

[mr. x]

the problem with pumping money into such organizations (which would be necessary to oversee this kinda project) is that u can't guarantee results. i mean if 100% of the girls who were rescued would become doctors and so forth im sure they'd be willing

[rice cracker]

From the article that CM posted it looks like Cambodia has begun cracking down on pedophiles and deporting them back to their home country for trial, as well as imposing harsher penalties for pimps.

[Blue dice]

Someone needs to put out a contract hit on that pedophile doctor. I'm completely serious. Scumbags like him don't deserve to live in this world.

[deez nuts]

three girls for fifty bucks for three days was it? or was it two chickens and a goat. anyways, forget the sex, i'd get them to clean up and run errands for me.

[mr. x]

they need to do this regularly, like have camera crews fillm these philes who show up at these shops and then beam their mug back to the states

"why i do declare isnt that dr...."

[bluemonq]

three girls for fifty bucks for three days was it? or was it two chickens and a goat. anyways, forget the sex, i'd get them to clean up and run errands for me.
that'd be an interesting idea actually:
prostitute ---->maid/errand girl/houseservant.
there's gotta be a few millionaires out there who need servants out there...you'd wonder though, the likelihood of abuse. and they obviously wouldn't get much hires if they stayed in their country.

[Faithless]

From the article that CM posted it looks like Cambodia has begun cracking down on pedophiles and deporting them back to their home country for trial, as well as imposing harsher penalties for pimps.
I guess that "looks like" and what Human Rights Watch really feels is being done are two different things:

HRW January 2004 report on Cambodia (http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/01/21/cambod6974.htm)

...
Trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation through networks protected or backed by police or government officials is rampant.
...
Human Trafficking
Despite periodic police raids and temporary closure of brothels, powerful figures running human trafficking networks, and their accomplices—many of them government officials, soldiers, or police—largely continue to be immune from prosecution. In March 2003 Cambodian police conducted a joint operation with US law enforcement officials in Phnom Penh, arresting several pimps and brothel owners and rescuing thirty-seven young sex workers, many of them underage. Three of the brothel owners were later sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment. Despite high-profile raids and the "rescue" of child prostitutes, the government provides little follow-up in terms of social services, counseling, and job training with the victims afterwards, resulting in many falling back into the hands of brothel owners or traffickers.
...

[thaite]

Okay, i watched it twice now. It makes me simultaneously sad and angry. I'm about ready to start raising funds to pull my own 'sting' operations. Anybody with me? Preferably those with money and knowledge of small arms tactics.