US targets child sex offenders

2006-01-26 13:32

San Francisco - Americans caught paying children for sex in foreign countries can be prosecuted in the United States, a federal appeals court ruled in upholding a two-year-old law criminalising such behaviour.

Michael Lewis Clark, a 71-year-old military veteran and the first person charged under the so-called Protect Act for having paid sex with minors in Cambodia, had argued that US law enforcement's reach shouldn't extend overseas.

But a divided 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday that Congress' constitutional authority to regulate commerce with foreign countries allows for the prosecution of Clark and other Americans on underage sex tours abroad because they pay for sex.

"The illicit sexual conduct reached by the statute expressly includes commercial sex acts performed by a US citizen on foreign soil," Judge M Margaret McKeown wrote for the 2-1 majority of the appeals panel that considered the case. "This conduct might be immoral and criminal, but it is also commercial."

Clark reserved his right to appeal in 2004 when he pleaded guilty in a federal court in Seattle to soliciting sex from two Cambodian boys, ages 10 and 13. He was sentenced to 97 months in prison.

Prosecutors said Clark may have had sex with as many as 50 children in Cambodia, paying them $2 each.

"It is really an important decision from the government's point of view," said Helen Brunner, one of the prosecutors on the case. "There are really very few statutes that govern the conduct of US citizens abroad."

The attorney with the federal public defenders office who represented Clark did not return a telephone call.

Since a federal grand jury indicted Clark in 2003, 14 other men have been charged under the Protect Act, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Judge Warren Ferguson dissented in on Wednesday's decision, writing that Clark's behaviour did not justify the reach of US law enforcement into foreign countries.

"The sexual abuse of children abroad is despicable," Ferguson wrote, "but we should not, and need not, refashion our Constitution to address it."

- AP