HOW HE SEES IT A global effort to fight sex abuse of kids

By GEORGE GEDDA
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- It's the seamier side of the rise in international tourism: the sexual abuse of children, some as young as 5. Many of the predators are American.
The United States and other governments worldwide are taking increased notice of the phenomenon.
A law enacted this year makes it a crime for any person to enter the United States or for any citizen to travel abroad for the purpose of sex tourism involving children.
The first indictment under the law occurred in September in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Michael L. Clark, 69, was charged with having sexual contact with young boys in Cambodia. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison.
Last month, a federal grand jury in Seattle handed down an indictment against Gary Evans Jackson, 56. He was accused of having sex with three Cambodian boys, between the ages of 10 to 15.
Young girls
A reporter from the Daily Telegraph of London reported in September that he was distraught when, during a visit to the Svay Pak district of Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, he was offered the sexual services of three girls, ages 10, 11 and 12.
President Bush told the U.N. General Assembly in September that there is "a special evil in the abuse and exploitation of the most innocent and vulnerable."
"The victims of sex trade see little of life before they see the very worst of life: an underground of brutality and lonely fear," he said.
The State Department is granting $500,000 to World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization, to assist the group's efforts to combat the practice in Cambodia, Thailand and Costa Rica.
Joe Mettimano, a World Vision spokesman, says the group hopes that deterrence can keep American child molesters away from the many countries where children are abducted, forced or coerced into commercial sex slavery each year.
He says World Vision is providing "pop-up" messages on Internet sites that tout child sex tourism opportunities abroad. The messages are a warning to pedophiles that they could be subject to arrest if they sexually abuse a minor.
The group also has plans to display the message at airports and airlines and in destination countries through local television, billboards and road signs.
Slavery
Former Rep. John R. Miller, R-Wa, who heads the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons says, "Sex tourism is one of the major components of modern day slavery, the biggest driver of forced child prostitution."
World Vision cited statistics to show that more than 1 million children are recruited annually into commercial sex slavery.
The highest concentrations of child prostitutes are found in Asia and South America, it says. The figures, it adds, have increased enormously in the recent past in Russia, Poland, Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Many sex tourists are born pedophiles but the majority are "situational offenders" driven by curiosity or other reasons, World Vision says.
The group has made some inroads in Cambodia with the help of the country's Ministry of Tourism. As an example, a number of local hotels now forbid local children from entering with foreigners.
Children make up only a part of trafficking in the international sex trade. And the State Department issues a report each year on the efforts of governments to combat the overall problem.
Countries that are not making significant efforts to combat this "modern day slavery" could be subject to U.S. sanctions.
Sex trade
A State Department report in June estimated that 800,000 to 900,000 people worldwide every year are trafficked across borders into the sex trade or into forced labor situations. Up to 20,000 are trafficked into the United States.
"It is incomprehensible," says Secretary of State Colin Powell, "that trafficking in human beings is taking place in the 21st Century -- incomprehensible but true. Trafficking leaves no land untouched, including our own."
XGeorge Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.