A Dream Vacation for Pedophiles - Child Sex Tourists in Southeast Asia

Ever read an article so powerful that it stays with you for the rest of your life? That happened to me with "Bitter Harvest," a 1999 MS. magazine article on child sex tourists in Thailand. What profoundly disturbed me was the story of two little girls - sisters ages 12 and 6 - who were sold to an Australian man. The girls were delivered to the tourist's hotel room where he abused and photographed them for months.

Journalist Betty Rogers describes what she saw in those photographs:

The children, tears streaming down their cheeks, perform oral sex on the foreigner as he photographs them. In another photo, he has stuck a banknote in the younger girl's vagina. And then there's one where her sister is face down with her arms handcuffed behind her back and her legs forced open.

I see the delicate beauty of the two moon-shaped faces with translucent skin. I see fear in their eyes. The 12-year-old has her hair pulled into a ponytail and wears a gingham dress with puffed sleeves. The 6-year-old stares out from underneath long bangs and straight black hair that curves below her chin. Her head reaches only as high as her older sister's thin shoulder.

I was the mother of two girls (8 and 6) and felt shell-shocked by the article, picturing my own children in this horrific situation. I felt nauseated that this was happening in Thailand, where a third of all sex workers were under 18. As Rogers reported, the Australian sex tourist was "one of the few foreigners ever to be convicted in Thailand of sexually abusing children."

That's beginning to change after decades of child advocacy in Southeast Asia. One vivid example is the expulsion from Thailand of a former British rock star convicted of pedophilia.. Paul Francis Gadd, better known as Gary Glitter, previously served nearly three years in jail for the sexual abuse of two girls, 12 and 11, in a southern Vietnamese tourist resort town. He has since been turned away from Cambodia, Vietnam, China, and was refused entry into Thailand through Bangkok airport recently.

Foreigners like Glitter are in the headlines, but those who head up child advocacy agencies in this region say that the majority of those who sexually abuse children are local men or from other countries in Asia. Few cases are prosecuted. Typically, the children's families are compensated financially, and the abuser goes free.