Catching Pedophiles: US Protect Act 2003 at Work

Photo: Andrea Bertone

We are all smiles in this picture, but this was one of those days where the stories you hear are so disturbing, you can’t understand how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents Gary Phillips and Hung Nguyen do it every day.

There are four ICE agents designated to investigate violations of the US Protect Act of 2003 in Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. Phillips and Nguyen are two of them.

Under the Protect Act, any person who sexually abuses a child in another country can be subject to criminal proceedings back in the US. The law dictates that there is no need to prove the intention to have sex for a person to have violated the Act.

And so mostly based on tip-offs by non-governmental organizations (90 per cent of the time), Phillips and gang move in to extract the children from the situation, and arrest the pedophile in question.

So far, the youngest child they found was 8 years of age, and the oldest, 15.

A couple of observations from his encounters with pedophiles:

• Most are single
• Most that he’s caught are teachers (!!)
• All of them had fantasies about children
• Most child sex abusers don’t use condoms
• Invariably, KY lubricating gel and Viagra is always found on them
• Their common excuse is, “I’m taking them out of poverty.” or “They fell in love with me; they came onto me.”
• None interviewed by Philips admitted to being sexually abused as a child

Be surprised not that the most common facilitator for child sex, at least in Cambodia, is… their mothers.

Break my heart, will you.

Phillips went through a number of cases that he’s encountered over the years. I thought it was really disturbing that some of these men would visit brothels that specialise in child sex and record every encounter.

Yes, you read right. These men would describe what they did together, and then grade the children accordingly. Another would cut off some of the boys’ pubic hair, take photos and then create a scrapbook. It made me so mad just to hear about it, and see photos of what Phillips and his team have found.

One man even founded an NGO called Socrates Foundation. He went to areas of trafficked children to distribute school supplies, giving him unlimited access in Svay Pak, Cambodia.

He had several girls living with him, and tied four of his seven virgins up. After his arrest, police found lots of drugs that were used to make the children sleepy and groggy.

He was a former US Marine Corps Captain with over 20 years of service. He was convicted on seven counts of sexual exploitation, and is looking at 210 years in prison.

“These guys cannot be rehabilitated,” Phillips says. And so many of these men are transferred back to the US to be prosecuted. (Conditions in Thai prisons could be worse, but they can easily bribe their way out of jail.)

Clearly all of this is so disturbing, and this is what Phillips has to deal with on a daily basis: broken people, both men and children, hurting themselves and others.

Why do you do it? we ask.

He says: “My motivation every day is getting these guys off the street. If we don’t do it, no one will.”