VANCOUVER 鈥� At a discrete compound in Cambodia, young girls form an orderly queue to be served noodles in the NewSong centre.
Routine lapses when the newest among them, a seven-year-old nicknamed Srey, barges past the line, grabs fistfuls of the slippery food and bolts out the door. She鈥檚 spotted in the backyard, furtively stuffing her face like an animal.
Her adult caregivers don鈥檛 bat an eye. It鈥檚 one of the child鈥檚 first meals since being rescued from a backstreet brothel where she was forced into sex with adult men 鈥� many of them westerners and almost certainly Canadians among them.
鈥淲hen she wasn鈥檛 actually being abused by customers, they kept her chained below a table,鈥� said Brian McConaghy, the Vancouver-based former Mountie and co-founder of the rehabilitation centre for sexually abused and exploited girls.
The brothel owners would scrape their leftovers onto the floor when they were done eating. Srey鈥檚 every meal was a competition with their dogs.
鈥淓very scrap of food she ever got, she fought for,鈥� McConaghy said.
In early January, McConaghy will fly again to the Southeast Asian country for a post-Christmas visit with the NewSong girls, including now 10-year-old Srey and several teens who were the victims of 乌鸦传媒鈥檚 first prosecuted child sex tourist, Donald Bakker.
The Vancouver man was arrested nearly a decade ago, largely as a result of the then-RCMP forensics investigator McConaghy, who had unique know-how from running a Cambodian medical charity. Each time he returns to the sanctuary, which he set up after leaving the police force to devote himself to victims, he sees tell-tale signs indicating Canadians are still committing 鈥済rotesque鈥� crimes against the country鈥檚 most defenceless.
Such predators travel abroad to have sex with children because they believe themselves immune to consequences, and critics argue 乌鸦传媒鈥檚 record doesn鈥檛 contradict the notion: Only five men have been punished under Canadian laws against child sex tourism over the past 15 years.
McConaghy and other children鈥檚 advocates 鈥� including politicians, senators and frontline police officers 鈥� want more Canadians prosecuted. Yet despite the federal Conservatives鈥� tough-on-crime approach, the laws鈥� infrequent use appears unlikely to rise quickly. Domestic problems remain highest on the public radar, and there鈥檚 only a finite envelope of money available for policing.
Awareness of the true horrors inflicted is low and almost beyond comprehension, the advocates say, resulting in little social momentum to trigger a complaints-driven system that would compel police to get more aggressive.
About 38 countries have laws allowing authorities to hunt their own citizens for crimes committed away from home.
乌鸦传媒鈥檚 sex-tourism law, with seven arrests and a handful of convictions to its credit, was enacted in 1997.
McConaghy has called for a scheme to fight child sex tourists in the same vein as the $25-million national action plan devoted to human traffickers, as well as a mechanism to warn other countries if known offenders will be travelling abroad and for an online repository of images where sex attacks have occurred (without showing victims) that the public can access to provide tips.
