Phnom Penh - A German national was in custody and preparing
to face court on debauchery charges, the Cambodian term for child
sex-related crimes, police said Monday.
Phnom Penh deputy anti-trafficking chief Keo Thea said a man he
identified as Walter Munz, a 62-year-old tourist from Stuttgart, had
been arrested Sunday in a raid on a guesthouse where he was a found
with a 13-year-old girl in his room.
'We are preparing the papers,' Thea said Monday. 'He will either
face court this afternoon or tomorrow.'
Police said Munz had refused food since his arrest and appeared
frail and somewhat confused.
Police accused Munz of gaining the trust of the mother of the girl
and offering to help with the child's tuition but then forcing the
girl to commit sexual acts and threatening her not to tell her family.
If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in jail and is liable for a
hefty compensation payout to the victim's family in a country where
the age of consent is 15.
Cambodia has made dozens of arrests of foreigners accused of
sexual exploitation of children to try to shrug off its reputation as
a haven for paedophiles.
Last month, two German men from Berlin and Munich were
collectively sentenced to decades in prison for the repeated
aggravated rapes of Vietnamese children aged 11 to 14 - acts which
they filmed - in a case police described as one of the worst cases of
abuse they had ever investigated.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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