Cambodia jails UK man, Vietnamese wife for sexual abuse of Vietnamese minors

The Khmer Times reported Thursday that the couple have been sentenced to five years in jail each.

Clive Robert Kingsley, 69, is guitly of engaging in child prostitution under Cambodia’s Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation, and his wife Chea Sokthy, 27, received soliciting charges, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court ruled.

The report did not explain how the Vietnamese woman acquired a Cambodian name.

The couple would have to jointly pay a total of $12,000 in compensation to the victims; and Kingsley would be deported after serving his sentence.

Both defendants declined to comment on their sentences.

In April 27 last year, the municipal anti-human trafficking and juvenile protection police arrested Kingsley and Sokthy after raiding their rental apartment in the Phnom Penh’s Chamkar Mon District. Four Vietnamese girls under 15 years of age were discovered in the apartment and rescued.

Police reports said that in 2016, Kingsley told his wife to persuade the families of the four girls to let him raise them and teach them English. But he offered the girls between $2,000 and $3,000 each to have sex with him on demand, with his wife getting $1,000 in commission from each child.

At a local trial last month, both defendants denied the charges. Kingsley said he was an English Literature teacher who came to Cambodia in 2015 and had already taught the subject at a private school there.

The couple claimed that the reason they adopted the four Vietnamese girls was because the girls’ families were poor and learning English could help them find work in the future.

Vietnam recorded 670 human trafficking victims last year, down almost half from 1,128 in 2016, according to official statistics. Most of the victims were uneducated women and children from poor areas, reports have said.