Asia Times: Child sex abuse on the rise in Pacific



	March 27, 1999	atimes.com

Oceania

Child sex abuse on the rise in Pacific
By Andrew Nette

MELBOURNE - Technicians in a small repairshop in Brisbane, Queensland, got more than they bargained forwhen they began work on a computer sent for servicing by itsoverseas owner: hundreds of images of men having sex with youngFijian and Indian girls.

The find led to the arrest in August 1997 of the computer'sowner, Mark Lawrence Mutch, 41, an accountant working in theFijian capital of Suva.

Fijian police allege Mutch, who is currently awaiting trial inSuva on 34 counts of child sexual offences, is part of a large andwell-organized child sex ring that had been operating in thecountry for some time.

The case, which led then Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabukato condemn foreigners as ''depraved,'' caused shock waves acrossthe island states of the South Pacific.

It also confirmed suspicions the Pacific region has become a newtarget for Australian pedophiles fleeing police crackdowns onchild sex offences at home and elsewhere in Asia.

''If the number of requests for help and information that wereceive is any indication, there is definitely a growing concernin the region that child sex tourism and associated activities areincreasing,'' says Paula Fitzgerald, Pacific liaison officer atEnd Child Prostitution and Trafficking Australia.

Factors behind this trend in the Pacific are the same as they arein other regions across the globe suffering from the problem:poverty, weak law enforcement capabilities and genderinequalities.

''The fact that these people target children,are foreigners and have money, puts them in a somewhat protectedspace,'' says Fitzgerald.

There is also the problem of rapid globalization, which in theSouth Pacific, as in many other developing regions, has hadnegative consequences.

''We wrongly believed that our isolation will provide thenecessary insulation to protect and prevent children from becomingvictims of sexual exploiters,'' Isikia Savua, chief commissionerof Fiji's police, told the first regional conference on the subjectin Suva last August. This myth, he said, was shattered with the arrest of Mutch.

While not the only offenders, Australians, due to the country'sproximity, make up the majority of foreign offenders so farapprehended for child sex crimes in the South Pacific.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) have long warned Pacific nationsto expect an increase in cases of Australian pedophiles seekingshelter on their islands.

At a meeting of South Pacific police chiefs in Vanuatu in mid-1997, an officer from AFP's International Division said child sexoffenders scared off by increasing exposure in Australia were nowmoving to the islands.

''Pacific traditions mean that neither the parents nor theauthorities wish to talk about this problem,'' the officer hadwarned. ''But it is something that we have to bring out into theopen because it is growing and it is not going to go away."

Australia's High Commissioner to Fiji, Greg Urwin,told the Suva conference last year: ''They [pedophiles] seem more inclined to look at this region,where perhaps controls may be perceived as less stringent, wheresociety generally may be perceived as more tolerant and relaxed,and where the innocence of children and families may seem moreexploitable."

The conference, held to draw up a regional strategy to combatincreasing child sex tourism in the Pacific, brought togetherrepresentatives from Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu,Cook Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Somoa, as well as Hawaii, NewZealand and Australia.

''A key problem in tackling this issue is that there is not a lotof awareness, until recently, of the problem on the South Pacific,''says Paula Fitzgerald. In this respect, she claims the Suva conferencewas a turning point.

''In addition to creating a regional network around the issue,since the conference, welfare and women's groups, church officialsand local police agencies have all called for harsher legislationto protect children from foreign pedophiles."

In Papua New Guinea, a campaign aimed at tackling child abuse waslaunched in early 1998.

Training and awareness-raising activities have also been held inthe Solomon Islands, Fiji and in number of other South Pacificstates. The issue has also come on to the official bilateral agendabetween the Australian and Pacific governments.

Child rights advocates say dozens of Australian citizens havebeen charged with child sex offences in Pacific Island nationsfollowing local police investigations.

A number have also faced trial at home on charges stemming fromAustralia's Child Sex Tourism Act, under which police canprosecute Australians who engage in sexual activities overseaswith children under the age of 16, even if it is not against thelaw in the country in question.

Informed sources maintain that at least half a dozen other casesinvolving Australians in the South Pacific are currently underinvestigation by the Australian Federal Police.

Sources say pedophiles use a variety of strategies to get closeto children, including posing as missionaries or secondary schoolteachers. There have also been cases of pedophiles taking childrenout of their countries under various pretexts.

Two men from South Australia were jailed in 1997 for sexuallyabusing a child brought from the Solomon Islands. Afterbefriending the boy's parents, they arranged for the boy to besent to Australia for a holiday.

''It's an isolated example, but we are hearing a lot of anecdotalevidence that this is happening in other countries such as PNG andFiji,'' says Fitzgerald.

U.S. Immigration Department officials discovered a similar case in1995, when a boy from Fiji was taken to the U.S. on the pretext ofhelping with his education. He was later sexually abused.

A number of child sex abuse cases in the Pacific were found to belinked to sophisticated Internet schemes. In the Mutch case,pornographic images were taken using digital cameras and thendownloaded directly on to the computer and put on the Internet.

(Inter Press Service)