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FBI
Child Sex
Tourism
Alaska Man Receives Prison Term for Crimes Committed in Cambodia
05/31/16
A tip to police from a concerned citizen in Anchorage, Alaska led to an
FBI investigation that stopped a sexual predator from victimizing
children in Cambodia—and landed the offender behind bars for a lengthy
sentence.
In March, a federal judge sent 45-year-old Jason Jayavarman to prison
for 18 years for attempting to sexually exploit children in Cambodia
over a period of years and attempting to arrange a child sex tourism
trip there for himself and others.
Jayavarman’s crimes were “horrific,” said Special Agent Jolene Goeden,
who investigated the case from the FBI’s Anchorage Division. In 2012,
the Bureau was contacted by the Anchorage Police Department after a
Crime Stoppers tip alerted the police to the possibility that
Jayavarman was making frequent trips to his native Cambodia to have sex
with children—an illegal act.
A preliminary investigation revealed that Jayavarman, who owned and
operated a popular youth hostel in Anchorage and who has dual
citizenship in the U.S. and Cambodia, had made at least a dozen such
trips between 2010 and his arrest in 2013. During that time, it was
later learned, he produced videos of himself having sex with a child
victim.
As part of the investigation, an undercover source posed as a man
interested in a child sex tourism trip. Over a period of months,
Jayavarman “talked very openly about production of child pornography in
Cambodia, how to smuggle that pornography back into the U.S., and about
his connections in Cambodia and how he could procure young children for
his friends—some as young as 12 years old,” Goeden said.
Jayavarman was arrested before he could travel overseas again, “but he
had purchased his tickets along with those of the undercover source he
believed would be accompanying him,” Goeden noted.
A search of Jayavarman’s house revealed child pornography, and from
that evidence, investigators were able to identify one of the child
victims in Cambodia. “We tracked her down in a mountain village in the
middle of nowhere,” Goeden explained, “and we were able to interview
her.”
Investigators learned that the victim was 14 years old when Jayavarman
first began sexually abusing her. A year later he began making
pornographic videos with her and ultimately recorded more than eight
hours of him having sex with the girl.
After his arrest, Goeden said, Jayavarman discussed how it was common
for extremely poor, young Vietnamese and Cambodian girls to be traded
to traffickers by their families for food. Many are brought from their
rural villages to the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, which is where
Jayavarman had first met the young victim.
“He was definitely a predator,” Goeden said. During recorded
conversations with the undercover source, “Jayavarman went on in detail
about how to groom a child and what to do to a child,” she said. “It
was incredibly graphic and very disturbing.”
Child sex tourism is a serious crime, Goeden added, “and it happens
more than we realize. Some people think that what they do overseas can
stay overseas, but that is not the case. The FBI is serious about
stopping those who sexually exploit children, no matter where the
crimes are committed.”
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