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Cambodia: 13-Year Sentence for Sexual Assault Perpetrator
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Monday, 14 April 2008

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA - In a modern-day David vs. Goliath story, a young girl’s testimony brings down a powerful expat investor accused in 18 other cases of abuse.

The significance of this verdict cannot be overestimated.
- Patrick Stayton
Director, IJM Cambodia
A Phnom Penh court has delivered a guilty verdict against Alexander Trofimov, a Russian investor with powerful sway in the Cambodian community where he had been living. Trofimov was charged with debauchery with a child under 15. Debauchery is the legal term that covers sexual abuse of children under Cambodian law.

Trofimov was sentenced to 13 years in prison and ordered to pay $100,000 USD in damages to the victim, who has been living in an aftercare shelter since the abuse. The victim, 14 years old at the time of the abuse, was brought to Trofimov by a Cambodian pimp, who has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in her abuse. Additional charges of debauchery are pending against Trofimov in cases related to 18 other victims, making him the subject of Cambodia’s largest-ever pedophilia investigation. Trial dates arising from these charges have yet to be announced.

After the verdict was announced against her perpetrator, the victim told her IJM social worker, “One day, I want to be a lawyer.”

“The significance of this verdict cannot be overestimated,” said Patrick Stayton, Cambodia Field Office Director for International Justice Mission. “The court’s verdict in favor of the victim is not a deterrent to foreign investors, as the suspect’s lawyer announced. Rather, it is a deterrent to foreign men with power and money who believe that they can use their power and money to circumvent the law, and it is a notice that they will be treated the same as any other criminal.”

The victim escaped Trofimov’s Sihanoukville guest home after four separate incidences of abuse and made her way back to Phnom Penh, where she was referred to International Justice Mission through an NGO partner organization. Based on the victim’s testimony, IJM worked with another organization to identify several additional underage girls who had been abused by Trofimov. These victims gave statements to IJM staff and the Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection police, which were used to secure search and arrest warrants for Trofimov. As a result of this investigation, Trofimov was arrested on October 17, 2007, at the home he had been renting from the deputy governor of Sihanoukville, Cambodia.

Trofimov was the chairman of an investment company which had been granted permission in 2006 to build a $300 million resort on Snake Island off Sihanoukville, an area in which the Cambodian government has been attempting to spur development.

 
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