Wednesday, 22 December 2010

Man gets 8 years in sex tourism case

http://www.contracostatimes.com/

via CAAI

By Fred Shuster City News Service
Posted: 12/20/2010
LOS ANGELES - In what an angry Los Angeles judge called "one of the most disgusting cases that has come before this court," a 61-year-old English teacher was sentenced today to 104 months in federal prison for traveling to Cambodia to have sex with a teenage girl who he "rented" from her destitute family for $100 a month.

Michael James Dodd was also ordered by U.S. District Judge John F. Walter to pay $9,500 in restitution and serve 10 years of supervised release.

"There's no doubt in my mind that when he gets out at 68 years old, he's gonna do this again," Walter said.

According to a plea agreement designed to save the victim from having to travel to Los Angeles to testify, Dodd pleaded guilty in September to traveling to Cambodia to engage in sex with a minor.

The judge said he was "extremely hesitant" to approve the agreed-upon sentence "after reviewing what I know of this case," but added that he was "unwilling" to force the victim to come to court.

Calling Dodd one of the most "twisted" defendants to ever appear before him, Walter said he would prefer to sentence Dodd to life in prison, had he been convicted by a jury.

As for the 104 months, "I may live to regret this," Walter said.

In previous hearings, Dodd denied abusing the 14-year-old girl, saying he loved her and planned to marry her.

Walter called such suggestions "absolutely preposterous" and labeled Dodd "a predator" who has "deluded himself into thinking he is not."
Given an opportunity to address the court, the soft-spoken, bespectacled defendant thanked his lawyers for treating him like "a brother or a dad," then tried to engage the judge in conversation.

Walter would have none of it.

"I have no desire to sit here and engage in idle chit-chat and banter with you," the judge snapped.

Dodd was previously arrested in 2001 in the Northern Mariana Islands, near Guam, for inappropriately touching 13 underage female students at an elementary school where he worked, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

After serving time there, he moved to Cambodia, where he taught English to students between the ages of 13 and 45, according to Steven M. Martinez, assistant director in charge of the FBI in Los Angeles.

Dodd was arrested by the Cambodian National Police in 2008, for the sexual relationship he was carrying out with the 14-year-old, Martinez said.

According to prosecutors, Dodd admitted to an FBI agent that he traveled to Cambodia because he was prohibited from teaching school in most places because of the previous sex offense.

Dodd admitted having sexual relations on about 25 occasions with a minor and paying the Cambodian girl's destitute family $50 every two weeks so he could visit with and eventually marry the girl.

He also admitted having sex with additional children who offered sex for money in Cambodia, prosecutors said.

Dodd was convicted in a Cambodian court of sexually abusing the girl, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but served 16 months, prosecutors said.

He was brought back to the United States last February by members of the FBI's Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement Team, a multi-agency task-force dedicated to crimes against children. CNS-12-20-2010 13:14

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