Rare is the person who does not cringe with horror at the sexual exploitation of children, and when the crime involves traveling to another country as well as trafficking it is particularly difficult, for me at least, to exercise compassion. Ronald Gerard Boyajian of Palos Verdes, California, a well to do section on the southern end of the Los Angeles basin, kept traveling to Cambodia to have sex with young girls. In 1995 he was convicted of sexually exploiting two girls—whom he had apparently bought in Cambodia from their mothers and grandmothers—he went there to have sex with even younger girls. He had been convicted of 22 counts of having illegal sex and oral sex with a minor. After his release from parole he traveled back to Cambodia 35 times in a nine year period to sexually abused young girls. A Cambodian human rights organization Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE )saw him enter a child brothel and decided to investigate. He was arrested in 2009 with the help of operation Twisted Traveler, am international law enforcement initiative meant to crack down on Americans traveling in other countries, particularly Cambodia to have sex with children, and which is under the Department of Homeland Security. In fact he was one of the first persons to be arrested under this initiative. The offenses took place in Svay Pak, a city near the capital where many poor immigrants live and known to foreigners who want to have sex with young girls. Although how many girls he abused is not known, four of them testified, one saying how she had been abused and treated worse than an animal. Boyajian, now 55, represented himself, objecting at every step, and has been in custody since his arrest. The judge gave him the maximum sentence of 70 years, which he is contesting. His mother, thinks it excessive too, feeling 70 years is too much just to have sex with young girls.
Here is a person who repeatedly and over a period of years harmed young girls not only by exploiting them sexually, but by abusing them and trafficking them, and there is every indication that had he not been stopped he would have continued. Judgmental or not, this to the best of my understanding is evil behavior, the kind of behavior that does not deserve compassion. And here’s the paradox and the conundrum: the paradox that he is a human being and as such deserves compassion, and the conundrum of how to reconcile that to his evil actions which do not.
About a Child Predator
