Lax Laws in Parts of Asia Aid Pedophiles

American John Mark Karr is surrounded by plainclothes police officers as he is taken to a police news conference at Immigration office in Bangkok, Thailand Thursday, Aug. 17, 2006. The former schoolteacher has been arrested in Thailand in the slaying of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey _ a surprise breakthrough in a lurid, decade-old murder mystery that had cast a cloud of suspicion over her parents. Karr, 41, said he was with the girl in her family's basement when she died and that her death was an accident. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) (Sakchai Lalit - AP)

BANGKOK, Thailand -- One pedophile had plastic surgery and jumped bail to elude authorities. Another paid thousands of dollars to the families of his victims after they agreed to ask that charges be dropped.

Across Asia, pedophiles have long taken advantage of weak and corrupt law enforcement systems, endemic poverty and networks of like-minded criminals.

The announcement that authorities had arrested American John Mark Karr in Thailand as a suspect in the 1996 murder of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was viewed as rare victory in the region.

Karr was arrested Wednesday, a day after he began teaching second grade in Bangkok, District Attorney Mary Lacy told reporters in Colorado. Karr told investigators he drugged and sexually assaulted the child beauty queen before accidentally killing her, according to a senior Thai police officer, who was briefed about the interview.

U.S. Ambassador John Miller, who heads the State Department's people trafficking office, said part of the challenge of catching pedophiles is that many come across "as upstanding citizens" who are doctors, teachers and soldiers.

"This is not easy work," Miller told The Associated Press, noting the U.S. government has extradited and convicted 29 Americans for abusing children since 2003, about half of the cases occurring in Asia. "We've started to make progress, but we haven't made anywhere near enough progress."

Hundreds of thousands of girls and boys are believed to work in the sex trade in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and other countries.

Some of their customers _ mostly older men _ commit their crimes with relative impunity, walking hand-in-and with underage girls in Bangkok or with boys in a resort hotel on the Indonesian island of Bali. The riverfront in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh also is a favorite spot, where pedophiles buy sex from street children.

"In my country, I never meet super-extra available boys," Italian Alain Filippe Berutti said after he was convicted in 2002 of having sex with Cambodian youngsters.

Others operate more covertly, finding work as teachers, music tutors or even volunteers at orphanages where they win children's loyalty with candy and toys.

"If they are in a country where there is a lot of poverty and appear to be developing relations with kids and doing things like organizing programs and teaching kids, people want to assume they have benevolent motives," said Janis Wolak of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. "I don't think it's mysterious that these people don't get found out."

Others depend on secretive pedophile rings found in cyberspace or through fellow pedophiles. The networks offer sexual predators tips on the best places to meet children or will help arrange sexual rendezvous in luxury condos or on private yachts.