U.S. child-sex tourism to Cuba hardly exists

Posted on Sunday, 03.17.13

CUBA

U.S. child-sex tourism to Cuba hardly exists

These stories are the result of a joint investigation by Toronto Star
reporters Robert Cribb, Jennifer Quinn and Julian Sher, and El Nuevo
Herald reporter Juan O. Tamayo.

An odd combination of Washington's trade embargo on Cuba and tough U.S.
laws on sex tourism has kept down the number of U.S. travelers who fly
to the island to abuse underage girls and boys.

U.S. residents account for an estimated — and chilling — 25 percent of
child-sex tourism worldwide, said Miami-based FBI Special Agent Heather
Armstrong, a member of the Crimes against Children Squad.

About one-quarter of the child-sex tourists in Cambodia surveyed about
10 years ago were from the United States and Canada, said Carol
Smolenski, head of the U.S. branch of the global monitoring group End
Child Prostitution and Trafficking.

And U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says its Operation Predator
led to the arrest of a record 1,655 child pornographers, child-sex
tourists and facilitators, human smugglers and traffickers of minors in
fiscal year 2012. Florida accounted for 406 of the arrests, including 81
in the Miami district.

Yet U.S. child-sex tourism to an island just 90 miles off the coast of
Florida falls far short of the levels of exploitation by Canadians and
Spaniards found by a joint investigation by the Toronto Star and the El
Nuevo Herald.

"When we talk about hotbeds of activity, [Cuba] is not one that comes
up," said one ICE official familiar with child-sex tourism cases.

100-YEAR SENTENCE

Federal prosecutors in South Florida said they knew of no cases of child
exploitation in Cuba since 2004. That's when Miami Beach resident Angel
Mariscal was sentenced to 100 years in prison for having sex with
underage girls in videos shot in Cuba and his native Ecuador. He was
HIV-positive.

Some child pornography seized by U.S. authorities in recent years
appears to have come from Cuban computers, said Michelle Collins, with
the Exploited Children Division at the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children in Washington.

But James Cason, the top U.S. diplomat in Havana from 2002-05, said he
could not recall any U.S. sex tourists jailed there during his tenure.
U.S. diplomats in Havana reported in 2009 that some Americans were
jailed there for child prostitution but gave no number.

State Department officials say they did not know whether any Americans
are currently jailed there for sex crimes.

Perhaps the key reason for the lack of U.S. sex tourism to Cuba is
Washington's trade embargo on the communist-ruled island, which has
limited travel there for more than half a century.

Cuban Americans can visit anytime, but they know "that the police can
throw them in jail anytime" and that U.S. consular officials in Havana
"cannot protect them," said Cason, now the mayor of Coral Gables.

Non-Cuban Americans are barred from tourist trips and can go only on
group "educational" trips that are tightly guided and can cost upwards
of $5,000 a week. Only about 67,000 went to Cuba in 2011. In contrast,
more than one million Canadians visited the island in 2012, and a week
in Varadero beach can cost them as little as $600.

TIGHT MONITORING

What's more, U.S. and state laws, as well as regulations and procedures,
are tough on sex tourists and allow for the tight monitoring of their
travels.

Federal laws make it a crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison to
engage in sex abroad with anyone under the age of 18 or to "facilitate
the travel" for sex tourism.

Many states require convicted sex offenders to give up to a 21-day
notice of foreign travel, including passport number, destination,
itinerary, means of transport and purpose of trip. Florida requires
notification 48 hours before departure.

Those notifications are forwarded to the Marshals Service's National Sex
Offender Targeting Center, which has about 40 officers tracking down the
estimated 700,000 sex offenders who violate their reporting requirements.

Targeting Center chief Rich Kelly said his unit also notifies Interpol
and the destination countries when sex offenders are traveling abroad.
More than 540 such notifications were sent in 2012, double the number
from the previous year, Kelly added.

In partnership with the FBI, the Postal Service and other U.S. agencies,
ICE's National Child Victim Identification System also manages an
archive of child-sex images designed to help identify the victims.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/17/3291012/us-child-sex-tourism-to-cuba-hardly.html#storylink=misearch