Former Marine captain on trial for allegedly raping Cambodian girls
From wire services
Article Launched: 05/09/2008 07:08:52 AM PDT
Opening statements are expected today in the downtown Los Angeles
trial of a jailed ex-Marine Corps captain accused of raping girls as
young as 9 years old while living in Cambodia.
Michael Joseph Pepe, 54, is charged with seven counts of engaging in
illicit sexual conduct in foreign places. The federal law that Pepe
allegedly broke allows the prosecution of those accused of engaging in
child sex tourism.
Pepe faces up to 30 years' imprisonment if he's convicted. He has
pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Prosecutors allege that Pepe raped seven preteen girls at his Phnom
Penh home beginning in the late fall of 2005 and ending shortly before
his June 2006 arrest by the Cambodian National Police. In February
2007, he was extradited to Los Angeles -- the last U.S. city he spent
time in before returning to Cambodia after visiting his daughter.
The alleged victims are expected to testify at his trial.
Pepe, who moved to Cambodia in 2003 and married there, allegedly paid
a prostitute a finder's fee to bring him young victims, typically
between the ages of nine and 15.
He also paid the young girls' families a fee and monthly stipend for
access to the girls for sexual gratification, prosecutors said. In one
case, the prostitute admitted receiving $10 for finding a young girl,
whose family received $300, prosecutors said.
Agents who searched Pepe's home found rope and cloth strips used to
restrain the victims, prosecutors said. They also found mind-altering
drugs, condoms, Viagra, children's clothes and newspaper articles
about pedophiles, prosecutors said.
Pepe's computer contained hundreds of images of nude and semi-clothed
children, in some cases bound, performing various sex acts,
prosecutors claim.
One witness expected to testify in Pepe's defense is Dr. Michael
Maloney, a defense witness in the 1980s McMartin Preschool child
molestation trial.
In that trial, Maloney criticized police interview techniques of the
alleged victims. He testified that they elicited erroneous information
that the children had been sexually abused.
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