They would need a whole lot more than that. The government would firstly need to prove a sex crime had been committed. Wouldnt the alleged victim have to testify to satisfy the defendants constitutional right to confront his accuser? And lets say the defendant had a legitimate business reason to travel to say Bangkok (or perhaps invented one). Seems like that would create enough reasonable doubt.
Why not just let the nation where the crimes took place try em and throw them in local jails. That would scare the crap out of most of us.
From the briefest of searches I get the impression that the right to confront your accuser only applies if the trial uses witness testimony from the “alleged victim”.
And the reason these laws exist is that the destination nations aren’t investigating and prosecuting these offences to “our” satisfaction.
Prostitution has always been illegal in post-soviet Russia. Wiki indicates its legal in Kazakhstan, Estonia and Latvia. Interestingly the global trend is towards more liberal positions on prostitution, so we will probably see more countries legalize it. (Countries are generally becoming more liberal on many social issues, with the notable exception of abortion and suicide).
If the government cant prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime has been committed then the charges will be dismissed. And, yes, until a charge is proved, its alleged victim.
Here in Washington state a guy died after letting a horse have sex with him, and we found that we had never got around to passing a law against bestiality.
It’s not like “bestiality is legal in locality X!” means that everyone there is totally cool with it. The purpose of a law against bestiality is to put people in jail when they violate the law. If you don’t have a bestiality problem in your locality what’s the purpose of having a law against it? And after we discovered we didn’t have a law against it, we just quickly and quietly passed a law against it.
You always have the right to confront your accuser, but your accuser isn’t usually the victim. Usually, your accuser is the government. If you always had to have the right to confront the victim, then prosecution of murder would be impossible.
Which its why its difficult to prosecute a murder case without a body to demonstrate that a crime actually occurred. We have the right to cross examine those who accuse us of a crime. The bigger point was how can you prosecute a case mentioned above without proving a sex act actually took place?
It’s not uncommon for people to confess, especially if their ego gets involved and they feel the need to justify themselves. If they’ve been bragging about their exploits, they may feel like they are already in so much trouble that they might as well tell the truth and hope for the best.
Often it isn’t prosecutable. But the threat of going to trial may be enough to force the next best outcome (a resignation, leaving town, whatever) and get the person to either move on and become someone else’s problem, or to at least be discrete enough that their sexual behavior isn’t attracting international attention.
I think the tool is less focused on the one-off tourist who makes a single bad choice, and more about having a way to deal with people who make their bad behavior public in a way that is embarrassing for the country the represent.
Your original question was how would they prove intent, which is quite different from the question of how they would prove the act actually took place. And having a legitimate reason to travel wouldn’t negate the intent that was shown by accessing sex tourist forums. A person can intend to do more than one thing when taking a particular course of action.
In terms of needing the person’s testimony, don’t forget we’re talking about sex with children here. Different rules apply to child witnesses in many jurisdictions. Also, the hearsay rule isn’t universal, and in some countries the child’s evidence could be given via a third party.
While the general age of consent is now set between 16 and 18 in all U.S. states, the age of consent has widely varied across the country in the past. In 1880, the age of consent was set at 10 or 12 in most states, with the exception of Delaware where it was 7.[2] The ages of consent were raised across the U.S. during the late 19th century and the early 20th century.[3][4] By 1920 ages of consent generally rose to 16-18 and small adjustments to these laws occurred after 1920. As of 2015 the final state to raise its age of general consent was Hawaii, which changed it from 14 to 16 in 2001.[5]
Obviously it is really all about what the moral majority believes at the time. Can you imagine that our forefathers thought 7 years was old enough to consent to sex? WOW Remember at 10 or 12 these young ladies could get pregnant.
What legal theory allows the US to prosecute a crime outside of its physical jurisdiction? Do other countries do that? Like if a person from France killed an American in the US would the French prosecute?
Quite a few Western countries. Australia comes to mind. Thailand has cracked down on pedophilia to some extent, so now all the pedos tend to go to Cambodia. Australians arrested under Australian law after returning home for child sex in Cambodia is a common news story.
My understanding is an American committing a crime against another American anywhere in the world is subject to American jurisdiction. If I killed a Frenchman in Tokyo, the US could do nothing, but a fellow American? US authorities would go after me. I thought Cecil had a column about this, but I can’t find it.
Universal jurisdiction and extra territorial jurisdiction. Specifically regarding universal jurisdiction the idea is that some acts are “crimes against humanity” and so should be able to be punished by any country. Extra territorial jurisdiction is more specific and applies to embassies, boats, planes and so on belonging to a specific country, or to citizens of the country outside the country, in this case the country in question can prosecute their own citizens for having sex with people under 18 anywhere in the world.
The justification for it is that some governments are too weak or corrupt to be able to prosecute these crimes themselves except in rare cases. I believe the US does claim Extra territorial jurisdiction for murder as well if either the victim or the murderer are US citizens they can prosecute you no matter where the act was committed.
In your example lets say the French citizen killed a US citizen in the US then managed to escape from the US. In that case they could be prosecuted either by the US or France, it would largely depend on who caught them first, but as I understand if they went to jail in France and weren’t given a severe enough sentence (according to US prosecutors), then the US could seek to have them extradited and charge them under US law. Double jeopardy doesn’t apply when it’s two different countries laws charging for a crime.
The law is actually the same in both Sweden and Norway (I believe Norway copied it from the Swedes and implemented it in 2009). Norway also make it illegal for Norwegian citizens to purchase sex anywhere in the world, even in countries where prostitution is legal, but very few people are prosecuted (for the very obvious difficult to catch reason).
This is for adult prostitution of 18+ of course, under 18 has “always” been illegal, and prosecutable no matter what the local country law says.
EDIT: Didnt realise this was a zombie, so maybe the answer is a bit late
