Bournemouth 'Sex Tourist' Jailed

A fish and chip shop owner from Dorset has become only the second man to be jailed under a law designed to catch sex tourists.

David Graham, 47, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to sexual activity with a boy of 14 in Cambodia in April 2006.

He was arrested in France last year after spending six years on the run.

Graham, who was originally from Bournemouth, was jailed for 21 months and ordered to pay £2,500 costs.

He was prosecuted under S72 of the Sexual Offences Act of 2003 which allows UK nationals to be dealt with in Britain with for offences committed abroad.

The first prosecution involved Barry McCloud, who was jailed for life in 2010 for sex offences against a girl in Goa.

Caroline Haughey, prosecuting, said volunteers working with local police saw Graham picking up the boy on the street in Phnom Penh and sexually assaulting him.

Graham was arrested by British police two months later but fled to France without answering bail in August 2006.

He was traced to Perpignan in September last year and was found to be using the name Daniel Green.

Graham denied paying the orphaned street child any money, but Miss Haughey said it was a "deliberate and sophisticated act'' to travel abroad to find a vulnerable child.

Christopher Strachan, for Graham, said he had settled in France with a Jamaican woman and they ran a fish and chip shop.

Mr Strachan said: "He went to a number of countries as a tourist. He was interested in temples and wildlife.

"He acted out of character that day.''

Judge John Bevan told Graham: "I am not interested in whether you were a sex tourist or a tourist who decided to engage in sex.''

What he had made the child go through had now caught up with him.