The Appeal Court will announce its decision Feb 3 on whether it will uphold the guilty conviction of a German national who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for sexually abusing four young boys.
Alexander Moritz Watrin, who was 36 years old in October 2006 when the then-Sihanoukville municipal court convicted him of debauchery, told the Appeal Court on Thursday that he didn’t abuse the four boys, who were beggars and shoe-shiners between ages 11 and 15.
Alexander said that the children had come to his rented house themselves to look for food and a place to stay. However, three of the victims present at the Appeal Court on Thursday testified that he had sexually abused them.
The three boys said that Alexander had taken shower together with them, cooked them noodles, played them pornographic videos to watch and then abused them inside his house in 2006.
“He told us to take the shower together, and he cleaned our bodies,” said one victim, now 15 years old.
Judge Ty Neng, who was the chief of the three-judge panel hearing the appeal, showed Alexander the pornographic VCD police confiscated from his house, asking if it belonged to him. Alexander said that he could not tell if the VCD belonged to him as it was all the same.
Alexander admitted that the children had gone to his house to eat and slept, but he denied that any sexual abuse had taken place.
“I cooked noodles for them to eat, and told them to take a shower but…there was no sex,” Alexander said through a translator.
