Deported British Pedophile Gets 18 Months in UK

A convicted British pedophile who was deported from Cambodia in October after being discovered working at a private English school in Phnom Penh was sentenced to 18 months in prison by a U.K. court on Friday and slapped with strict travel restrictions, according to the court.

Paul Prestidge, 35, was found guilty in 2007 of producing and possessing sexually explicit images of young boys while he was a Cub Scout leader in Plymouth, England, and sentenced to three years in prison.

In October, it emerged that he had been working at Hope International School’s main campus in Phnom Penh for more than a year while wanted by British police for breaking the terms of the U.K. sex offender register in 2010.

He was arrested at the request of the British Embassy and deported to his home country on October 28.

In Cornwall on Friday, the Truro Crown Court heard that Mr. Prestidge worked at a school in Spain for three years before moving to Cambodia, according to a statement posted to the court’s website.

“You took the deliberate decision to move to a part of the world that does not conduct or does not have the facilities to conduct those checks,” Judge Simon Carr said during the sentencing, according to a BBC report, going on to describe Cambodia as “a country blighted by sex tourism.”

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