Police in Phnom Penh on Sunday arrested a 62-year-old German man on suspicion of sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl, a senior municipal police official said Monday.
Walter Munz, who was arrested in the child’s company at a Prampi Makara district guesthouse, has confessed to police that he sexually abused the girl, said Keo Thea, deputy chief of the municipal anti-human trafficking police department.
Munz, from the German city of Stuttgart, also admitted to police that he was jailed for a year in Germany in 1995 on child sex charges, Keo Thea said.
“Police will send the man to court by tomorrow,” he said, adding that Munz is believed to have met the alleged victim when she was begging with her mother on Sisowath Quay.
“The man tried to comfort the girl by giving her money before asking her to go out with him,” Keo Thea said.
Zelda Hunter, project officer at the French anti-pedophile NGO Action Pour Les Enfants, said investigators have not yet determined whether there are other alleged victims or perpetrators associated with Munz. The results of medical examinations of the alleged victim are still pending, Hunter said.
Munz, who had been under APLE observation since mid-March, could have sexually abused as many as five underage girls, she said, adding that the alleged victim has told police Munz sexually abused her on several occasions.
“He was intending to set up an orphanage and that’s all we know at this stage,” Hunter said. “He developed a relationship with these children. They came from poor families.”
