An American missionary who was deported from Cambodia last week after spending a year in prison for sexually abusing five boys in Phnom Penh now faces 30 years in a U.S. prison on separate charges of molesting a Cambodian minor in 2005, U.S. media reported on Saturday.
The U.S. District Court in Eugene, Oregon, has brought charges against Daniel Johnson, 36, for allegedly abusing an underage boy sometime between November 2005 and October 2006, according to a copy of the indictment posted to the website of The Oregonian newspaper.
Mr. Johnson is accused of “engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place,” according to the December 10 indictment. If found guilty, he could face up to 30 years in prison.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court in June sentenced Mr. Johnson, the former director of the Home of Hope orphanage in Meanchey district’s Boeng Tompun commune, to one year in prison for sexually abusing five boys in his care last year.
Last week, he was handed over to an FBI attache at the request of the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh and deported to the U.S.
Following Mr. Johnson’s December 2013 arrest, a new investigation by anti-pedophile NGO Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE) found numerous claims of sexual abuse from children at his orphanage.
APLE country director Samleang Seila said Sunday, however, that his organization was not involved in the investigation that led to Mr. Johnson’s recent U.S. indictment and knew nothing about it.
“I was just aware there was an investigation in the U.S.,” Mr. Seila said, referring to earlier charges brought against Mr. Johnson in 2000 and 2001 in Oregon.
In the Oregon case, Mr. Johnson was charged with sexually abusing three children living with his sister. The charges were later dropped because investigators doubted the testimony of the children, who admitted to lying about sexual abuse in a separate case.
Mr. Johnson is scheduled to be arraigned in the U.S. District Court in Eugene on Monday.
