Retrial begins for ex-Marine accused of sex crimes in Cambodia
Doug Kari

In 2014, Judge Fischer sentenced Pepe to 210 years in prison. “Monstrous does not begin to describe the crime,” said the stern-faced federal jurist.

But in 2018, in a surprise 2-1 decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Pepe’s conviction, reasoning that because he lived in Cambodia, he wasn’t engaged in “travels” when he sexually assaulted the girls.

Rather than petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the decision, the government indicted Pepe on related charges that don’t require proving the defendant was engaged in “travels” when the sexual misconduct occurred.

In the retrial that began this week, the government aims to prove that in May and September 2005, after visiting family in the U.S., Pepe, who is from Oxnard, boarded return flights to Cambodia with the intent to engage in sex with minors—and did so after he arrived.

“He went back because in Cambodia you could buy children for sex,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Damaris Diaz told the jury in the government’s opening statement.

Deputy Federal Public Defender Isabel Bussarakum countered that Pepe’s purpose in traveling to Cambodia “was simply to go home where he had been living since 2003.”

https://lbpost.com/news/michael-pepe-ca ... il-marines

Justice at last.


Jury finds former U.S. Marine guilty of molesting girls in Cambodia
Doug Kari, special to the Post

A jury in Los Angeles returned guilty verdicts today against a former U.S. Marine charged with molesting underage girls in Cambodia.

The federal court jury found Michael J. Pepe, 67, guilty on four counts of traveling from the U.S. to Cambodia in 2005 with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct with minors.

As U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer read the verdicts aloud, Pepe blinked rapidly and his face reddened, but otherwise he remained impassive. Afterward he could be heard to say, “I’m not really surprised.”

Judge Fischer, who presided over the seven-day trial, set a sentencing hearing for Dec. 6. The former Marine Corps captain faces a maximum term of 120 years.

Meanwhile, Pepe remains incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Downtown Los Angeles.

At trial, a series of alleged victims, now women in their 20s, testified that Pepe raped and abused them at his villa in Toul Kork, an upscale district of Phnom Penh.

Most of the victims hailed from the slums of Svay Pak, a Cambodian village notorious for being a hotbed of child prostitution.

Last week one of Pepe’s accusers, speaking softly in English, told the jury she grew up around girls who worked in the sex trade.

“You assume and expect that your turn will be next,” she said.

The woman testified she was brought to Pepe’s house as a 9-year-old, in exchange for $30 per month paid to her family. She said Pepe fed and clothed her, sent her to nearby Newton Thilay school, and rewarded her with one dollar per sex act.

“I saved the money for my family,” she said, explaining that a dollar could buy a day’s food for her siblings.

The prosecution alleged that during the 2005-06 timeframe, numerous preadolescent girls were dropped off at Pepe’s villa by their mothers or by a prostitute named Sang who acted as procurer.

Some of the victims shared a second-floor room, right down the hall from Pepe’s bedroom. In an email sent to a Scottish man nicknamed “Mack,” Pepe allegedly wrote, “The sweet things I have with me have the most perfect bodies and attitudes.”

But when one of the girls screamed and fought back, Pepe threw her out. “There have been some problems with a fresh one,” read one of the emails he allegedly sent to Mack.

Vansak Sous, a Cambodian national who formerly worked at the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh, said in an interview that the little girl, traumatized and bleeding, was spotted by an anti-trafficking investigator.
Full article: https://lbpost.com/news/jury-finds-form ... n-cambodia

Vile pig.
NOW, please let him be sentenced to at least 200 years in prison. Shame that he won't serve it all, but hopefully he will be locked up for life. Those kids will never forget what he did to them.

Welcome to your new life of living hell mf.

As a Chomo he’ll most likely be offered PC with all the other rapists and sex offenders. Being an ex-marine he might not cotton to that prospect. He looks reasonably fit and maybe thinks he can take care of himself in gen pop, no problem. Then again it’s far from safe in protective custody. Chomo’s sometimes receive “contracts” by other inmates to kill fellow sex offenders.

Some more dope:

“Convicted sex offender David Oseas Ramirez was beaten and drowned in his jail-cell toilet by his cellmate in Florida’s Duval County Jail. This past January, an inmate serving a 40-year sentence for running a global child-pornography ring was slain at a Michigan federal detention center.

Two months earlier, Clinton Don Simpson – who was accused a decade earlier of abusing more than a dozen children in his backyard – was killed at the age of 76 by a fellow prisoner in Texas. In May 2018, an inmate in California jail killed an accused pedophile – telling authorities that it was his “public service.”

In 2015, a former cop in Michigan – convicted of sexually assaulting a nine-year-old girl – was strangled by his cellmate.

“He was trying to justify why he did it and I told him to keep quiet... but he continued to talk about it, try to justify it,” the cellmate testified. “So, I got down and I hit him in his face a few times. When he fell, I wrapped a cord around his neck and I took his life.”

Another high-profile prison homicide was that of former priest John Geoghan, who was strangled and stomped to death by another inmate in a Massachusetts facility in 2003.

That’s merely the tip of the iceberg.”

In this case the pimps should be doing the time with him.

Former Cambodian prime minister Ung Huot testified for the defense at the August 2021 trial in Judge Fischer’s downtown L.A. courtroom.

What the hell??

Chuck Borris wrote: ↑Tue Feb 15, 2022 2:02 pm Shouldn't be parents who agreed on prostitution also prosecuted and all their remaining children taken from them? I know it is Cambodia, but...

He was arrested here in 2006, it's likely the kids have all grown up by now.

John Bingham wrote: ↑Tue Feb 15, 2022 2:05 pm

Chuck Borris wrote: ↑Tue Feb 15, 2022 2:02 pm Shouldn't be parents who agreed on prostitution also prosecuted and all their remaining children taken from them? I know it is Cambodia, but...

He was arrested here in 2006, it's likely the kids have all grown up by now.

"...victims who were as young as 9 years old when Pepe abused them, prosecutors said."

"I sentence you to a one-way flight back to Cambodia, unsupervised, and attached to a central pole by a 10-foot chain, in the village you committed your heinous devilry, for the remaining days of your life. Pack light.

Remove this evil. And will somebody, please, disinfect my courtroom!"