Police Chief Jamie Graham will likely send one of the department's top sex crime investigators to Cambodia for up to three months to gather intelligence on Canadian pedophiles preying on children as young as five years old.

Graham's move would be a first for a Canadian police force, none of which has investigators stationed overseas tracking Canadian pedophiles. The chief described his decision as a "defining moment."

"What are you as a police force?" he asked rhetorically. "Are you there to simply draw a circle around Vancouver and protect our citizens? Or, when we see behaviour that affects children around the world, do we have a responsibility to step up to the plate when we think there could be Canadian men over there committing crimes? And this is one of those moments that I think we will."

Graham's action came from information he received from Insp. Tom McCluskie, who is in charge of the department's major crime section. McCluskie was in Cambodia for seven days in May to present an award to the Cambodian National Police for its help in a VPD-led investigation of a local sex predator.

The Cambodian police's assistance helped Vancouver investigators build a strong case against former East Side resident Donald Bakker, who committed sexual acts against seven Asian girls between the ages of seven and 12 in a Cambodian brothel.

Bakker, who videotaped the acts, pleaded guilty to those crimes and to sexual assault causing bodily harm against two sex trade workers and sexual assault against a third in Vancouver.

The 44-year-old former employee of the Pan Pacific Hotel was the first Canadian to be prosecuted under the country's so-called sex tourism law for sex offences committed in a foreign country. He was sentenced last June to seven years in prison, and had served 18 months in jail prior to being sentenced. He lived in a house at Dundas and Nanaimo streets at the time of his arrest in December 2003.

Graham still hasn't worked out the cost or the exact length of time an investigator would spend in Cambodia, but said McCluskie would likely be the person he selects to go. McCluskie is expected to present a report of his trip to the chief before the end of the week.

McCluskie will recommend training Cambodian police to investigate sex crimes. McCluskie worked eight years in the VPD's sex crimes unit and has taught officers throughout the province.

In an interview with the Courier, McCluskie said having an officer in Cambodia would give the department a better idea of how many Vancouverites and other Canadian pedophiles are paying kids for sex in that country.

"That's an unknown number," he said. "But I can tell you through our investigations here, we have had a number of cases in the past where our suspects have got on planes and boarded them for Third World countries. And there's nothing we can do about it, and we know exactly why they're going."

A VPD officer wouldn't have powers of arrest in Cambodia. But McCluskie said the officer could have Cambodian police conduct investigations on behalf of the VPD. The officer could also set up a network in Cambodia with non-governmental organizations and other agencies to assist in tracking Canadian pedophiles.

Working with the Cambodian police would no doubt prove a challenge, admitted McCluskie, noting some officers there are corrupt. He pointed to a recent television documentary that showed a Cambodian officer working security for a brothel.

"If there's money to be made, they won't cut their own sources off," he said.

In the village of Svay Pak, where the seven Asian girls were working when Bakker was there, McCluskie said upward of 30,000 children work in the sex trade. The trade is easily visible in other parts of the country, he said.

He described one scene in Pnomh Penh. "There's this line of males who are sitting at the top of an embankment and they're watching these families bathe in the Mekong River. And you'll see these guys walking up and down what I consider to be a boardwalk and they're just looking for children to have sex."

McCluskie has developed a standard profile of a typical pedophile, but he wouldn't reveal it for investigative purposes. Although McCluskie didn't witness men give money to children or their families for sex, he said he knew what the men were doing-and so did the families. "For you and I, we go, 'That's disgusting.' For the families, they go, 'Well, you know, that's survival.'"

McCluskie noted the seven Asian girls involved in the Bakker case are now in the hands of the aid agency World Vision and going to school.

"That was huge-huge," he said.