International Legal Tussle May Wait Alleged Pedophile

Darah Hansen

Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, October 17, 2007

VANCOUVER - Canada's sex-tourism law could face a major legal test if federal authorities try to bring home a Maple Ridge fugitive wanted for allegedly raping children in Asia.

Christopher Paul Neil, 32, is the subject of an international manhunt after Interpol released what appears to be a photo of Neil in connection with the rape of a dozen boys in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Neil, a private school teacher who once aspired to be a Catholic priest, is believed to be hiding out in Thailand since disappearing from his job at an English-language school in South Korea on Oct. 11. He was caught on camera the same day at Bangkok airport, arriving from Seoul.

Today, Thai authorities sought their own arrest warrant for Neil after a boy accused him of paying for oral sex. Immigration police at 54 Thai border posts were ordered to keep a close watch for Neil, and to scour tourist hangouts.

Should the hunt result in his arrest, Neil could become the first Canadian to test the muscle of Canadian sex tourism legislation, which makes it a criminal offence to exploit children abroad. To date, no Canadian has been extradited to Canada under the law.

"It's uncharted territory," said Supt. Earla-Kim McColl, head of the RCMP National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre in Toronto.

Benjamin Perrin, an assistant law professor at the University of B.C. who has worked in Cambodia with victims of child sex tourism, said Canada has a long way to go to convince foreign countries it means business when it comes to dealing with child sexual predators.

"We have only successfully convicted one person in 10 years ... so [foreign] governments may be reticent to turn this individual over to us for a long, protracted battle," he said. "We'll need to convince these governments whose citizens where allegedly harmed that we are serious about the prosecution and that we are going to put enough resources to ensure that justice is done."

To date, Vancouver resident Donald Bakker remains the only person convicted in Canada on charges of exploiting children abroad. He pleaded guilty in June 2005 and was sentenced to 10 years jail for sexually abusing children in Asia, and for abusing prostitutes in Canada.

Charges are still pending in the case of a second B.C. man, Kenneth Robert Klassen of Burnaby, who allegedly exploited children in Cambodia, Colombia and the Philippines.

Neither case involved extradition.

Perrin said Canada has no formal extradition treaties with Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand - the countries where Neil is alleged to have committed offences. He noted that each of those countries is legally entitled to prosecute individuals charged with crimes within their jurisdictions.

"So it could become a bit of a diplomatic issue if we wanted to extradite him," he said.

However, said Perrin, there are good reasons why Canada would want to make the effort - namely to ensure a fair trial, and that all of the charges, regardless of which country they were allegedly committed in, are dealt with together.

"Legal protections in the countries of Southeast Asia are not as favourable to the accused as they are in Canada," said Perrin. "I'm quite confident in saying that someone who is alleged to have committed sex crimes against children will face a harsher sentence in all likelihood in these countries, than they would in Canada."

Police officials in Canada have indicated in recent media reports that RCMP will be seeking Neil's extradition upon his arrest. But Perrin said it will likely become a case for politicians to handle.

"It will remain to be seen if Canada has an interest," he said. "Something like this is going to involve diplomatic pressure being applied and negotiation and all that."

Perrin said Neil would be better off surrendering himself to a Canadian embassy, making issues around extradition moot.

On Tuesday, Neil's younger brother urged his sibling to turn himself into authorities.

"I would like to say, `Chris, turn yourself in,'" Matthew Neil told reporters outside his home in Maple Ridge. "You know, get back into Canada. This is where you should be to answer these allegations."

Matthew Neil, 30, said he had not heard from is brother since he left Canada for Korea on Aug. 15. Interpol detectives have been trying to track down Neil since German police discovered photographs on the Internet three years ago showing a man raping 12 boys in Vietnam and Cambodia. The abuser's face was digitally disguised, but experts at Germany's BKA federal crime office managed to unscramble the image to reveal a Caucasian man with a receding hair line.

Interpol posted the cleaned-up photo of the suspect on its website last week, prompting more than 350 tips about the identity of the man. Neil, who had previously been known only by the code name "Vico," was identified by information from five sources on three different continents.

Until his certificate was suspended by provincial authorities Tuesday, Neil was able to work as a private school teacher in B.C. Education ministry officials confirmed he was employed earlier this year as a substitute teacher at a Catholic school in Port Coquitlam.

Neil's education history includes a four-year stint at the Christ the King Seminary in Mission, where he graduated in 1998 with an undergraduate arts degree, but failed to receive the necessary approval to go on to the priesthood.

He also served as a chaplain counselling teenagers at several military cadet camps in Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan during the summer months, from 1997 to 2000. A military spokesman said today no complaints have been reported regarding Neil's behaviour during his employment.

For the past several years, Neil has been teaching at English-language schools abroad, most recently at the Kwangju Foreign School in South Korea, where he taught English and social studies classes to Grade 7 and 8 students. Neil had been at the school for less than two months before his disappearance on Oct. 11.

The RCMP, now the lead police agency on the case, first became aware of the worldwide investigation, dubbed Operation Vico, in 2004. The following year its National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre joined other police agencies looking for the man who kept popping up on the Internet in a series of photographs that depicted abuse, but only last Wednesday did Canadian authorities learn he might be from Canada.

RCMP spokesman Staff Sgt. Rick Greenwood said the force has opened an active investigation since last Wednesday, when Interpol passed on the information gleaned from the hundreds of tips it received.