After a six-week trial, Ronald Gerard Boyajian, 55, was convicted of three sexual exploitation crimes: “intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct; engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a minor in foreign places; and committing these offenses while being required to register as a sex offender,” according to an ICE press release.
Boyajian had finished a parole sentence after a 1994 conviction for multiple counts of statutory rape when he traveled to Cambodia, his thirty-fifth visit to the Asian country in just nine years, the Khmer Times reported.
“The evidence presented at trial showed that Boyajian thought that he could molest and intimidate his young victims with impunity because he was in a foreign country, but he could not have been more mistaken,” federal prosecutor Eileen M. Decker said.
Boyajian is scheduled to be sentenced June 13 and faces up to 30 years in prison.
Prosecutors said he sought out and paid local pimps and even family members for access to girls between eight and 11 years old, all from immigrant Vietnamese families, and asked that they weigh no more than 70 pounds.
“While the attacks took place in the village of Svay Pak – which is known as Kilo 11 because it is located 11 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh – the victims were Vietnamese immigrants who lived in the poor community,” according to the bulletin distributed by ICE.
