Vietnam has jailed a Canadian teacher for four years for sexually abusing underage homeless boys he met on Hanoi’s streets, a court official said yesterday, in a rare prosecution for the offence.
Vadim Scott Benderman, 46, who taught English at a foreign language center and played music in bars in Hanoi, was found guilty at a trial in Hanoi on Wednesday.
“He was charged for having sex with four local homeless teenaged boys he met in the center of Hanoi between late 2014 and his arrest in the middle of last year,” the clerk said.
According to local media reports, Benderman met the boys in central Hanoi before luring them to his apartment and paying them around US$13 for sex.
The indictment said his “behavior infringed upon the teenagers’ physical and psychological development,” according to a report on the VNExpress news Web site.
It also “badly influenced [Vietnam’s] customs and caused social disorder,” the report added.
Benderman is to be deported after completing his four-year jail term, the clerk said.
The Hanoi-based Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, which works with at-risk youth, said it was “relieved” Benderman was behind bars, but would have liked a longer sentence.
In a statement posted on its Web site, the foundation lauded Vietnamese authorities for managing to “catch and imprison this pedophile who has been abusing children.”
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