Cambodian court sentences Russian national to 13 years imprisonment for sexual assault of 14-year-old girl
In a modern-day David vs. Goliath story, a young girl’s testimony brings down a powerful expat investor accused in 18 other cases of abuse
“The significance of this verdict cannot be overestimated.”
- Patrick Stayton: Director, IJM Cambodia
A Phnom Penh court has delivered a guilty verdict against Alexander Trofimov, a Russian investor with powerful sway in the Cambodian community where he had been living. Trofimov was charged with debauchery with a child under 15. Debauchery is the legal term that covers sexual abuse of children under Cambodian law.
Trofimov was sentenced to 13 years in prison and ordered to pay £50,000 in damages to the victim, Lisa* (below). Lisa has been living in an aftercare shelter since the abuse. Lisa, 14 years old at the time of the abuse, was brought to Trofimov by a Cambodian pimp, who has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in her abuse. Additional charges of debauchery are pending against Trofimov in cases related to 18 other victims, making him the subject of Cambodia’s largest-ever paedophilia investigation.
After the verdict was announced against her perpetrator, Lisa told her IJM social worker, “One day, I want to be a lawyer.”
“The significance of this verdict cannot be overestimated,” said Patrick Stayton, Cambodia Field Office Director for IJM. “The court’s verdict in favour of the victim is not a deterrent to foreign investors, as the suspect’s lawyer claimed. Rather, it is a deterrent to foreign men who believe that they can use their power and money to circumvent the law, and it is a notice that they will be treated the same as any other criminal.”
Lisa escaped Trofimov’s Sihanoukville guest home after four separate incidences of abuse and made her way back to Phnom Penh, where she was referred to IJM through a partner NGO. Using Lisa’s testimony, IJM worked with another organization to identify several additional underage girls who had been abused by Trofimov. These victims gave statements to IJM staff and the Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection police, which were used to secure search and arrest warrants for Trofimov. As a result of this investigation, Trofimov was arrested at the home he had been renting from the deputy governor of Sihanoukville, Cambodia.
Trofimov was the chairman of an investment company which had been granted permission to build a £150 million resort on Snake Island, off the coast of Sihanoukville, an area in which the Cambodian government has been trying to promote development.
* In order to protect the individuals IJM serves and those who carry out the work, faces of certain victims and IJM investigators have been blurred. To further conceal the identities of victims and safeguard ongoing IJM casework, pseudonyms (marked by an asterisk) have been used, though the accounts are real. Actual names and casework documentation are on file with IJM.
