Shop owner, who abused boy, in Cambodia after paying him, jailed in Britain under new sex tourism laws

A sex tourist paid a teenage orphan 99p to grope him on the streets of Cambodia, it emerged today.

Fish and chip shop owner David Graham, 47, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to sexual activity with a boy of 14 in Cambodia in April 2006. He was arrested in France last year after six years on the run.

Graham, originally from Bournemouth, Dorset, was jailed for 21 months and ordered to pay £2,500 costs. He today became only the second man to be jailed under a law designed to catch sex tourists.

Jailed: Fish and chip shop owner David Graham, 47, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to sexual activity with a boy of 14 in Cambodia in April 2006. He was arrested in France last year after six years on the run

The traveller was caught after charity workers spotted him - and traced him back to the UK. But he fled to France while on bail and was started running a fish and chip shop in Perpignan.

At the time of the offence he was aged 40 and had been hanging around the riverside area outside the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh when charity workers spotted him approaching street children.

Action Pour Les Enfants Investigators, whose aim is to stamp out child exploitation, followed him as he made his way back to his hotel. He beckoned over the boy, who had been sniffing glue.

The taxi driver and former hardware store worker was then videoed for nearly an hour sitting on a bench with his arm around the boy - who had run away from his aunt after his parents had died.

He had his hand on the boy and was then seen putting the boy’s hand down his shorts in the incident which lasted half an hour and for which the youngster was paid 6,000 Riel, worth £0.99.

Graham flew out of Cambodia the day after, but investigators traced his name from hotel records.

Ten days later the father of three was again spotted in the capital chatting to children and was seen buying them food and clothes and taking them to restaurants in April 2006.

The charity found the boy and he told them ‘the man held him by the wrist and put his hand inside the man’s shorts... He tried to take his hand away but the man held his hand there. He was scared.’

UK police were alerted and Graham was arrested at his home in Bournemouth two months later.