Japanese man arrested for having sex with 15-year-old girl in Cambodia

A Japanese man from Fukuoka Prefecture was arrested Wednesday for having sex with a 15-year-old Cambodian girl in a brothel in Phnom Penh in December 2003 and paying $100, a joint investigation team of the Hyogo and Fukuoka prefectural police said.

Issei Hara, a 28-year-old employee of a personal computer training school, has admitted to the allegations, police said. He is suspected of violating the law banning child prostitution and pornography, they added. Police said Hara had sex with the girl on Dec 24, 2003, photographed her with a digital camera, and later burned the photos onto a CD-ROM in Thailand before bringing it into Japan and uploading them on the website.

The probe into the case started after an investigator with the Hyogo police found in October last year that pornographic photos of the girl apparently taken at the brothel were on a now-defunct website run by Hara.