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The Ugly American
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Published: December 2, 2007
On the streets of Bangkok, it's easy to find an American man with his arm around a girl of 10 or 11, acting as though she were his girlfriend.
Children as young as 7 can be found in the city's notorious red-light district, sometimes soliciting customers with this skin-crawling invitation: "Yum-yum."
It's enough to make any red-blooded American sick.
Yet a number of American men regularly travel to Thailand's capital to have sex with children.
Karl Kaechele of St. Petersburg is one of those ugly Americans.
Federal prosecutors describe him as "a sex tourist of epic proportion."
He even kept a journal about his conquests. In one entry, he described a 9-year-old girl who was "tiny, approximately 35 pounds." He rated her "the best ever."
Kaechele, 64, was sentenced to nine years in prison last week.
The sentence was severe, but given his notoriety, Kaechele deserved a sentence of epic proportions.
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