[British] Paedophile Gets Five-Year Travel Ban

It is the second time Griffin has come under suspicion.

UK, Wednesday January 18, 2012
Martin Brunt,
Sky News crime correspondent

A British orphanage owner who was deported from Cambodia for sexually abusing a boy in his care has been given a worldwide travel ban.

Nicholas Griffin, 54, a former scout leader who set up two orphanages, was expelled from the country after a year in a Cambodian jail.

A dozen children told investigators he exposed himself, touched them and shared their beds.

A judge imposed the maximum five-year travel ban and told Griffin: "It is absolutely essential to protect children from serious sexual harm."

She said: "The defendant is a man who has, for a long time, placed himself in situations in which it was inevitable he would work closely with children.

"On any view his previous conduct gives cause for concern and he presents a serious risk to children with whom he comes into contact when alone with them."

Griffin said he has lived on benefits since arriving back in the UK last October and travelling abroad again was "the last thing on my mind".

But Det Sgt Kelvin Lay, of the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre, told Uxbridge Magistrates Court of two meetings he had with Griffin after his conviction in Cambodia.

The officer said Griffin told him he had no job prospects in Britain and would prefer to look abroad again for work with children.

According to the detective, Griffin also said he wanted to talk to the children whose evidence had helped convict him, because they had been "put up to it" as part of a conspiracy against him.

Griffin, who ran scout groups in South London and North Wales, moved to Cambodia in 2006 and began raising funds to set up orphanages.

He was arrested in 2010 after moving 65 orphans to a fortress-like building he had built in remote countryside outside the northern city of Siem Reap, near the famous Angkor Wat temples.

He was arrested on his forced return to the UK by North Wales Police over an old sex abuse allegation by a former scout but the case was dropped this month.