Saturday, March 24, 2007

US paedophile sting traps evil psychiatrist

From the Irish Examiner

A Saudi Arabian psychiatrist who travelled to the US in the hope of molesting a three-year-old girl has been sentenced to seven years in prison.

Nabil Al Rowais, 37, from Riyadh, had arranged the trip during nine months of graphic email correspondence with a man he thought was the girl’s father, according to court records.

However, the “father” was an undercover agent posing as a fellow paedophile who was abusing his own daughter.

Al Rowais flew to San Francisco in April 2006 and took a limousine to a nearby hotel. He carried an overnight bag containing a video camera and girls’ underwear, US Attorney McGregor Scott said after yesterday’s sentencing.

“He went to room 328 and he knocked on the door, fully expecting to encounter a father and his two and a half-year-old – now three-year-old – daughter,” Scott said.

Instead, the man was arrested. The girl does not exist.

His emails indicated that Al Rowais had previously molested two and 10-year-old girls in Saudi Arabia, Scott said. The man’s conduct, Scott said, “absolutely shocks the conscience”.

Al Rowais pleaded guilty in January to travelling to the US intending to have sex with a minor.

His plea agreement called for him to serve nine years in prison, but US District Court Judge Lawrence Karlton imposed the seven-year sentence.

According to prosecutors, Karlton’s rationale was that Al Rowais could be in danger in prison because of the nature of the crime, his Middle Eastern ethnicity and his slight physical stature.

When asked about the lighter sentence, Scott said only that it was the judge’s discretion.

Al Rowais is likely to be deported after completing his prison sentence, Scott said.
See also this news story from the Vallejo Times, where the man was arrested
A federal judge Friday sentenced a Saudi psychiatrist to seven years in prison for flying more than 8,000 miles to have sex with a 2 1/2 year old girl in a Vallejo motel.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton of Sacramento set the sentence despite a defense plea citing overwhelmingly "hard time" for his Arab Muslim client in a post-9/11 world.

Dr. Nabil Al Rowais, 38, of Ryadh, Saudi Arabia, pleaded guilty in January to traveling into the United States to engage in illicit sexual conduct.

"All crimes involving the exploitation of children are disturbing," said U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott, in a released statement. "From time to time certain cases involving exploiting children, however, truly shock the conscience."

California Justice Department officials spent a year luring Al Rowais, who went by the screen name "Openminded-guy39," to a rendezvous at a Vallejo motel room. It was unclear why Vallejo was chosen as the meeting point.

During the lengthy sting, an undercover agent pretended to be a father, propositioning his 21 2-year-old daughter for sex.

Al Rowais' attorney Quin Denvir asked Judge Karlton to reduce his client's sentence, citing a psychiatrist's report he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from sexual molestations as a child.

Denvir also asked the judge to consider the "hard time" Al Rowais faced due to the nature of the offense, his size (5-feet-6-inches, 120 pounds), and his ethnic background and religion.

Al Rowais wrote the judge from jail that after he's released, he will hold weekly clinics to help adults with child abuse pasts.

"Fortunately, in my case there was no real victim and hence no harm done to anyone," he wrote. "What happened was a strange out of character behavior which stemed [sic] from a fantasy. What happened was a mistake I will be always regretful for. It left me with pain I struggle with every day."

His Canadian fiance and her 12-year-old daughter, who considered Al Rowais her father, also submitted letters of support.

The government argued that his 74 pages of explicit chats over a nine-month period showed "a robust and unhealthy desire to act upon what the defendant characterized as merely 'fantasies.'"

The Al Rowais case fell into investigators' laps in July 2005, according to court documents.

In 2004, investigators arrested Larry Jeffs on child pornography charges, after he was alleged to have molested his two-month-old daughter and shared web cam photos of the live criminal act with several individuals.

In 2005, one of Jeffs' online friends, who authorities also were investigating, told Al Rowais to contact Jeffs because "they both liked them really young."

Unbeknownst to Al Rowais, when he contacted Jeffs' e-mail account, he actually made contact with an undercover agent. The agent posed as the father of a 2 1/2-year-old girl, and soon, Al Rowais wrote that was "a lovely age and that it was good that his daughter could grow up knowing how to please daddy" and "i could pay u for sharing."

Al Rowais also chatted that he had previous sexual contact with a 10-year-old while she slept, and a 2-year-old, who was awake. He called them his "girlfriends."

From there, Al Rowais sent sexually explicit photos of prepubescent girls to the undercover agent for nine months.

A meeting was arranged at Vallejo Motel 6, 458 Fairgrounds Drive.

Al Rowais flew to San Francisco and took a limousine to the Vallejo motel room, where authorities were lying in wait. After knocking on the motel room door, agents arrested him and in his overnight bag found a video camera and two pairs of girls underwear, among other items.

He has been held in Sacramento County Jail since his arrest.

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