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As part of an initiative to protect children from sexual predators, including those who travel overseas, special US agents operating in South East Asia have brought more than 80 alleged child sex tourists back to America to face justice.

Sihanoukville looks like paradise, or at least a decent, low-rent version. Golden beaches, swaying palm trees, cheap alcohol and shimmering sea.

Retired American pharmacist Ronald Adams had come here for the good life – setting up a beachside cafe. But one morning last February Adams’ personal vision of paradise was shattered, when officers from the Cambodian National Police raided his apartment.

They found a collection of sex aids, child pornography on DVDs and a variety of illegal drugs. Adams was accused of drugging and raping a 12-year-old girl.

For Westerners arrested on child sex charges in South East Asia, things do not always turn out too badly. Gary Glitter got a two-and-a-half-year sentence in Vietnam for obscene acts with girls aged 10 and 12.

These are poor countries, where $100 can buy your freedom. But Ronald Adams had more to reckon with than the local police. An agent from America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) was part of the group carrying out the raid.

If a US citizen is caught abusing children abroad, American agents are now on hand with the specific aim of getting the suspect on a plane to stand trial back in the US.

ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security, based in Washington, with a severe, Brooks Brothers-suited lawyer, John Morton, as its director.

“Don’t think that simply by buying a plane ticket to leave the United States and going to a country with less robust investigative and prosecutorial capacities that you are going to be able to get away with it again,” Morton said.

“Perfect example – the three gentlemen we brought back from Cambodia.”

The “three gentlemen” were given the moniker Twisted Travellers by ICE in a heavily publicised and deliberately humiliating extradition from Cambodia 18 months ago.

All three had previous convictions for abusing small children in the US. The oldest, 75-year-old former marine Jack Sporich, now faces a sentence of 15 years for sexually abusing a number of young boys.

Cambodia’s jails are full of foreign paedophiles, but for most of them a short sentence is all they have to worry about. But even that can be avoided if you have the money to pay off the police and the judge.

America was the first country to be positively pro-active about arresting and returning their child abusers to face justice. It has been joined in the past 12 months by Australia and Canada.

For US special agent Chris Materelli, it is as much about moral responsibility as law enforcement.

“If Americans are coming here to do this against the Cambodians, it’s our job to try to help the Cambodians clean it up,” he says. “They’re our citizens, it’s our responsibility to bring that person to justice.”

In the seven years since the Protect Act was passed, America has brought back 85 child sex tourists to face justice in the US.

But none of this would work without a ground-breaking change in the way US agents work – not just with local police, but NGOs run by ordinary citizens.

In the tourist hot-spots of Cambodia, Action Pour Les Enfants (Action For Children, APLE) acts as the eyes and the ears of ICE in keeping surveillance on suspect Americans.

Young men on motorbikes patrol the streets with video cameras supplied by the Americans. It was an APLE undercover team that came across Ronald Adams openly asking for sex with underage girls, “the younger the better”.

This kind of co-operation with ordinary locals represents a massive change of attitude, almost unthinkable 30 years ago in the wake of America’s bombing of Cambodia.

Cambodians are welcome within the ranks of ICE agents. Vansak Suos, once a conscripted boy soldier in Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army, now occupies an office in the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, with a photo of himself and Bill Clinton on his desk.

Vansak’s story is bleak, his brother, two sisters, and grandfather were all killed in the time of Pol Pot. He, himself, barely survived, but having done so was determined to use his life to protect other children.

Big catch

Forty-five-year-old millionaire from Florida, Kent Frank, is probably ICE’s biggest catch so far. He is a serial global child sex tourist, who was caught abusing four underage girls in his hotel room in Phnom Penh.

Vansak describes how Frank tried to bribe the local police chief.

“Kent Frank just stood up and put his hand in his pocket. Then, shaking the hand with the boss. And the boss just found $100 in his hand,” he says.

Frank admitted to having sex and taking photos of the girls he had been with, saying that he believed they were all over 18.

“That’s a common defence, that these kids are older than what they appear to be because they’re Asian,” says ICE agent Gary Philips. “And if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that, I’d probably be a millionaire.”

Frank tried to delete the incriminating photos on his digital camera, but at ICE’s state-of-the-art cyber forensics lab back in the US, 1,600 deleted pictures were recovered. Frank is currently serving a 40-year sentence in a federal jail.

But it doesn’t always end that way. After seven months on remand in a Cambodian prison, Ronald Adams was released without charge. The court decided that because his alleged victim says she was drugged, her evidence could not be relied on. He has since disappeared.

Vansak shrugs and moves on. He is, he says, proud of what he has done. Every sex offender convicted means that many more children are now safe.

This World: The Paedophile Hunters will be broadcast on BBC Two at 2200 GMT on Sunday 30 January, or catch up on BBC iPlayer.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Mills & Boon romantic novels have become a worldwide hit since they first arrived on book shelves in 1908, with global sales currently clocking in at over 200 million every year.

Nollybooks, South Africa’s answer to the popular love story collection, may be some way off scoring a similar feat but its rising popularity in the country is hoping to pave the way for the rest of Africa.

Created by and written for a female audience who are young, urban, black and can but maybe don’t read, the romantic tales contain subtle differences from their western counterparts.

Firstly the hero’s eyes are brown rather than blue and instead of hailing from the British upper class, he might head the Africa division at MTV.

Secondly Moky Makura, a Nigerian-born author and publisher who set up Nollybooks in 2009 after picking up on Mills & Boon’s huge global figures, also points out that sex is portrayed very differently from its steamy counterpart.

This is primarily down to the fact Aids kills nearly 1,000 people a day in South Africa.

“I don’t believe that you need sex to have story-telling,” Makura argues.

“I am trying to show young girls that you can have a heroine who is educated and doing well, but who doesn’t sleep around or have to have sex, and still ends up with a good guy.”

Nollybooks is inspired by Nigeria’s thriving movie industry, Nollywood.

“Nollywood proved that Africans want to see themselves reflected in what they consume, and that is exactly what Nollybooks represents,” says Makura.

She feels that it is important to challenge the perception held in Africa that books are purely for education.

“We don’t see books as entertainment yet,” Makura explains. “I see Nollybooks as almost having a soap opera in your hand.”

For Makura, initial sales prove that the concept works, but there are challenges.

“I still feel the cost of the books is high at around $10 (£6.50) each,” she says. “We need to get more books out there so that I can bring the price down.”

Although this is half the average price of a book in South Africa, Makura is aiming to make romantic fiction even cheaper.

“I think it should be like a daily newspaper, you buy one, read it, chuck it out and buy a new one,” she adds.

She is not the only one who has discovered this market.

South African publisher Kwela Books has created Sapphire Press in response to a need for “black romance” in the country.

“Mills & Boon sell more than 20,000 units per month here,” explains Lindsay van Rensburg, a junior editor at Sapphire.

“We thought it would be quite appealing for those readers to have access to books set in South Africa.”

Unlike Nollybooks, the characters do have sex in Kwela Books.

But there is a strong emphasis on safe sex points out Mokopi Shale, who has written two novels for Sapphire Press – Love’s Courage and A Prince For Me.

“I am conscious of what it is to be born in a time where love is the most dangerous thing around,” she said.

“Of course, I have to write about safe sex, my heroes and heroines always reach for a condom, always.”

Kwela’s romantic writers currently earn just over $1,500 (£970) per manuscript and Makura says that her writers get a similar fee.

Shale says that it is difficult for writers to make a living primarily because South Africa is not a reading nation.

However, Makura believes that once she cracks distribution, this may all change.

Her plan is to expand into West and East Africa.

Ultimately, romantic fiction offers women an escape to a world where true love is “respectful, gentle, understanding and passionate”, says Shale.

Empi Baryeh, a Ghanaian writer and creator of online community Fiction Writers of West Africa, agrees.

“We have the opportunity to give young girls the wisdom and confidence they need to recognise and pursue the right kind of relationships, and to cultivate in them the courage to fight for those relationships that are worth fighting for. “

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Rescue workers in the Brazilian city of Belem, in the northern state of Para, are searching the rubble of a collapsed building for three construction workers.

A union representative said the three had been trapped when the building, which was still under construction, caved in.

Six people, most of them passers-by, are being treated for minor injuries.

Police have cleared adjacent buildings for fear they too could collapse.

The union representative said that seven workers had been working in the building, which was due to be finished in December of this year.

He said four of them had left the site before the accident occurred. The other three men are still missing.

Neighbours reported hearing a loud rumbling sound followed by what resembled an explosion.

The said the area was covered by a plume of white dust.

Para state Health Minister Helio Franco said all the emergency services were on the scene to search for possible victims and survivors.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.