'Can I Have My Ring Back' Asks Fleeing Child Abuser -Updated

The head of a ‘Volunteer Project’ offering tours feeding children at Phnom Penh’s Stung Mean Chey rubbish dump has fled the city after first trying to ‘borrow’ the engagement ring he gave a 17-yr-old student there.

David Fletcher, 66, who was exposed in last week’s Sunday Mirror as having a conviction for the sexual abuse of a 15-yr-old in Britain, first told the Cambodian Daily that the  British girl was ’15 doing on 25′ and ‘You don’t get seven months for kiddy fiddling’.

Fletcher claimed the girl was in love with him, but the court was told, he paid her cash and got her drunk on champagne.

David Fletcher on his food run at Stung Mean Chey

A spokesman for the Cambodian Children’s Fund which manages five projects in Phnom Penh said that Fletcher first called on the home of 17-yr-old Yang Dany, whose mother he had offered US$200 for her hand in marriage.

‘He went to ask for the engagement ring  as he said some adjustments were needed, and to express his hurt for reading that Dany ‘felt sorry for him.’ He wanted to take Dany out of the dump community to talk to her where he wasn’t being watched, but his request was refused’.

Fletcher was actually sentenced to 18 months in jail by a judge at Norwich Crown Court in July 1997.

He told the Cambodian Daily he was not fleeing the country. He would leave when he had put his business in order.

Reports about his behavior, he said, were greatly exaggerated.

According to reports reaching Bangkok from the Thai Cambodian border David Fletcher has now crossed overland into Thailand.