Was Peter King a sex tourist?

10 May 2008 | by A.K.A., Contributing Writer

There are fresh concerns that former trade ambassador Peter King could have used his position as a trade ambassador to commit illegal sex acts with children in impoverished countries while vacationing or brokering deals overseas. That is question on the minds of child advocacy experts these days as more lurid details emerge on King's highly experimental sex life. Could he have been a sex tourist?

It is a very real question we need to be asking ourselves. This was obviously a man who was living on the edge and willing to take risks. He videotaped sex acts with young children and acts with his sexual partners and he must have known that his dangerous lifestyle would have led to his death, one child advocate told One876Entertainment.com.

The question we must ask is what other terrible acts could Mr. King could have committed, even in other countries, that we ought to be aware of.

So there it is. Was Mr. King a sex tourist? Sex tourism is a very lucrative industry that spans the globe. In 1998, the International Labour Organization reported its calculations that 2-14% of the gross domestic product of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillipines, and Thailand derives from sex tourism. In recent years, tourists have increasingly traveled to Mexico and Central America for their sexual exploits as well.

It has emerged that there are several recorded scenes of King posing young boys and exploiting them for sexual kicks. There are even scenes where young boys are seen dancing in a provocative manner. At least two of the tapes appear to have been filmed in an overseas locale because of the landmarks seen and the different languages and accents of the young boys in question.

While some tourists are pedophiles that preferentially seek out children for sexual relationships, many child sex tourists are "situational abusers" who while they do not consistently seek out children as sexual partners, do engage in sexual acts if an opportunity arises.

Ambassador Peter King, whose father Rev Canon ROC King was known for his work with Boys' Town, began his public service career in the 1960s in the Jamaica High Commission in London. Soon afterwards, he became a personal assistant to the then minister of trade and industry Robert Lightbourne, and in the 1970s to his successor, a young P J Patterson.

In the 1980s, King served as deputy high commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Guyana, and in the 1990s was a lead representative of behalf of the Caricom Regional Negotiating Machinery for market access in the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations.