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Australia is considering a law that would ban international travel for registered pedophiles. The reasoning seems to be the assumption that they frequently travel to Asia or south pacific islands for the main purpose to abuse children.

Australian pedophiles are notorious for taking inexpensive vacations to nearby Southeast Asian and Pacific island countries to abuse children there.
Australia plans to ban pedophiles from traveling overseas - Yahoo

I'm not sure such a bold claim can be backed up with anything, except maybe circumstantial evidence like the following:

  • registered pedophiles visit Asia far more frequently
  • child abuse in Asia is commonly reported as perpetrated by foreigners

Unless Australian registered pedophiles are often caught in Asia, I don't see how the claim can be made with much confidence.

The claim seems to say this like it's common knowledge, but common beliefs have been wrong before.

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    Related Wikipedia article: [Child Sex Tourism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sex_tourism) – Andrew Grimm May 30 '17 at 21:50
  • Note that even unregistered (i.e. not previously caught) pedophiles being caught, would confirm the claim that "Australian pedophiles are notorious" -- even when you don't know they're pedophiles until authorities catch and convict them. That's subtly different from the need to revoke passports of registered (already previously identified/convicted) pedophiles, the need for which depends on a further factor i.e. recidivism. – ChrisW May 31 '17 at 00:19
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    @Andrew Well that makes an answer easy pickings. I didn't even realize that was a thing. "The more you know ..." –  May 31 '17 at 00:20
  • @Chris Yes, catching a high percentage of unregistered pedophiles would confirm the claim, I agree. –  May 31 '17 at 00:39
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    @ChrisW "notorious" is a notoriously hard to prove claim... If they get caught, we know they go there, we assume it is for having sex with minors (but unless they get caught in the act, do we know for sure? There are many incidences of people being falsely arrested for things, either deliberately or erroneously, and being on some "pedophile watch list" makes you liable to be watched with suspicion or worse in many countries for even buying a plane ticket to Thailand. Heck, I've been advised to not travel there simply because I'm a single man, and I'm on no such list to avoid suspicion... – jwenting May 31 '17 at 07:36
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    Could we please make the distinction between paedophiles and child abusers? Which group is being targeted? Is there even such a thing as registered, non-offending paedophies in Australia? – Konrad Rudolph May 31 '17 at 10:16
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    @KonradRudolph: The closest I can find is the [National Child Offender System](https://www.acic.gov.au/our-services/child-protection/national-child-offender-system) which includes "offenders who are charged but not convicted". (I would prefer they included the word "alleged" there!) – Oddthinking Jun 01 '17 at 00:25
  • In order to answer this question we'd need to find 1) Australians 2) who are registered pedophiles 3) who travel 4) and who are caught reoffending. [Should child sex offenders be allowed to travel?](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-40436976) mentions groups of people which match 3 of those 4 criteria, but not all 4. – ChrisW Jul 12 '17 at 20:01

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