Cambodian girls change tale in Australian sex case

PHNOM PENH, June 2 (Reuters) Six Cambodian girls whose testimony put an Australian in jail for 20 years on rape and sexual abuse charges changed their story on Thursday and asked an appeal court to free him.

They accused the Cambodian Women's Crisis Centre, which denied the charge, of persuading them to testify that Bart Lauwaert, 39, hired them as maids -- then raped and abused them sexually -- in expectation of getting money out of him.

''We were told to blame Bart so that we will have some money from him,'' Savy, one of the girls aged between 12 and 14 when the alleged rapes occurred, told an appeal hearing attended by Australian diplomats four years after Lauwert was jailed.

''If you have falsified your statement and made him get 20 years in jail, that is very serious thing,'' judge Thou Mony, recently appointed to the bench for trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders, told the girls yesterday.

They could be jailed for up to two years if found guilty of false testimony, he said.

But Ung Chanthol, the director of the crisis centre, told Reuters the reason for the change of story was that the girls were upset they had not received the 20,000 dollars the court ordered Lauwert to pay in compensation.

''The court told the children it had passed the compensation money to us for the children, but that is not true. So the children are now angry with us,'' she said.

''It is a funny thing to hear that. We have helped them all the way to win the case, but now they've changed their minds.

We never forced them to put the blame on the Australians.'' Lauwert was arrested in Siem Reap, the main Cambodian tourist town near Angkor Wat, along with English-teacher Clint Rex Betteridge, who got a new passport and fled to Australia where he was jailed pending a decision on extradition.

Betteridge was sentenced to 10 years in jail in absentia.

In January, he was still in an Australian jail pending a decision on whether he should be extradited back to Cambodia to serve the sentence, The Australian newspaper reported.

''I hope we get justice for me and for all of the young women,'' Lauwaert said after leaving the court.

''I have never broken the law in Cambodia, never, and I ask the judges to please free me.'' The three-judge bench said it would announce its verdict on June 9.

Reuters PDS VP0422