Andy Ivens
Staff Reporter

p. A30.

Crown sums up sex case

A Richmond man facing charges of obtaining sex from nine girls — two of them aged 12 — raped and threatened to kill some of his victims, a B.C. Supreme court jury heard yesterday.

After 10 weeks of evidence, presecutor Sandra Cunningham summed up her case against Frank Kim.

Many of the alleged victims were prostitutes in Vancouver and Burnaby when Kim picked them up in his BMW during 1997, said Cunningham.

"It's a sad, sordid picture of the lives of young girls who struggle with poverty, lack of parental guidance and drug addiction," said the prosecutor.

She said none of the nine complainants has continued in school and "most of them had to fend for themselves from an early age."

Cunningham played a brief excerpt of videotape police seized when they entered Kim's home on Azure Boulevard in January 1998. For the second time in the trial, the jurors saw Kim having sex with a 12-year-old.

Kim, who is defending himself without legal counsel, stared down at his notes while the tape was played in the Vancouver courtroom.

Kim, 25, called only one witness, himself. He claims the five complainants shown on videotape having sex with him did so consensually and that there was no sex with the other four.

The case continues today.