Saturday, October 27, 2007

Pedophile case just tip of the iceberg for Thailand

October 26, 2007

Thai police, who ended a global manhunt with the arrest of a Canadian pedophile suspect last week, are looking for dozens more foreign suspects, mostly Germans, who may be hiding in the country, a senior officer said.

Police regularly sift through the red light districts of Bangkok, the notorious beach town of Pattaya and the island of Phuket for Westerners police in their home countries had issued warnings about, said Major-General Wimol Powintara, head of the child crime police.

"These are men, young and old, who love to have sex with little boys," Wimol said as he flipped through a folder of photographs of 50 white males supplied by the German police about a year ago along with their names and dates of birth.

"I have no objection if they have sex with anyone aged over 18, but don't do it on our little children who are the future of our country," Wimol said in an interview at his office where 200 officers deal with crimes against children and women nationwide.

Wimol said these pedophiles were quite discreet when looking for children, hiring adult males or transvestites as go-betweens to lure children to their rooms by promising free computer games and easy money.

The most difficult part of putting suspects behind bars was to convince abused children to testify," Wimol said.

"Without the cooperation of the children, police can't prosecute."

A case in point was that of Christopher Neil, a Canadian accused of raping young boys in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia and posting photos of his sex on the Internet.

After a three-year hunt involving cutting-edge technology and police on three continents, Neil, 32, was arrested in a dusty town, 250 kilometers northeast of Bangkok, last week and will be charged with molesting underage children in Thailand.

Neil denies accusations that could land him in jail for 20 years and one teenager soon alleged the Canadian had paid him for oral sex.

But it took police days to convince a second teenager to say Neil paid him 500-1,000 baht ($15-30) for each act of oral sex," Wimol said.

Even if the abused children did cooperate, suspects were often freed on bail and paid them not to show up in court or change their testimonies, police said.

"With their influence and money, it is almost impossible to put them in jail," said one of Wimol's officers.

Pedophiles have long headed to Thailand, a largely conservative, overwhelmingly Buddhist country where a large sex industry draws thousands of foreigners among whom it is easy to hide. Last year, Thai police launched a manhunt for JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect John Mark Karr, found in possession of child pornography in the US.

Karr, who worked as an English teacher, was arrested in a run-down Bangkok hostel and sent back to the US, where he was cleared the infamous unsolved crime.

Source:China Daily/agencies

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good step for the German Police, but it would be nicer if they could stamp "Pedophile" on his passport or something. That way, we could denied him entrance to Cambodia.

Anonymous said...

Shut up is you Country sell those thing so the foreigners they go to buy it,what is your problem .No seller no buyer.

I can't believe this typical Thai,like to show the face when they are pretty ,but the butt stinky cover it up pretty good.

Anonymous said...

No problem, it is just that if you buy our thing, it might just be the last thing you ever buy.

Anonymous said...

We also start auctioning off this Viet troller's head here on KI-media: $21.00; Feel free to bid up or down for any info leading to the arrest and conviction and to euthanize this Animal Viet troller to stop its sabotage on Khmer blog.

Anonymous said...

I bid 2 trillions USD!

Anonymous said...

shut the fffffffup Ah kon mee chor marai viet cong viet minh kamaer rouge kinhom kanchass youn.