Minister removes director of Rong Poh center where 4-year-old was molested for 2 months
The young victim points to Noi
Khamsri, one of the men she says raped her.
Teerarak Suthathiwong
A Banglamung man arrested for allegedly molesting a 4-year-old at the
Chonburi Child Care Home may have been only one of three pedophiles
operating at the Rong Poh facility.
Investigators, led by Banglamung and Anti-Human Trafficking Department
police, said one or two other suspects are believed to have molested
children at the home where the much-publicized rape of a 4-year-old girl was
reported Aug. 29. One of the suspects, police said, is 15 years old and left
the facility in mid-August.
The revelations of possible additional abuse at Chonburi Child Care emerged
as Minister of Social Development and Human Stability Paveena Hongsakula
removed the center’s director and transferred three other boys to the
state-run Ban Mit Maitree “welfare house” for the homeless. No reason was
disclosed for the boys’ transfer.
Daoruang Naram, 42, filed a complaint with Banglamung police Aug. 29 after
retrieving her daughter from the Rong Poh home and discovering bruises and
obvious signs of sexual abuse. The child had been living at the center for
two months while Daoruang, a bar worker in Pattaya, was in jail on a
drug-use conviction.
Daoruang told police that her daughter said an older boy had assaulted and
sodomized her repeatedly for the entire two months. The most-recent attack,
she said, occurred the day she was released and was committed by the
departed 15-year-old suspect identified only as “Art.”
Police, however, have arrested Noi Khamsri, 57, for allegedly raping the
young girl. A disabled former police officer living in the home’s male
dormitory, Noi denied the charges, saying at first he didn’t know the girl
then, later, admitting he knew her well, but never molested her.
Police said the child positively identified Noi as one of her attackers.
Noi was a corporal in the Royal Thai Police’s Special Branch until he was
convicted on drug charges in 1975. He later was disabled by arthritis in his
hip and became homeless. For several years Noi lived at the Bangpakong Home
for Persons with Disabilities in Chachoengsao, but in recent years
discovered he was HIV-positive. At that point he requested to be moved to an
AIDS care center in Rayong. While awaiting for his transfer to be completed,
he’d been housed temporarily at the Chonburi Child Care Home.
Noi told police that the victim often pushed his wheelchair, but he never
thought of her in sexual terms.
The abuse report has set off a media firestorm which quickly brought Social
Development Minister Paveena into the scandal. A day after the news broke,
Paveena, who took over the ministry in July after years of running her
eponymous Paveena Hongsakula Foundation for Children and Women, inspected
the center, declaring its security measures woeful and decrying the lack of
separation between adults and children.
The Chonburi Care Home, she said, had no working closed-circuit television
cameras and that young children mix freely with homeless, mentally unstable
and disabled adults. She immediately ordered the removal of center Director
Saowanee Khomphat, sent the victim to the Forensic Institute at Police
Hospital for examination, placed the child in the care of the Paveena
Hongsakula Foundation and awarded her and her mother 10,000 baht for
expenses.
The minister also ordered the immediate inspection, renovation and upgrade
of security systems at all Thailand child-care centers under the ministry’s
jurisdiction.
