Gang rape probe brings eight arrests
The latest sex crime charges to seize headlines see at least 40 men being accused, but while the figure shocks, it remains part of a far too normalised reality
>> PHANGNGA: Police detained eight suspects in connection with the gang rape of a 14-year-old girl who claims she was abused by at least 40 men.
Earlier three suspects were arrested and indicted for rape. They were later released on bail, said Pol Maj Gen Bunthawi Toraksa, chief of the Phangnga provincial police.
The three suspects were identified as Worachit Khongbut, 39, Bunphot Nonsi, 33, and Chatchai Sirat, 37.
The court later approved arrest warrants for them for additional charges, including gang rape and the abduction of children for molestation.
The suspects denied any involvement in the crime when they were taken to the Khok Kloi police station for questioning yesterday, said Pol Maj Gen Bunthawi.
Alongside these three men, five other suspects were arrested for the gang rape that allegedly took place in Ban Koh Raet of Takua Thung district last year.
The five men were led by a lawyer to turn themselves in to the authorities on Friday.
They were identified as Chaloem Samin, 69, Suchip Sumen, 55, Thawatchai Thaoku, 34, Natthawut Butnoi, 27, and Kirati Sumen, 30.
After being questioned from Friday night until yesterday morning, the five were taken to the Phangnga provincial court where police insisted they stay as they further investigate the case.
In court, several relatives of the suspects were seen crying, while some even fainted. They said they were in disbelief that their loved ones might be involved in a rape case.
Nattharat Nukaeo, a volunteer lawyer representing the five suspects, said they all denied any wrongdoing after turning themselves in to the investigators on Friday.
Each of them was yesterday required to provide a surety of 450,000 baht to support their bail applications, he said. Two of them were granted bail.
Meanwhile, the stepfather of the victim lodged a complaint to Thalang police in Phuket against three villagers in Ban Koh Raet for defamation charges. According to him, the villagers had accused him of potentially being abusive.
The man said he adopted the girl when she was two years old and considers himself close to her. He said he was willing to get a polygraph test to disprove the accusations.
The case entered the spotlight after the girl’s mother lodged a complaint with local police, asking them to reopen her daughter’s case after finding out there could be at least 40 people involved in her rape.
The villagers in Ban Koh Raet were reportedly upset by the news coverage of the case, with many suffering mental health breakdowns. They said they have since encountered negative and even hostile responses from outsiders.
Police said earlier they had tried to seek warrants for as many as 17 suspects, but the court rejected them and told the police to gather more information to substantiate the allegations.
The girl’s mother said earlier that she was forced to leave her daughter, whose biological father is her former husband, alone with her seven-year-old brother when she and her current husband went out to tap rubber milk at night. She begun noticing some unusual behaviour from her daughter, who eventually told her she had been repeatedly raped.
The attackers filmed the girl being raped and used the footage to blackmail her into further coerced sex, said the mother.
The general public was shocked to learn of a horrific crime this week — the gang rape of a 14-year-old girl in Phangnga’s Takua Thung district last year. Their initial shock was perhaps only amplified when they found out that at least 40 men from the village of Ban Koh Raet in tambon Lo-yung were facing accusations of their involvement in several episodes of rape.
Not long after the news broke, some Ban Koh Raet villagers questioned if such a dreadful crime could have really taken place in the Muslim village. They were afraid that the accusations would tarnish their otherwise wholesome reputation.
Several villagers describe the community as peaceful and tight-knit. Moral and religious codes were strictly upheld here, as far as many were concerned. However, the number of tourists in the village has dropped dramatically since the news broke.
Thus far in the investigation, authorities have learned of the widespread use of kratom, a psychoactive drug, in the village. The finding prompted speculation that the alleged rapists were under the influence of the drug while committing the crime.
It is ultimately up to the police to unearth the truth of the matter. Meanwhile, villagers should resist jumping to conclusions about the plausibility of the crime taking place just behind their backs.
Instead, they should focus on sympathising with the victim and her family, who suffer from immense pain stemming from these allegations.
Villagers should not treat the girl and her mother as if they are enemies to be shunned from the community.
News of the gang rape accusations surfaced last Sunday after the girl’s distraught mother lodged a complaint with the police.
Before that, three men had already been indicted with raping the girl, but the 36-year-old mother wanted the police to extend their probe. According to her daughter, there were at least 40 men involved in a series of rapes taking place from May to October last year. The girl is 15 years old.
The mother said the police investigation proceeded too slowly. She also told police that her family had been intimidated by some of the accused rapists. They used to be friends of the family.
The mother and her daughter have since been placed in a safe home under the police’s f ormal witness protection programme.
Early this year, after hearing her daughter’s account of being raped, the mother contacted the Muslims for Peace Foundation, a NGO set up to protect the rights of Thai Muslims. She asked them for formal help in filing a lawsuit against the first three men initially indicted who were residents of her village, aged 25 to 30 years old.
According to the daughter, she was taken to the beach by three men, who drugged and raped her. Last month, they were finally arrested and indicted. Since then, they have reportedly been released on bail.
The three men apparently persuaded other men in the village to participate in the gang rape of the girl at least three separate times.
On these occasions, the girl’s mother and stepfather were out at night working at a rubber plantation. On one occasion, the victim was allegedly raped by 11 men successively. On another count, she says she was raped by five to seven men.
The girl’s stepfather has also been questioned in the probe, being forced to undergo medical examinations. The results of the investigation have yet to be released.
The Takua Thung gang incident is not the first case of rape to stun the nation. In 2014, Nong Kaem, a 13-year-old girl, was raped and killed on a sleeper train from Nakhon Si Thammarat to Bangkok. The murderer was furiously condemned for his act.
A building anger and sense of urgency to resolve the endemic reality of rape was already present in the Thai and foreign media at the time. The case of Nong Kaem inspired people to call for the death penalty for rapists. Several celebrities and women’s groups rallied around the cause as well.
Nong Kaem, a Mathayom 2 student at Satrinonthaburi School in Nonthaburi, was strangled to death after being raped by Wanchai “Game” Saengkhaoan, an employee of the State Railway of Thailand. He was 22 years old at the time.
After murdering her, he dumped the victim’s body, as well as her bloodstained bed sheet and clothing, outside the carriage window. Her body was later found in a bush by the railway in Pran Buri district of Prachuap Khiri Khan.
It was Nong Kaem’s first time riding the train. She was returning from the city of Surat Thani with her two sisters and one of their boyfriends to Bangkok.
Wanchai was later sentenced to death for committing murder and rape.
His friend, Natthakon “Nueng” Chamnan, a 19-year-old train cleaner, was sentenced to jail for four years as an accomplice.
The two horrific cases are only the tip of the iceberg in the country’s rape crisis. More cases of sexual assault are bound to occur, with the perpetrators more often than not ending up being friends and neighbours of the victims. Sometimes, they are even fathers or stepfathers.
A spate of rape crimes targeting women have repeatedly left Thai society in shock, prompting concern over personal safety. Late last year, the National Research Institute and the Royal Thai Police released the findings of a study on rape, which showed that a woman or child is raped in Thailand almost every 15 minutes.
According to the study, there was an average of around 30,000 rape cases per year, or 82 per day, between the years of 2009 to 2013.
A new study from the Pavena Foundation for Women and Children has further revealed that it received 656 reported rape cases in 2015. The age range of victims was anywhere between one year and eight months to 81 years old.
The foundation revealed that the majority of rapists in those cases were stepfathers, friends of the victims and neighbours.
The foundation cited several main for why rape occurs — the social dominance of men, influence from the media such as scenes on soap operas showing male protagonists raping women, men with mental health issues who were themselves abused as children, drug use and the vulnerability of some rape victims.
To prevent more rape cases from arising in Thailand, civil society and parent networks must take care of their children. They should work tirelessly to amplify the voices of survivors so that less people become victims.
They should also spearhead campaigns against rape culture to protect women from future harm and call for justice for all, including the effective prosecution of those responsible.