Ex-head gets 5 years for student sex
NAKHON RATCHASIMA: A school director sacked for having a sexual affair with a 14-year-old girl at a school in Bua Yai district has been sentenced to five years and two months in jail without suspension.
The Bua Yai provincial court yesterday sentenced Nathaphop Boonthongtho, 51, former director of Patong Thanoen Samakkhi School to 10 years and four months in jail on charges related to sexual abuse against his student.
Mr Nathaphop was found guilty of obscenity against a girl aged not more than 15, depriving an under-aged girl of parental care for obscene purposes, and depriving the girl of parental care for sexual molestation without her consent.
He was given 10 years and four months in jail.
As the defendant confessed, the sentences were halved to five years and two months in total without suspension. The defendant was given 30 days to appeal.
The scandal was exposed in January this year when angry residents and members of the school committee released copies of Line chat messages found on the girl’s mobile phones.
In t he message, Mr Nathaphop addressed the girl as “darling’’ and “dear wife’’. Residents also saw him out with the girl on several occasions.
The scandal prompted provincial education authorities to set up a panel to look into the allegations against him. In July, the panel found him guilty of gross disciplinary violation involving sexual misconduct and decided in a unanimous decision to sack him from the teaching service.
Another figure in the case is a Mathayom 3 student who formerly dated the girl. He faces the same charge as Mr Nathaphop after the girl’s mother lodged a formal complaint against him.
His mother insisted her son had done nothing wrong but said she was aware he and the girl had been “intimate” a year earlier.
Nithon Katelunsong, a provincial prosecutor, said that Mr Nathaphop also faces charges in connection with another case in which he was accused of sexually abusing two under-aged girls. The court set Oct 16-18 for examination of witnesses in this case.