The trail of the man known as Swirl Face

Christopher Neil has pleaded guilty to sex crimes involving young boys

2001

Maple Ridge native Christopher Neil, 26, goes to Asia where he teaches ESL in schools in Vietnam, Thailand and South Korea.

2004

German police find more than 200 online images of a Caucasian man sexually abusing 12 young boys, who were identified as being Vietnamese or Cambodian. He’s called Swirl Face because his identity in the images was electronically altered with a swirl.

2007

Neil returns briefly to B.C. and works as a substitute teacher at Archbishop Carney Secondary School in Port Coquitlam before going to South Korea to teach at the Kwangju Foreign School.

OCT. 1 1, 2007

Interpol posts unscrambled photo of suspect on their website. Instead of going to work, Neil flees to Bangkok.

OCT. 16, 2007

Interpol confirms that Swirl Face is Neil. Two days later, Neil is arrested in Thailand and charged with four unrelated counts of molesting and distributing pornographic images of two Thai boys aged nine and 13.

2008

Neil pleads guilty to kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 13-year-old Thai boy and sexually abusing a nineyear-old boy and is sentenced to 3 ½ years in jail.

2012

Neil is released from jail in Thailand and extradited to Canada where he is arrested on arrival at Vancouver International Airport on Sept. 28. He is held in jail until early October when Neil voluntarily agrees to court-ordered conditions for 18 months. Conditions included surrendering his passport, staying away from places where children under 16 would be present and not using any devices capable of searching the Internet.

2013

Neil is arrested for breaching those conditions in August and, in October, pleads guilty.

MARCH 2014

Neil is charged with 10 counts including two counts of sexual touching, two counts of invitation to sexual touching, one count of production of child pornography linked to the abuse of boys in Cambodia in 2003. He is also charged with possessing child pornography in Maple Ridge in 2007, two counts of accessing child pornography, and possessing child pornography contrary to his 2012 court-ordered conditions. His request for bail is refused.

DEC. 16, 2015

Neil pleads guilty to five charges including sexually interfering with and sexually touching the Cambodian boys as well as possessing and accessing child pornography.

APRIL 2016

Neil’s sentencing hearing begins in a New Westminster court.