Sunee Plaza Bar Owner Arrested for Selling Under-Age Sex

[MidTMike]

French Paedophile Arrested In Pattaya Selling Child Sex

A combined force from Thailand's Department of Special Investigation (DSI) and local police in this coastal province late Tuesday night arrested a French businessman who runs many entertainment venues in the seaside resort of Pattaya on charge of sexually abusing child and providing child sex for his customers.

Chon-Buri, the 25th of January 2010 [TNA]: French national Jean Eric Lopez, 47, was arrested after the DSI’s Bureau of Foreign Affairs and Transnational Crime was informed by representatives of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Thailand and French national police based at the French Embassy in Thailand that Mr Lopez used to run entertainment venues which offered boy sex trade for hire and the accused himself had sexually abused children.

According to the investigation, the DSI officials found that Mr Lopez is a shareholder in several entertainment venues for homosexuals in Pattaya, which provide children aged between 12 and 20 year-old to the customers.

The Pattaya Court issued an arrest warrant of Mr Lopez on Tuesday and he was arrested hours later.

The DSI operation officials also impounded a number of gay sex CDs and condoms. The French national has been charged with taking indecent liberties with children aged under 18-years-old despite having the child’s consent.

The accused denied the charges and was later taken to Pattaya for further questioning.

http://www.pattayadailynews.com/en/2010/01/27/french-paedophile-arrested-in-pattaya-selling-child-sex/

[Bob]

If he fact was peddling underage sex, I'm glad the cops got him.

[Beer Chang]

Always wondered why barowners aren't targeted?

[Thaimo]

Always wondered why barowners aren't targeted?

I think they are not targeted because they pay large amounts of money to the police so that they will look the other way. Maybe this is one bar owner who failed to come up with his payment, but I think even more likely he was arrested because somehow he became the target of investigations by the FBI and the French police. I don't know why the FBI would have been involved in a matter between a French national and Thailand, but you never see many of these arrests unless there is such involvement and publicity too. I doubt that this man was the only bar owner who runs this kind of operation. It will be interesting to see if more bar owners, including Thai bar owners, find themselves in a similar predicament.

Several years ago I discussed this problem with a Thai bar owner. His rationalization was that these under age boys come from the rural provinces where sexual involvement far younger is not uncommon with local villagers. He said that these boys come from families living in poverty. The only life they can look forward to is life of poverty on the rice farm. It is very attractive to them, he said, to come to these bars where they can get away from the rice farm, live with their own peer group, have food and a room provided for them, can make more money in one day than they can in weeks or even months on the rice farm, and can even become involved with a foreign boyfriend who will support them financially. He said he feels he is helping these boys, not exploiting them, and no one is really being hurt.

In some ways I can almost see his point, but one thing he forgot to mention is that since this kind of activity is illegal, viewed as a serious crime, and considered unacceptable by society, then what he is doing is exploitation and there are many ways to help these boys without exploiting them in this manner.

[Beer Chang]

live with their own peer group, have food and a room provided for them,

Kind of like going away to college but not having to go to classes.

[Wino]

Here is an interesting comment from the Pattaya Daily News. Of course, sex slavery and child prostitution is not right, but seems the Christian Fundamentalists exploit the issue to obtain money and try to make the world conform to their view.

CONTRADICTORY STANCES ON UNDER-AGE SEX AND SEXUAL EXPLOITATION

There has been yet another incident reported of under age prostitution reported in Pattaya, resulting in Western Human Rights Agencies such as the International Justice Mission crying exploitation, yet this whole controversy contains certain ambiguities. The Thai government passed a law in 1996 Prevention and Suppression of Prostitution Act, B.E. 2539, essentially due to Western moralistic pressure, making prostitution illegal. Yet, it should be pointed out that the oldest profession doesn’t carry the same stigma as it does in the West, which is one of the reasons so many Western men come to Thailand, solely for this purpose.

One wonders what their stance on their own government’s conduct in Iraq is!

Initially, the IJM maintained they were combating child prostitution. When it became apparent to everyone that child prostitutes are quite rare, they jumped on the trafficking bandwagon. Once it becomes obvious that sex slaves are even less common than child prostitutes, what will be their next excuse to obtain grant money from the US government, one asks oneself? It appears to be yet another cynical instance of Christian Fundamentalists on the one hand, highlighting controversial issues to justify their own existence and on the other, yet another attempt by advocates of American Imperialism of trying to foist their value judgements upon the whole world.

http://www.pattayadailynews.com/showfeature.php?FeatureID=0000000359

[Beer Chang]

I doubt that anyone who caters to the sexual needs of farangs in Thailand are sex slaves.

Now it's possible that there could be Burmese sex slaves catering to Thais but I really don't know how the Thai pay for play industry works.

[Thaimo]

It has been my experience that while it does exist, sex slavery is very rare in Thailand. There is virtually no need for it given the tremendous availability. Most of the sex slavery I have heard about occurs when Thais are lured and sold into sex slavery in other countries.