Thai court jails 'swirly-face' paedophile
Three years for abusive acts
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A Canadian schoolteacher who was arrested after police appealed for the identity of a man depicted abusing boys on images circulating on the net has been jailed for three years and three months in Thailand.
Christopher Paul Neil, who taught English in several Asian countries, was arrested last October in Thailand after Interpol launched the manhunt. He pleaded guilty to abusing a 13 year-old boy. At a sentencing hearing on Friday he was jailed for more than three years, half the six years and six months he would have received without a guilty plea, and fined $1,780. Neil was led away from court, dressed in an orange prison uniform and wearing ankle chains, to begin his sentence.
The 32-year-old still faces a string of even more serious allegations, including charges that he abused his admitted victim's nine year-old brother.
Neil denies paying the younger sibling between $15 to $30 to perform oral sex on him in 2003. His trial in that case for sexually abusing a minor, videotaping alleged sex acts, and taking a child without parental consent is due to begin on 7 October. If convicted, Neil faces a maximum sentence of 20 years' imprisonment.
Rosalind Prober, president of the Canadian child rights group Beyond Borders, suggested he might also face trail for similar offences in Vietnam. She expressed disappointment at the relatively short sentence Neil received over the admitted abuse of the 13-year-old but noted that this marked only the start of a much longer justice process.
"This is the first, baby step for Christopher Neil in terms of having him held accountable for the international sex crimes he is accused of committing," Prober told AP. "The world will be watching to see if there is the political will to continue on with this case."
Disguised pictures of Neil were found in a cache of 200 child abuse images found on the internet. German police unscrambled an image of Neil's face contained in one of these images which had been digitally "swirled" in an attempt to hide his identity. Interpol published this photo, which led to Neil's arrest in Bangkok Airport days later. Neil was cuffed after he stepped off a plane flying into Thailand from South Korea, where he was working at an English school shortly before his arrest.
In court on Friday, Neil admitted through a Thai translator that he made the offending photos but denied distributing them online. ®
COMMENTS
Will just make this comment then I'll be on my way...
Anonymous Coward,
On August 15th at 14. 57 GMT you posted the following comment.
'Really glad the the guy was an utter moron when it came to trying to hide his identity, but, how thick do you have to be to apply an image changing algorithm to a picture, when it should be obvious to all and sundry that to get the picture back all you have to do is reverse the process?'
The pervert can't be that thick AC; he's evaded capture for years. From what I've gathered so far paedophiles are generally clever. Take for example their petition which is aiming for the abolition of the sex offenders registry, part of their twisted campaign to make the world a better place for those who sexually abuse children. Amongst the huge list of signatories there are many doctors, lawyers, pastors, ministers, librarians, teachers, IT professionals, mothers and wives of violent child abusers, technicians, dentists, vets writers, social workers, etc etc. (www.wikisposure.com/Reform_Sex_Offender_Laws_Campaign)
It's a real eye-opener. We all know these scumbags are everywhere, but when you actually see all those names on the list it makes your skin crawl. Imagine how many more there are infesting other parts of the world.
Right then, I'm off to see what those corporate sex offenders youtube are turning a blind eye to today. There may not be any videos of children being sexually abused since youtube last got told off, but you can bet your bottom dollar there will be plenty of sick comments attached to innocent videos of kids playing, videos which known and outed paedophiles (again see wikisposure) steal for their own perverted channels.
By the way AC, I may not know about algorithms but I do know that you don't need to put a comma after the word 'but'.
@tom
how can a whole word be a typo?
Don't you mean unintention as opposed to intentional (distasteful) pun. Although I fail to see how it's a pun. As far as i'm aware he did not step on anyone.
@AC, why WOULDN'T the comments section be open? It is open for the purpose of commenting on the story. That's about the long and short of it. Not really a hard concept to grasp.
@David. Couldn't you still recover the missing piece with metadata?
Also, I looked up his exact sentence (39 months) and discovered that he studied to become a priest ...He could have been sentenced to 35 years, got 6 and that was reduced because he pleaded guilty. Read the rest of the story, it says he faces more charges with a possible 20 years...
To the naysayers...
This case was designed for one simple reason...
To buy time. Time to allow for other investigations to continue gathering evidence against him. it was a smart move on their part, knowing that there is potentially dozens of other cases / victims out there, and needing time to identify and contact them and so on, and not wanting to risk a disaster at trial which might set him free, such as a mistrial or even acquittal (not too sure how Thai law works), they offer him what looks to him to be a sweet deal, one he cant refuse, and it buys them time for their own and other governments to build additional cases against him, 3 years and 3 months to be exact, which should be plenty of time to identify additional victims and wittiness's and get them to come forward.
In my eyes a brilliant move....
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