Biting back

BANGKOK: A drunken security guard had the tip of his tongue bitten off during an unsuccessful attempt to rape a 50-year-old partially-sighted woman. In a tale recounted by Pol Lt Col Paythai Thipmongkol of the Bang Khen Police, security guard Boonrawd Kanwan, 42, was off-duty and drinking with friends in the workers’ quarters of the Bangkok Mass Transit Authority (BMTA) bus garage on Paholyothin Rd on the night of December 16. He was described as being “very drunk” when a woman came along and joined the party. Although blind in her right eye and getting on in years, she appealed to Boonrawd in his drunken state. Before long he asked her into his small room there, saying “he had something to discuss” with her. But it was carnal pleasure rather than discussion that Boonrawd sought, for once inside the room he began to try to rape the woman. She resisted and they soon started wrestling. Boonrawd mistakenly thought he could “warm up” his victim to his crude advances by sticking his tongue into her mouth as she screamed for help. When he did this, she seized the opportunity and bit down hard, her incisors slicing off a two-centimeter chunk of his tongue. Unable to endure the pain, he fled to his home in neighboring Pathum Thani Province, where his relatives took him to the district hospital for treatment. Slurring under the effects of alcohol and a partly missing tongue tip, he told his doctor that he sustained the injury when he fell down some stairs. The doctor found this explanation suspicious and reported the incident to Pathum Thai Police, who questioned Boonrawd and learned that he worked at the BMTA garage in Bang Khen. After contacting the Bang Khen Police, they learned that a woman had filed a complaint of attempted rape against a man matching Boonrawd’s description: he was missing part of his tongue. Boonrawd was handed over to Bang Khen Police and was charged with “attempted rape against a woman not his own wife”. This was not the first time a would-be rapist had his tongue bitten off by an intended victim. In Prachin Buri Province last August a 24-year-old textile factory worker bit a three-cm chunk from the tongue of a 16-year-old boy who tried to rape her.