Man in NE Thailand allegedly raped his young relatives and lured them into sex trade

A man in northeast Thailand allegedly raped and exploited young boys who were his relatives and lured them into the sex trade. The boys are six and 10 years old.

Police arrested the suspect, 21 year old Saifa, in the Si Bun Ruang district of Nong Bua Lamphu province today. The officers caught Saifa as he was allegedly taking one of the boys by motorcycle to give sexual services to a client.

The officers, who were from the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Division (ATPD), had an arrest warrant from the Criminal Court. The ATPD commander said the arrest came after an investigation into the suspect.

The commander said that Saifa was an administrator of a LINE group with almost 200 members paying a fee of 200 baht each. He said that Saifa posted pornographic clips of the two boys in the group.

Saifa allegedly admitted that the two boys were his relatives and that he lured them into the sex trade, Bangkok Post reported. He also allegedly confessed to raping the 10 year old boy for a year, and the six year old boy for about a month, convincing them to let him take videos of them having sex in exchange for a mobile phone, toys, and video games.

Police found that Saifa had a bank account with over 100,000 baht in circulation. They charged him with human trafficking and disseminating pornographic material.

Thailand is notorious for human trafficking, particularly sex trafficking. The US 2022 Trafficking in Persons Report identified 414 trafficking victims in 2021. Some 181 of these people were victims of sex trafficking, while 233 were victims of labour trafficking.

But in the past, organisations have estimated that the real number of people trafficked in Thailand is much higher than this. In 2018, the Global Slavery Index estimated that there were 610,000 people in Thailand living in modern slavery. Western countries have long considered Thailand a human-trafficking hub, despite government efforts at both ends to discourage the trade.