CityNews – 19th November 2019, at Mueang district police station, “A” (pseudonym), a Mathayom 1 student and her mother reported to Pol. Lt. Col. Somkhid Phusod, investigative officer, that she was approached by a monk via Facebook’s messenger application.
The message, she said, contained sexual content from a monk who later waited for the girl in front of her school. Police officers went to investigate the area and found that the monk was from a youth training Centre in Lampang’s Dharma Practice Centre. His name is Kan Choti-sitthi-phong, 41 years old.
The girl’s mother revealed that the monk and her daughter had not known each other in person. The monk approached the girl online and had been sending her sexually-oriented messages since July 2018.
Initially, her daughter ignored those messages, said the mother. However, last month the girl checked the messages and found that they had become more serious, coupled with the event when the monk came to wait for her at her school on several occasions, the mother decided to confront the monk.
She warned him, she said, but he didn’t care and still continued his actions. That’s why she decided with her daughter to report to the police.
The proof of the girl’s claims was contained in messages such as, “wanna hug you, wanna kiss you, wanna sleep with you”, etc. Police officers kept a copy of the messages and interrogated the monk Kan. The monk said that previously he used to train students at Wat Suandok School where he met the girl and asked for her Facebook account. He sent messages to her several times but there were no replies, but she had also not blocked him. When he came to receive medical treatment in Chiang Mai one day, he said, he tried to find her by waiting in front of her school.
They chatted 2 – 3 times previously, he claimed.
He said that he felt afraid and accepted he did stalk her but insisted that he didn’t touch the girl physically.
Results from police interrogation concluded that such acts were not yet deemed a violation of the law but the officers warned the monk not to act like this again and that they would further investigate his actions and the evidence.