PUBLISHED : 20 Jan 2024 at 04:00
Four suspects have been arrested for creating and selling video clips of a sexual nature with minors, while another suspect has been nabbed for allegedly sexually abusing his 7-year-old daughter.
A special team of police and Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau officers detained four online content creators based in Bangkok and Pathum Thani yesterday.
The suspects were charged with producing and selling pornographic content featuring a 16-year-old girl without blurring or covering her face. The content was posted on the social media platform X and the subscription-based OnlyFans.
The four offenders are facing five charges — possession and exploitation of child pornography; sharing of child pornography; production, possession, import, export or distribution of child pornography; importing and publishing pornography to a computer system, allowing the general public to access it, and human trafficking involving exploitation of a child to produce pornography.
The penalties range between three to 15 years in prison and 60,000 to 1.5 million baht in fines.
The 16-year-old victim, hired by the suspects to perform in the sexual clip, was later rescued and sent into the care of health professionals.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the Department of Special Investigation’s (DSI) Bureau of Technology and Cyber Crime announced the arrest of a Thai-German man who had been sexually abusing his 7-year-old daughter and posted footage of the abuse online.
The arrest, which took place on Jan 14 in a northeastern province, was the result of continuous cooperation between the Thai authorities, Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt police (BKA) and the anti-sex trafficking organisation Operation Underground Railroad (OUR).
On July 20 last year, the BKA sent evidence to the DSI, which indicated that the suspect had been repeatedly abusing a child in Thailand and uploading illicit pictures and videos of the abuse on a dark website accessible in Germany.
Further investigations revealed that the perpetrator was a Thai-German citizen residing in a northeastern province. The child victim was supposedly his 7-year-old daughter, born to a Thai mother. Evidence found in his home included several electronic devices containing files of child pornography, which matched the evidence from the BKA.
The man was arrested and transferred to the Bureau of Technology and Cyber Crime for investigation before being sent to the Criminal Court for imprisonment. His request on Jan 16 for bail was rejected.