International manhunt tracks pedophile suspect to Thailand

same guy?

Odd. The untwirled picture and the one in this article don't look like the same guy to my (admittedly untrained) eye. Yes, they both have really short hair. Apart from that, the nose and chin seem different for starters.

Oh well. Somewhere out there is someone who is going to get royally screwed by the police forces of the world. Hopefully it's the real perpetrator, because nothing is too cruel for that kind of sicko. However, whether or not it's the actual perpetrator probably isn't material, so long as the police can show they can catch someone. Anyone. We can only hope it's the right guy, because whoever they catch has already been found guilty by the press and probably doesn't have much of chance with the courts either.

Cynically yours,

<yr>

Title

i dont think they're randomly going off the picture - they've collected information from so many ppl

plus there's the facts surrounding this guys appearance in thailand - he was teaching english in south korea and "fled" to thailand

hopefully he wasn't teaching school kids o_O

Why...

There's one thing I don't understand. I think we can all agree that child pornography and child abuse is bad, and that anyone who takes part in it should be removed from society. So why on earth would Interpol and/or the various law enforcement agencies NOT want the public's help in finding these people? The FBI has various lists of wanted people, including a list of (albeit only six) "Televised Sexual Predators", right on their home page. So in cases where it's cut-and-dry (such as this case, where the "suspect" is in over 200 photographs), why not ask for the public's help?

Before anyone jumps on my back about how photographs can be doctored, if you have a large enough sample (say, 200), you can tell if they're authentic or doctored. There's no such thing as a perfectly doctored photo.

@Andy Tunnah

I think you've missed the point about being a pedophile English teacher in Thailand; he's certainly teaching kids.

Risk to Innocent

Chris C: The main reason (to me at least) with public manhunts is that the public are even worse at getting the right person than the police.

As a case in point, I don't have figures for total number of spottings but I can think of at least 9 countries that 'Madeleine' (Young missing child) has had multiple spottings in. It is also not unknown for innocent people to be targetted by Vigilantes because they 'looked like' or had the same name as a sex offender.

I'm not saying public appeals should never be used, I simply don't want them to be used for everything and anything.

Thailand cops

Would be a shame if he did accidently get shot, I'd rather see him spend 20 yrs in a Thai jail, Death is probably a better option.

@several

"I think you've missed the point about being a pedophile English teacher in Thailand; he's certainly teaching kids."

I think the point was that pedophiles aren't into child-abuse whilst paedophiles are.

The other problem with public manhunts...

Is that it can quite easily lead to vigilante violence. All it takes is for someone to describe the guy by voice to the wrong person and suddenly a bald guy with glasses is getting the shit kicked out of him in Thailand.

While paedophillia is up there with the worst of the worst crimes, suggesting it's ok for police to take matters into their own hands when they pick a suspect up is naive at best. One of the reasons that they might not stay in jail too long is, of course, that the courts could be lenient, the other is that he might be innocent. Courts are there, not only to provide proper sentencing (something that does seem to be lacking), but to prove that someone is guilty without doubt, or innocent.

@2% witness

Atually, a 2% good information return on tips seems a pretty high ratio. They undoubtably got large numbers of calls from cranks, idiots, the clueless, and people honestly trying to help, but whom were totally wrong. That they managed to get that number of solid hits is pretty good. Any way, it was more than enough to put *this* guy to flight.

I see some resemblance between the images, presuming the unswirled image to be one of a substantially younger perp. hopefully they do indeed have the right guy, or at least *a* right guy, anyway - a preditor that is, and not an unfortunate innocent.

Pedophile, paedophile, sexual paedophile

Dictionaries are descriptive not normative and words obtain meaning by usage, there is no other linguistic authority beyond usage.

Natural languages are living languages that change over time. (Actually most of the artificial languages seem to change over time a well.)

Maybe at some point in the past pedophile meant something else, but today it is equivalent to sexual pedophile.

PS I am betting that before they went public with a name they had more a bit more than tips based on unscrambled images.

Also I am guessing that with that many photos there must be moles, scars, tattoos ... something to uniquely identify him once they have in in custody.

I also have to chime in against police brutality and vigilante justice, its very important that people get a fair trail, especially in these cases.

From what I hear people in prison have pretty much the same attitude toward these sick bastard so there is no need to rush things.

Also court cases tend to go better in these countries when the international press is paying attention. No judge is getting bribed in this case.