Posted on 03/24/2004 6:36:19 AM PST by dead
Thai police have accused the former Australian diplomat Robert Scoble of running a secret child-sex recruitment network behind the facade of one of South-East Asia's biggest gay tourism agencies.
Police officers told the Herald they found more than 100 albums containing sexually explicit photographs of boys - some believed to be as young as 10 - when they raided the Bangkok apartment of the former deputy ambassador to Vietnam and Telstra executive.
"They were like catalogues, and we believe he was sending these pictures to people overseas," said Major Choowong Uthaisang of the Royal Thai Police immigration department.
Major Choowong said police also seized computer picture files of a man they believed to be Scoble engaged in sexual acts with several prepubescent boys.
The same department's Lieutenant-Colonel Pichit Itthipalacahai said Scoble, 56, and an American business partner, John Charles Goss, were believed to have used their Bangkok travel agency as a front to introduce foreign pedophiles to Thai children.
Scoble and Goss were arrested last Friday after a month-long surveillance which followed information supplied by the Australian embassy in Bangkok and complaints made to the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
"There is evidence that they were supplying boys to tourists coming to Thailand, and we are looking at further charges," Colonel Pichit said.
Scoble and Goss were charged on Saturday with distributing pornography and employing an unregistered foreign worker in their travel agency, which is in an office suite in the Tarntawan Place Hotel. The boutique hotel is popular with gay travellers and next to Bangkok's infamous Patpong nightclub district.
The two men were released on bail after a brief court appearance. Their passports were impounded and they were ordered not to leave Thailand.
The travel agency, co-founded by Scoble in the mid-1990s, sells package tours throughout South-East Asia to gay travellers. An affiliated website boasts that the company "pioneered gay and lesbian travel in South-East Asia".
At the agency yesterday, a middle-aged American man, who refused to give his name, said Scoble would not talk to journalists.
"We are being crucified in the newspapers in Australia. There is some terrible innuendo being published, " he said. "One woman has written some very libellous stuff and we're going to sue the panties off her."
During the raid on Scoble's apartment, in an expensive suburb popular with Thai politicians and film stars, police said they found a huge cache of pornographic material including magazines, personal photographs, videocassettes and computer disks.
Major Choowong showed the Herald images of a stocky, middle-aged man with receding grey hair - his face digitally masked - having sex with several young boys. The images were found on a personal computer in the apartment.
Colonel Pichit said that if investigations confirmed Scoble's identity, he would face further charges of sexually abusing minors.
He said Scoble, who denied being a pedophile, broke down after being told late on Friday that he would be charged with distributing pornography, which carries a maximum three years' jail.
Scoble, a career diplomat who held posts in Thailand and Vietnam, resigned from the Foreign Affairs Department in 1985 after a scandal involving pictures of young boys sent through diplomatic mail.
He said the images were sent as an innocent joke.
"They were like catalogues, and we believe he was sending these pictures to people overseas," said Major Choowong Uthaisang
Major Choowong is in charge of the big gay pedophile investigation.
He said the images were sent as an innocent joke.
Reminds of the line from Slingblade:
"Funny ha-ha or funny queer?”
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