A Kafkaesque Nightmare
A Kafkaesque Nightmare.pdf
This narrative describes how three of the worst elements of the cult of Trumpism destroyed my career and took away my freedom twenty-seven years before Donald Trump rode down the escalator and began his campaign to “poison the blood” of American democracy.
Q-Anon style conspiracy theorists who believe in satan-worshipping pedophile rings
Hateful and bigoted Evangelical Christians who want gay Americans to go back in the closet
Right-wing Republican ‘grifters’ who make money from gullible followers.
Because these three features are very much a part of the MAGA aberration, I believe that in the next four years, many political junkies in America like me will face a similar type of oppression from Trump’s government officials.
This is a true story! It concerns perceptions that people consider to be realities and false accusations made by the media, law enforcement, politicians and religious fanatics using allegations of evil intent as diversions; manipulators of the mind who make use of the fear of evil for profit and control, and to hide their real motives. Thrown into a Bangkok prison for a bizarre crime that did not exist, I struggled for two years to free myself and prove my innocence. In an environment where an accusation of child abuse is nourishment for the media and entertainment for the masses, people equate accusations with reality. Sensational stories of child abuse are readily believed to be true, but often the accusers of child abuse are the abusers themselves.
One of the legacies that my parents had given me was a social and political consciousness. My father had been a Methodist Minister and a conscientious objector. He counseled young men about how to avoid the draft during the MCarthy era of the early 1950s, a time when such activities could land people in jail. He despised racists and racism and railed against apartheid in South Africa and segregation at home. After he died in the late ‘50s, my mother bought a house in an all-white Santa Rosa, California neighborhood for the express purpose of integrating the neighborhood and renting it to a black family. She went on to become the head of one chapter of Jimmy Carter’s Habitat for Humanity, building homes for poor families, and founded the Center for Senior Employment to find jobs for older workers. She worked for peace groups during the Vietnam War and created organizations to feed and employ the poor and build houses for the homeless. I had followed in my parents’ footsteps by becoming a social and political activist. After a stint in the Air Force and at the Air Force Academy, I returned to Santa Rosa and founded the South Park Youth Organization to help mostly black and Latino poor children. I was also very active in the anti-Vietnam war protests and helped to organize peace groups. Then after Anita Bryant won an anti-gay referendum in Florida in 1977, I became active in the struggle for gay rights and marched arm-in-arm with Harvey Milk, the gay San Francisco Supervisor who was later assassinated. I then served as the treasurer for the Harvey Milk Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club and participated other gay groups’ activities. Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s as a gay boy at a time that all gay sexual activity was illegal, I believed that the United States legal system should be based on the constitution, which states that our system of laws is separate from religious thought. So I believe that both sexual activities and the use of drugs were private matters and only included in the legislative framework because religions purported that they were immoral activities. I declared that if the legal systems were truly independent of religious dogma, those activities would not be legislated. I spoke at gay rights conferences, openly promoting the termination of laws prohibiting all gay sex and the legalization of all drugs.
My persecution by law enforcement and later by the State Department, US Embassy officials and the FBI began as a result of my gay political activism. It all started forty years ago with a San Francisco police inspector who believed in conspiracy theories eerily similar to those promoted by Q-Anon about Satan-worshipping pedophile rings. Because of my very vocal political convictions, Tom Eisenman believed that it was his job as an inspector of sexual crimes to follow me and watch my home, even though there was no evidence that I had committed a crime. The inspector began warning young male friends to stay away from me, telling them that I was a dangerous sexual predator who would turn young people into drug addicts. When I learned what Eisenman was doing, I contacted his supervisor to tell him that Eisenman was harassing me. His superior apologized, telling me that that Eisenman was “reactionary”. He then ordered the inspector to stop his harassment if he had no evidence that I had committed a crime. The following year, after his supervisor had been moved to another department, inspector Eisenman began the harassment again, going into my office and removing personal belongings without even obtaining a search warrant, looking for evidence of something illegal that I had done. I was forced to hire an attorney and sue the police department to have my possessions returned.
In 1985, I expanded my San Francisco receptive tourism business into Thailand and then moved there two years later to run the Thai office. Then in 1988, a man who I had met two decades earlier at Sonoma State University, visited me in Bangkok. John Cummings and his wife were devout Evangelical Christians, and they were on their way back to the states after visiting evangelical missions in India. While in my office, Cummings called his sister who told him that the police in Sacramento, California had issued a warrant for his arrest for having sex with young boys and that they would pick him up when he returned to the states. Cummings freaked out and decided to remain in Thailand while his wife went home. He asked if he could stay in my apartment, since he didn’t know anyone else in the country. Initially, I agreed, but he was so moody, irrational and disruptive that I told him to move out after a month. He then became visibly angry and insisted that I was obligated to let him stay. In desperation, he called an Evangelical Christian friend who was working in the Reagan White House. His friend put him in touch with a person at the American Embassy in Bangkok who Cummings told me would help him and could be trusted because he was a “born again Christian”. The next day, he left my apartment to meet with his contact at the embassy and did not return.
Although I had known since college that Cummings was a con artist, I didn’t even consider that he would be as devious and conniving as he turned out to be. He had studied law in school, so he was well aware of the benefits of using plea bargains to reduce his probable sentence. After leaving my apartment, he created a false narrative about me, my receptive tour business and friends of mine that he had met to use in a plea bargain. He told his embassy contact and later the police in San Francisco that I operated a sex tour business, brought pedophiles from around the world and then took them to a children’s shelter operated by Mark Morgan; a friend who had previously worked at my tour company. Cummings alleged that the shelter was nothing but a front for child prostitution. One day before he turned himself into the authorities and returned to the states, Cummings visited the shelter. Mark Morgan wasn’t there at the time, but Cummings asked the Thai volunteers who were taking care of the children to call all of them together. They had never met Cummings, but he sat down in front of them and started crying. The volunteers said that Cummings carried on for half an hour. Everyone was embarrassed, but they didn’t know what to do. Finally, he stood up, asked all the kids to let him hug them, and then left. I can only assume that the visit and his behavior was the result of a guilty conscience, because he knew that the story he had created would destroy their happy lives.
Cummings was aware of Inspector Eisenman’s obsession with me, so when he returned to the states, he contacted Eisenman and told him the story he had concocted. He embellished his story by telling Eisenman that I had sex with a young Sacramento boy who he had brought to my house in San Francisco years earlier. Having investigated me for five years and being unable to find any crime that I had committed, Eisenman was anxious to find something for which he could have me arrested. He and his partner immediately went to the boy’s school in Sacramento. Even though the boy did not say we had sex when Cummings brought him to my house, the inspector was so anxious to charge me with something that he created an arrest warrant entirely based on Cummings’ allegations. He then created a second bogus warrant stating that I had fled to Thailand to avoid prosecution. In the meantime, Eisenman had contacted the Bangkok embassy and conspired with Cummings’ ‘born-again’ Evangelical Christian contact there to orchestrate my arrest by the Thai police. The embassy official relayed the tale that Cummings had created about my business to other embassy staff, the Thai government and the Bangkok police department, without bothering to investigate to see whether or not the story was true.
On February 13, 1989, an article appeared in a Thai newspaper alleging that a foreigner in my neighborhood had picked up a homeless boy while he was being tutored by Catholic social workers and then took him to a home for homeless children and raped him. The day after the article appeared, I received notice that the government of Thailand would no longer extend my visa and that I had to leave the country. The police later came to my office and arrested me and my neighbor, claiming that it was because of the article in the newspaper. Yet the article had not mentioned anything about either of us. The next day, the two of us were taken to police headquarters where dozens of newspaper reporters and media personnel were gathered for a press conference. The head of the police department forced us to sit at a table covered with pictures of naked babies, and then told everyone at the press conference the story that had been created by Cummings. After the press conference, I posted bail and left the police station, only to be re-arrested the next day when the security attaché at the embassy sent a letter to the Thai police.
After spending many months in various prisons and jails, I was eventually found not guilty by a Thai court and released, only to be sent to an immigration prison and held for over a year because US Embassy officials had cancelled my passport and the Consul at the Embassy had asked Thai authorities in the immigration department to keep me locked up. At one point, my Thai lawyer asked Consul Pattison why he had arranged with the immigration police to keep me imprisoned. He said that he was afraid I would “abscond”, believing the bogus charge made by Eisenman that I had fled to Thailand. He told the lawyer that he would deny having anything to do with my continued incarceration if anyone asked. Finally, I was returned to the states only to have a judge order my release, stating that there was no evidence of a crime.
It was apparent that neither the embassy personnel, the FBI, nor the Thai police had ever conducted an investigation to see if Cummings’ allegations were true. Had they investigated, they would have learned that my business was an entirely legitimate, legally registered receptive tour business that dealt exclusively with corporate incentive tours, and that Mark’s children’s shelter was a wholesome environment for homeless street children. One would think that the FBI, the world’s premier investigative agency, would have conducted a thorough investigation before embassy officials acted on Cummings’ story, but they didn’t.
I walked out of jail more than two years after the day of my arrest in Thailand, not having committed any crimes, penniless, with my friends’ lives forever altered and my career, reputation and businesses destroyed.
This is the full story:
Although my university degree was in the field of psychology, I didn’t want to be a counselor as much as I wanted to travel and see the world. So, after graduation, I took a job in the travel and tourism industry. I worked first with a San Francisco incentive tour operator and then with a receptive tour operator, opening my own receptive tour company in 1977. Following a successful eight years doing business in San Francisco, I expanded into Thailand. When I opened the Thai business, I was still president and the major stockholder of the San Francisco company, which dealt with all segments of the travel industry. I didn’t want the same kind of constant pressure that I experienced in San Francisco, so I decided to focus only on American corporate incentive tours. Travel industry colleagues in America doubted the wisdom of the idea, while a Thai tour operator told me that if I was planning to only handle American incentive programs, I might as well declare bankruptcy before setting up shop.
During the first year of business at the Bangkok company, I had spent thousands of dollars more than anticipated, Thailand had withstood a military coup and John Robbins, my sales manager, had been rushed back to the states for a liver transplant. By the end of the second year, David Wood, my office manager, had committed suicide after finding his newlywed wife working in a brothel. Also, I had been forced to sell some of the stock in my San Francisco company so that I would have enough money to keep the Thai office operating. But I was determined. I loved Thailand with a passion and told anyone who would listen to my ravings that the country would become the world’s next major incentive destination. After David Wood died, I hired a Thai man to be the general manager. A few months later, I met Mark Morgan and hired him to be my sales manager. It had become increasingly obvious that I could not successfully run two companies on different sides of the world, so in 1987 I moved to Thailand.
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Before opening the Bangkok company, I leased a condominium from my Thai consultant It was in a relatively new building called ‘Victory Monument Condominiums’. The architects hadn’t used a tremendous amount of creative genius. The box-like cement structure was similar to thousands of unimaginative, but functional buildings in developing tropical nations. The first floor was for open-air parking, topped by eight floors of simple rectangular units, each exactly like the other. The office that I leased consisted of two of these units, thus it was twice the size of one I rented to live in on the same floor. A twisting alley and a cement bridge over a small khlong connected the building with its namesake; Victory Monument, a monolithic World War II memorial to soldiers, sailors and airmen who died fighting for their king and country. At the base of the monolith are bronze statues of military figures, encompassed by a traffic circle consisting of somewhere between ten and twenty lanes, depending on how many vehicles were jammed into the roadway at any given time. On the periphery of this enormous swarm of trucks, buses, automobiles, samlors and push carts were sidewalks packed with humanity cueing up to board buses that labored through the congested streets, spewing black choking fumes into the already densely polluted air. Beyond the bus stops were small swards of swamp grass and a few struggling trees, which gave way to alleys clogged with street vendors, attempting to hawk everything from chicken fried over portable grills to ceramic piggy banks and counterfeit name brand shirts and watches. Next to the alleys were more modern buildings with shops, restaurants and Robinson’s Department Store. The humid tropical air was filled with the stench from the polluted khlong, fumes from the myriad vehicles, and the pungent odors of Thai noodle soup and fried rice – cooked and served at portable stalls lining the banks of the murky waterway.
Initially, I hired two Americans to help me open the Thai office. David Wood and John Robbins loved Thailand enough to disregard the monumental frustrations that accompanied the opening of a foreign owned business in the ‘Land of Smiles’. Even though the company had been registered with the American Embassy and the office had officially been set up with the help of a corporate lawyer in accordance with the dictates of the Thai government, we couldn’t start doing business right away. It took six months to get a telephone and telex installed, and that was only after the proper authorities had been ‘coerced’ to move things along. But my faith in the country as an incentive destination was beginning to pay off. The Tourism Authority of Thailand had dubbed 1987 “Visit Thailand Year” and the marketing campaign drew visitors in record numbers. We had handled 17 corporate incentive programs in the formative years and twice that number were on the books for 1989 and 1990.
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One day in February of 1989, I left work and walked down the hall to my apartment. The two boys who shared the apartment with me usually left the door open so that the breezes would flow through to the balcony, but on this day, it was closed. I tried to turn the door handle, but it had been locked from the inside. Suddenly, it swung open and Chat stood in the doorway. He was a rather stocky 17-year-old with dark hair, dark skin and a ready smile. When he stepped aside, I saw a group of his friends sitting in a circle on the floor in the front room with a stack of playing cards in front of them. They were all wearing their school uniforms of white shirts and black shorts. Nu, the other boy who shared our apartment was sitting on the couch in his school’s white shirt and blue shorts. “I hope you’re not playing for money again,” I exclaimed in my broken Thai, knowing full well that was why the door was closed. Immediately, all of the boys stood up and placed their hands in front of their faces as if they were praying. I shook my head and walked past them into the bedroom.
I had met Chat three years earlier when I invited a group of teenagers from the neighborhood to go to an amusement park. While we were having lunch, I asked them how they were doing at school. Chat replied that he could not go to school with his friends. When I asked him why, he said that his family had no money to pay for his education, so he left home in Ubon Province and had come to Bangkok to work with his sister in her street stall. “How much does school cost?” I asked. “Five hundred baht a month”, he replied, a figure so low that I immediately offered to pay the tuition. When we returned from the amusement park, Chat and I went to talk to his sister Rekha. A few days later, I drove Chat and Rekha to their family home in Ubon so that we could get the approval from his mother and retrieve his school records. Chat’s older brother then decided to go to Bangkok to replace him at the food stall, which created a problem with their living situation. Rekha’s small shack was tiny and not large enough for three people, so I offered to let Chat move into my apartment.
Word got around the neighborhood about what I had done. Not long afterwards, I heard a knock at the front door. When I opened it, a neatly dressed 13-year-old boy stood before me and blurted; “My mother made me come here to tell you that she can’t afford to send me to secondary school any longer and she wondered if you could help”. He seemed almost fragile as he looked up at me with imploring huge brown eyes that resembled those of a waif in a Walter Keene Painting. “Of course, I’ll help you”, I replied.
The first year that I paid his tuition, Nu lived at home while attending school. Then two years later, he decided that he would prefer to live in Mark Morgan’s children’s shelter because it was nicer than his mother’s home. When he arrived, he was the 16th child in the shelter, but a year later, twenty-nine children called the shelter home and it had become too crowded for Nu. So, one day he appeared on my doorstep beseeching me to let him move in with Chat and me.
I grew to love both boys. As with most Thai children, they were extremely polite and well-mannered. I gave them weekly chores around the apartment and, in exchange, an allowance. But they liked to gamble and Chat usually lost, so he was always broke. I had asked them not to gamble for money, but as the events of this afternoon proved, they hadn’t listened to me.
A few minutes later, my American neighbor stuck his head in the doorway. “Cocktails?” he offered. The apartment David Groat rented down the hall had a wet bar built into the wall between the kitchen and the balcony and he enjoyed playing bartender. Just as David was pouring me a drink, one of Chat’s friends from the neighborhood poked his head into the open door and asked where Chat had gone. I told him that Chat was home, even though the door was closed.
A couple of minutes later, he returned with Chat, Nu and their friends. “Look at this,” Chat exclaimed. “It’s an article about foreigners at Victory Monument.” He spread the Matichon daily on the table and read to us slowly so that we would understand. The headline declared that a foreign sex gang operated out of the Victory Monument area. It said that an orphan living on the street had been taken to a foreigner’s home packed with Thai children and then raped and sodomized. “I want to show this to the soi”; Chat said, referring to the maze of wooden shacks next to our building. The boys then departed as abruptly as they had arrived. “Have you noticed any foreigners who might be living nearby?” I asked David. Although the Victory Monument neighborhood covers a large area, our building was the nicest within a half mile radius and I couldn’t imagine a ‘gang’ of foreigners living in one of the run-down, Spartan Thai-style buildings. “I haven’t seen anybody,” David responded.
*******
The next day was a school day. The boys’ routines were always the same on school days. The alarm would ring and Nu would reach over Chat to turn it off and then stumble into the bathroom. Emerging a few minutes later, he would nudge Chat awake and then head out the door to catch the bus for school. Chat would open his eyes just for a second, then roll over and close them again. Then a few minutes later, he would suddenly jerk awake, rush into the bathroom, sprinkle some water on his body, throw on his school uniform, grab his books, wake me up and dart out the door.
Lying awake, I thought about the newspaper article. Although sex scandals were a mainstay of American media outlets, it was not an issue that the Thai people cared much about. Articles like that seldom appeared in newspapers. Most Thais are Buddhist. Unlike American Christians, they don’t consider sex to be evil or immoral. Prostitution is legal and many areas of Bangkok are filled with bars that offer either male or female sex shows. Participants are available to any of the patrons who wish to take them home. Being gay, I frequented a number of the gay bars in the Patpong area. If I decided to take one of the performers from the bar, I would rent a room at the Suriwongse hotel, rather than take him to my apartment where the two boys were staying.
David Groat was in the office typing on my computer when I opened the door. He had rented an apartment in the condominium building two years earlier. As the only other American in the building at the time, we struck up a friendship. Since he was more computer literate than me, he offered to create a computer program for my business. So I gave him an office key and access to my office equipment. Then when Mark Morgan’s shelter started to expand and take in more homeless children, Mark asked David to help him by creating mailing lists of donors and keeping the shelter’s financial records. David was missing several of his teeth, which he claimed was a souvenir of an American prison in which he had been savagely beaten by hard-core inmates. Small and thin, with a developing beer belly and a receding hairline, he walked hunched over and often went about without his dentures, making him look much older than his 35 years.
A prepayment for an upcoming incentive program was due and it had not yet arrived, so I went over to the telex machine to type a message reminding the client. While I was typing, Kenji arrived. He was a very thin half Japanese and half Thai man in his early twenties. Somewhat timid and shy, he always had a ready smile and stayed calm even during stressful situations. Kenji was born in Thailand, but had grown up in Australia, spoke with a strong Australian accent and hadn’t spoken Thai since he was six years old. His Thai was so rusty that he decided to take a Thai language course at the YWCA to reacquaint himself with his native tongue. Mark Morgan met Kenji there while he was studying Thai and told him that he should apply to work at my company as a tour guide. When Kenji came in to apply for the job, I hired him to be my operations manager, rather than a tour guide.
While I was still typing the telex message, Kachon walked into the office. He had worked for me about as long as Kenji. Although his English wasn’t wonderful, he was so pleasant he could talk a cat out of eating a sparrow. He seemed to have ongoing affairs with at least five women, some of whom would wait outside the office for him to get off work so that they could castigate him for his indiscretions. I completed typing the message and pushed the “SEND” button. Nothing happened, so I turned around and said: “There’s something wrong. It won’t connect to an outside line.” The telephone and telex lines were a constant source of frustration. The first year, we had to wait five to ten minutes, just to get a dial tone. When I installed my fax machine, the lines were so primitive that the machine could not connect with its computerized counterpart overseas, so the telex had become our lifeline. Kachon picked up the phone and called the Communication Authority of Thailand. “The lady says that the line is good, so she will send someone here to check it.”
A few minutes later, Kachon came over to my desk to tell me that the police were in the reception area. “They want to talk to Chat,” he said. “Chat? What do the police want Chat for?” I asked. Without waiting for a response, I stood up and went out to greet them. Standing in the open doorway were six of the largest Thai men I had ever seen. “The police said that the guard told them Chat lives in our office”: Kachon said. “They say they are here because of the story in Matichon Newspaper” “Come in,” I offered. “Sit down.” Two of the officers stepped in and sat down. The other four men remained standing outside the door. “Chat is in school,” I told them. “Does he live here?” one officer asked. “No,” I gestured around the room. “This is an office. Chat is one of the two boys who live in my apartment down the hall. Is there something wrong? What has Chat done?” “Who is the other boy?” the second officer asked, ignoring my question. “His name is Nu,” I answered. “He is in school. Both boys return from school at around 4:30. If you want to talk to them, you should come back then.” “Thank you, we will come back,” the second officer said, rising to his feet. “Thank you,” the other officer repeated, and then the two of them stepped out the door to join their colleagues in the hallway.
When they left, I turned to Kachon “If you see Chat and Nu before I do, tell them that the police want to talk to them about something.” Just then, Mark Morgan called. David picked up the phone. When he hung up, he came over to my desk and reported that Mark told him a reporter from Matichon newspaper had called him to find out what he knew about the story in her paper, but that he didn’t know anything about it and hadn’t seen the article. David continued; “I told him that the police had just come to our office and wanted to talk to Chat about the newspaper article.” Then I remembered that the article had mentioned a home packed with Thai boys run by a foreigner. It said the home was near Victory Monument, but Mark’s shelter is five miles away. Why would the newspaper reporter call him? I wondered. The whole thing was very strange!
Later that afternoon, Mark came to the office looking decidedly worried. He was the epitome of the Utah Mormon; a tall slender 30-year-old man with glasses and straight blond hair which always had so much gel it looked as if it were cemented to his head. Two years earlier, when Mark was my sales manager, he had turned a project to help a few homeless street kids into a full-time job. Then when I moved to Bangkok to run the company, he resigned so that he could devote all of his time to his children’s shelter. Mark had rented a large house about five miles from Victory Monument, and equipped it with bunk beds, a TV, stereo, VCR and ping pong table. The house had a large yard, so Mark put in a trampoline, planted a vegetable garden, and then bought a dog, chickens, rabbits and a monkey. He hired a Thai man to be the house father, a Thai woman to be a house mother and a full-time cook. In addition, three volunteer students from one of the universities and occasional volunteer stewardesses from Northwest Airlines helped to take care of the kids.
“The whole thing has something to do with some Catholic social workers,” he said. “The reporter told me that while they were teaching some street children out on the grass near the monument, a foreigner walked right into the class, ignored the Catholics, and told one of the boys to follow him. The reporter said that the boy returned the next day and told the story to the social workers who then told it to the reporter at Matichon newspaper. I don’t know how the home, or Chat for that matter, became involved. It’s possible that the street children had been to the home and the stories got mixed up. I’ve asked the Thai volunteers at the home to go and talk to the Catholics to straighten the whole thing out.”
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This story was getting stranger all the time, so the next day, I asked Kenji to go to the security office with me and act as a translator. “What did the police say to Chat?” Kenji asked the guard. “I didn’t hear the conversation,” he responded. ” Do you know why they wanted to talk to the boys?” “They didn’t tell me what they wanted, but they did say that they didn’t find what they were looking for. They weren’t regular police, anyway. They were from the child welfare department.”
After talking with the security guard, Kenji and I returned to the office. “Khun Steve,” Kachon said as we walked in. “A letter just arrived from the Labor Department. It says that your permit to stay in Thailand is denied and they will not issue another one.” “Why would they refuse to extend my permit?” I asked rhetorically. I was bringing the type of business that the government wanted and I was personally responsible for a number of corporate executives deciding to bring their incentive qualifiers to Thailand.
“Call Khun Phisan’s office, Kachon, He’ll straighten it out for me.” Phisan was the Permanent Secretary of the Interior, one of the highest-ranking government officials in the country. He was a personal friend of John Robbins, my former sales manager. When John was still working for me in Thailand, we visited Phisan in his office at the Department of the Interior. Although the waiting room was overflowing with people wanting to talk to the Secretary at the time, we were whisked into the inner office immediately. Phisan spent 45 minutes talking to us and, before we left, told me to come and see him if I ever had any problems.
Kachon hung up the phone and said; “The Secretary for Khun Phisan says that you have to write a letter to make an appointment.” I wondered what might have caused this change of attitude. The first thing that came to mind was that it was Khun Anan. He was the owner of one of the largest tour companies in Thailand, was well-connected, knew a lot of government officials, and was angry at me for asking one of his clients to allow my company to bid on their next incentive program. When I ran into him one day, he looked at me and snapped; “That’s not the way we do business in Thailand.” Then he turned away and muttered; “You don’t know who I am.”
I picked up the phone and called the director of the Thailand Incentive and Convention Association. “Khun Sawalee,” I said, “I have a problem with my work permit. It was rejected. Could you ask Governor Dharmnoon to intercede on my behalf?”
Kachon popped his head around the corner and when I hung up, he told me that three men from the Telephone Organization of Thailand found the break in my telex line. They said that somebody had cut the line inside the building.
On my way out to lunch, I ran into a doctor from the clinic next to the condo. He told me a man had come into his clinic and asked a number of questions about me, Chat, Nu and the other foreigners in the building. He said that he didn’t know who the man was, but that he was not a cop.
Chat sometimes exhibited uncharacteristic behavior for a Thai. Most Thai people are not demonstrative in public. It is usually considered bad manners. But, every day after school, Chat would traipse into the office, head straight for my desk, drop his books, throw his arms around me and hug me, pick up his books and leave without saying a word. When he came in this afternoon, I asked him why the police had questioned him. He said that they asked about his relationship to me and that he explained to them that I was like a father to him.
As I was talking to Chat, Mark called to report that his staff met with the Catholic social workers and they denied ever saying anything to a Matichon reporter. The reporter had told Mark the story came from them. Somebody was not telling the truth and I suspected that it was the newspaper reporter.
I wanted to see this mysterious article again, hoping it would provide a clue to help me figure out what was happening, So I asked Chat to find his friend and to see if he still had the newspaper he showed us. When Chat returned to the office with the paper, I asked Kachon to translate the story again. But his translation provided no further clues. “What do the rest of the articles in the newspaper say?” I asked, wondering if Matichon was the Thai version of ‘The National Enquirer’. “Who reads this newspaper?” “Matichon is very popular with government officials,” Kachon replied. He then began giving me an overview of all the articles. Four major stories were about foreigners and they were all negative. One said that foreigners bring AIDS into Thailand; another was about foreigners who were caught illegally purchasing land in Pattaya; a third was about the negative effect of tourism on the environment; and the fourth was the front-page salvo about the foreigner who purportedly raped a boy. The slant of every article seemed to be geared toward exciting xenophobic passions. I thought that either the owner or the editor of the newspaper was a Thai version of Rush Limbaugh; the American radio personality who vilified immigrants and excited xenophobic passions by juxtaposing actual stories of politicians, or actual events, with conspiracy theories. Like Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh would often stretch the truth to advance his own conspiracies. It seemed that someone at Matichon Newspaper was doing the same thing. If the reporter was lying about her source for the story, was the story itself a lie? If so, then who was promoting this lie and how were Chat and Mark Morgan involved?
Nu arrived while Kachon was reading the newspaper. “What did the police say?” I asked. His response was the same as Chat’s; that the police wanted to know what his relationship was with me. He said that he told them that I was like a father to him and that he loved me. He said, however, that they tried to get him to say that I had sex with him and when he told them that I didn’t, they said they thought he was lying because Chat had said I did. “What?” I exclaimed. “Why would they say that to you? Chat didn’t tell me they asked him that.” It seemed like they were trying to use Chat to manipulate Nu into telling them that we had sex. But I wondered what would make them think that or ask that question. This whole thing was getting weirder by the minute.
*******
The next day, the repairmen from T.O.T. came to tell us that because the lines in our building are on private property, they would not be able to fix our line, but that if we want telex service, we can buy a cable and connect it ourselves. When I left the office and went to David’s for cocktails, I asked him if he had spoken with Mark. I told him that I was so busy with an incentive proposal, the telephone lines and getting my work permit renewed that I forgot Mark was going to call the Matichon reporter back. He said that he hadn’t heard from Mark, but We talked about the possibility that someone connected to Matichon newspaper was trying to create a scandal and I worried that Mark’s shelter might suffer. I wasn’t worried that it would affect me in any way.
*******
I had arranged a meeting with the executive board of the Society of Incentive Travel Executives. Even though I had a bad cold, I was the president, so I had to attend. I dragged myself to the top of the Bangkok Bank building pumped full of sinus relief medicine. The session went on for more than two hours. It centered on an essay contest, our plans to send the contest winner to S.I.T.E.’s next conference in Las Vegas, and the next seminar to be held in Hua Hin. I told the board that I wanted to bring the S.I.T.E. University to Thailand. The University would bring incentive planners from around the world for weeklong classes and after they had spent a week in the country, I was sure they would all agree with my claim that Thailand was the finest incentive travel destination in the world.
The Society of Incentive Travel Executives is the largest and most prestigious incentive travel association. Its membership comprised the top management personnel from the finest hotels, incentive travel companies, destination management companies, airlines, theme parks and other businesses that deal with incentive travel programs. In September of 1988, I was elected president of the Thai chapter of S.I.T.E. My predecessor had initiated a program of seminars teaching people in the travel industry what an incentive is and how it should be operated. When I succeeded him, I inherited his seminar schedule.
Following the meeting, Sandy Ferguson, the publicity chairman for S.I.T.E. invited me to the Dusit Thani Hotel for a drink. On the way, Sandy said, “You know, Tim Smucker is a friend of mine. He wasn’t very happy about your letter to the editor in response to his article in the Bangkok Post. It made him look bad.” “It should’” I replied. “It was not at all the type of story I would expect to read in a respectable newspaper.” I remembered the piece very well. I thought that it appealed to Christian sexual phobias. One of the main reasons I loved Thailand so much was that the Thai people did not have the same sexual phobias and homophobia that permeated American society, so when Tim Smucker’s article was published, I reacted and wrote a letter pointing out all the inaccuracies in it. Tim asserted that prostitution was responsible for street kids snorting paint thinner. In my letter to the editor, I said that I found his assertion to be preposterous and stated that, unfortunately, street children all over the city were sniffing paint thinner, including those in my neighborhood at Victory Monument. I added that the street children in my neighborhood were not prostitutes.
“Tim is just trying to make a living’” Sandy explained. “He writes articles that the newspaper will pay for, so what if it’s a little distorted. It’s his livelihood. Tim should be at the Press Club at the Dusit. If he’s around, I’ll introduce you. He’s not a bad guy.” Tim Smucker did not appear. I bade Sandy farewell and caught a tuk tuk home. The motorized samlors got their Thai name from the sound that their two-stroke engines make. The Japanese owned Thai company that created the unique but ubiquitous machines was now manufacturing them for export. It was David Wood’s fantasy to buy one and take it back to America, but he did not live long enough to see his fantasy come true.
*******
The next day was Saturday, so the boys didn’t have to get up early for school. There was a knock on the door and I peeked around the corner as Birt walked in. “Sawatdee Khrap,” he said as he placed his two hands together. He was an orphan, about Chat’s age and a very sensitive boy, easily hurt by the slightest rejection. When Chat first met him, he was living with a group of musicians who used him as their go-fer, so Chat suggested to him that he go to Mark’s shelter. But a little while after Birt moved into the shelter, some radios and cameras disappeared. Ulit, the Thai house father that Mark had hired, accused Birt of taking them and ordered him to explain their disappearance. Without saying a word, Birt ran out of the house. Nobody saw him for months afterwards. While working for Mark, Ulit had contacted some of the shelter’s local sponsors and asked them for personal loans and donations. He didn’t repay the loans and he pocketed some of the donations. Although Mark knew what Ulit had done, he initially didn’t want to fire him. Ulit had been a wonderful teacher and house father and the only child he ever alienated was Birt. But finally, when Mark learned that Ulit had been forging his signature on checks, Mark let him go. Ulit swore revenge. To fire a Thai from a job is always a bit risky. It’s hard for westerners to understand how humiliating it is for a Thai person to lose face. When Birt learned that Ulit was no longer at the shelter, he went back to live there, but nobody ever knew whether or not he had been the one who took the radios and cameras.
As Birt was talking with Chat and Nu, I headed for the shower. When I emerged, Chat said he was going ice skating and asked if I’d join him. “No Chat, I’m expecting Maureen to call today, but if Birt wants to go with you, I’ll pay his way.” My niece Maureen and her husband Ken had come to Thailand two weeks earlier for an extended honeymoon. They left Bangkok three days after arriving in the country but promised to call so that I could arrange a visit to a game preserve near the River Kwai. I hadn’t heard from them and I was getting worried. Since Kenji and Kachon would not be in the office, I wanted to stay near the phone during the day in case they called.
The boys all left and I settled down to read a book. A couple of hours later, Mark Morgan called. “Birt just got back,” he said. “He told me a very interesting story. He ran into Ulit on the street and Ulit asked how I was. When Birt told him I was fine, he told Birt that in a few days, I wouldn’t be fine. Do you think Ulit had anything to do with the Matichon thing?” “I don’t know, Mark, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Ulit lost face when you fired him and so he’s trying to stir up some shit. What can he do anyway?”
The president of an American air-conditioning company, his wife and a female corporate executive were due to arrive at the airport, so I headed for the airport terminal, greeted them and drove them to the Oriental Hotel. I had not heard from my niece; the telex line hadn’t been repaired and Governor Dharmnoon had yet to respond to my request for help with the work permit. I had no idea why the police said those weird things to Nu, why they came to my office asking for Chat, or why some stranger was asking the doctor about me and the boys. However, with clients in town, I was only focused on taking care of them.
The day after they arrived, I drove to the Oriental to meet them and then we proceeded to a nearby dock, where I hailed the owner of one of the long-tailed speedboats. The speedboats are similar to large canoes. The owner sits in the rear and steers the propeller. Rumor has it that they are powered by large engines cannibalized from trucks brought in by the American military during the Vietnamese-American war. As the boat knifed through the water, passing under the Sathorn Bridge to the mouth of the Thonburi Canal, we could see the banks of the “Mother Water” Chao Phraya bustling with life. The modern skyscrapers of the Oriental and Shangri-La Hotels gave way to centuries-old warehouses and decrepit shacks. Workers on the docks scurried around to unload rice, vegetables, or any of the other goods that flowed up and down the river in large wooden barges and small family-owned boats. Children happily cavorting in the brown water of the canal waved as we passed by, while their heads bobbed up and down. “Everybody is smiling all of the time,” one of the ladies observed. “They always seem to be so happy.” “This is fabulous,” the company president observed. “I usually despise tours, but this is so different. It’s hard to describe. It’s an experience instead of a tour. It’s just so…exotic.” Thailand had infected them. I never really had to sell Thailand. It sold itself. An American executive could never be convinced that ‘Ancient Siam’ is the perfect incentive destination while seated in an office in America or Europe. He or she has to go to ‘feel it’. When I first visited Thailand in November of 1981, the country took hold of me and refused to let go. From that moment on, I was convinced I would never be the same, living anywhere else. This had become my home.
The banks of the canal continued to expose its treasures: Rickety wooden shacks, ornate ancient temples, tropical foliage, waterfront shops and a warehouse of Chinese caskets. Everyone was smiling and you could feel the happiness emanating from their ebullient faces. The boat swung back into the Chao Phraya River and looming above us was the Temple of Dawn. We disembarked, entered the compound and climbed up the precipitous stairway. Shaped like the Eiffel Tower, this porcelain covered Khmer style pagoda was once the tallest structure in the city. Even though many of the city’s skyscrapers are now taller, it is still an awesome sight as it stands like a sentinel above the “River of Kings”. I led them across the river to the “Grand Palace” and “Temple of the Emerald Buddha”. No one is quite prepared for the jeweled splendor of this place. It’s like driving to the edge of the Grand Canyon and, for the first time, looking out over its expanse. I had arranged for a limousine to meet us at the entrance, and we drove around Sanam Luang, continued past the art deco monument to democracy, the statue of King Chulalongkorn and the Golden Teakwood Palace. Following a guided tour through the palace, I told the driver to take us to the Dusit Thani Hotel where I seated my guests at a table in the Penthouse Bar so they could survey the city below.
“Now let’s talk about your program,” I began. Then I went on to outline an incentive program for their company. “Would you like me to block the hotel space?” I asked. Their reaction made me aware that Thailand had just won hands down over the two other destinations they had been considering. The charisma of my adopted homeland had worked its magic once again. I spent both days with my clients, showing them all of the things that might be included in their upcoming program. I enjoyed the time I spent showing off ‘my’ country, so ten-hour outings with clients didn’t faze me. Time is an abstract concept, whose passing is inconsequential when one is happy, but laborious when one is not. I didn’t know it then, but, very soon, time would be passing very slowly. Instead of ignoring hours, I would be counting minutes. I would look back on these days as if they had been part of a carefree adolescence long gone.
*******
With the site inspection completed, I finally went into the office and asked Kenji if the telex was repaired while I was out with the clients. “Not yet,” he said apologetically. “Kachon hasn’t had a chance to get the cable. We’ve been busy working on Glaxo.” A Glaxo Pharmaceutical meeting was due to arrive at the Dusit Thani in a couple of weeks. The British incentive house operating the program previously worked with my San Francisco company, but this was the first time we had ever handled a program for them in Thailand and I was anxious that everything go well. “By the way, Dan will stay over and play for us,” Kenji said. Dan was a friend of David Groat and he was staying with David in his apartment for a couple of weeks. He was a violinist with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra who had been invited to come to Bangkok to perform with the Bangkok Symphony. I thought that it would be a nice touch to hire him as a strolling violinist on a riverboat cruise we were organizing for Glaxo. “Great! Has Governor Dharmnoon called about my work permit?” “Not yet,” he said. So I went to my desk, and then dialed the director of the Thailand Incentive and Convention Association (T.I.C.A.). “Khun Sawalee, have you talked to Khun Dharmnoon about my work permit yet?” “I asked someone to get forms for you to fill out,” she replied. “But I’ve filled out all the forms,” I objected. “I called you because my request for this year’s renewal has been rejected. I need to talk to somebody who has some pull with the Labor Department. “Khun Dharmnoon has been out of the country,” she said. “Why don’t you just fill out the forms and try to apply again?”
I hung up the phone exasperated. Then I heard my niece Maureen and her husband Ken in the outer office. The two of them looked very bedraggled. “What happened to you?” I asked sharply. There was no hiding my irritation. “I thought the plan was for you to call me from Kanchanaburi last week.” “We only stayed at the River Kwai one night,” Maureen replied. “Then we went to Chiang Mai and took a trek through the mountains and a river raft cruise. We had a great time and I’m sorry we didn’t call, but we really haven’t been around any phones.” “You could have called from Chiang Mai,” I responded rather forcefully. “I’ve been terribly worried. I was about to call the tourist police and have them look for you!” Then, I calmed down a bit and said, “A friend from New England is visiting and asked me to take him to the monkey temple in Lopburi tomorrow. Would the two of you like to come along?” “Sure,” Maureen said, “That sounds great!” Lopburi was the home of my first Thai boyfriend, so it held a particularly sentimental interest. I had visited the town and its temple filled with monkeys many times after meeting Somkiat in a gay bar in 1981.
*******
The next day, I picked up the honeymooners and my friend, then the four of us headed north. We first went to the summer palace at Bang Pa-In, and then hired a speed boat to go to Ayudhaya. Once the most spectacular city in the world, Ayudhaya had been a metropolis larger than any in Renaissance Europe. Then, in 1767 the city was totally destroyed by an invading Burmese army; its golden idols melted down and its jeweled treasures carted away. But the ancient capital is still a place of wonder. We stood in its ruins and looked out at the deteriorating pagodas and crumbling statues and felt a real sense of history.
After dropping everyone at their hotels, I went to David’s apartment. While I was there, an American who had rented an apartment in the condominium a few months earlier called David. He immediately put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Bob is calling from Phuket. He wants to check the contents of the envelope he left with us. Would you run down to the office? I put it in the safe,” he said. I didn’t know it at the time, but David was aware that the money and tickets Bob had left with him for safe keeping were no longer in the safe. I went to the office and opened the safe. When I couldn’t find the envelope, I rushed back to David’s apartment. ‘Where did you put it?” I asked. “I can’t find it.” “You must be mistaken,” he responded. “It was there just a few days ago when I was in the office.” I picked up the phone. “What’s the problem?” Bob asked. “I don’t know,” I said. “David will talk to you in a minute.” “There has apparently been a theft,” David told Bob. “What are you saying?” Bob asked. “Somebody has taken my money?” “I don’t know,” David replied. I took the phone. “That’s a lot of money,” Bob cried. “It’s nearly US$2,000.00.” “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry,” I said “On Monday we’ll go to the police.” “Who could have taken it?” I asked David after hanging up the phone. “You and I are the only ones with keys to the safe,”
*******
The next day, David, Kachon and I jumped into a tuk tuk and rode to Din Daeng Police Station to file a police report about Bob’s missing money. Inside a fenced compound and behind a parking lot sat a four-story building. The façade was once white, but it was now caked with black soot from the exhaust of tens of thousands of vehicles. The first floor consisted of an open-air reception area where uniformed officers were recording reports and complaints from citizens on antiquated typewriters. An officer began to type our report but grew more and more agitated as we told him about the missing money. “How do I know who took your money?” he exclaimed with exasperation. “If the two of you have the only keys to the safe, you should know.” Kachon persuaded him to continue, so he typed the rest of the report and then sent a team to the office to dust for fingerprints in the safe.
Suddenly, all the officers leapt to their feet and stood at attention. I turned to see a well-decorated uniformed officer march in and glare at us. He was a stocky man in his mid-forties, with olive-brown skin and a regal air that crossed the line into pomposity. “Why are the foreigners here?” he snapped at one of his men. I couldn’t quite understand the answer, but it seemed to satisfy him. He sat down and opened a logbook to check that day’s reports. The other officers continued to stand, and I had the distinct feeling that he considered us impolite because we remained seated. An officer suggested that I send any other employees in the office to be fingerprinted. I decided to ask both Kenji and Mark Morgan to go, as Mark had been in the office the previous week to work with David on the mailing list for his children’s home.
It was late afternoon by the time we returned. The lab technicians had already dusted for fingerprints in the safe by the time we arrived. The hassle of filing the police report was exhausting. David did not have the energy to cook, so I invited him, Chat and Nu to our favorite local restaurant for dinner. Predictably, David refused the offer, so I just took the boys. I didn’t know it, but this would be our last dinner together there.
After dinner, Chat said: “I want to talk to you,” he said. “It’s about Nu. He’s been acting funny since the police talked to us and he’s swearing too much.” “Yes, I noticed that. I will have a talk with him,” I said. When Chat got up to go, I felt a great deal of love for him. His sensitivity was very heartening. I made a promise to myself to see that he got through college so that he might have a chance to do what he wants with his life. The next day, when Nu came in from school, I sat him down for a talk and asked him again what had happened that had caused him to become so sad and to start swearing, after the child welfare police spoke with him. He said it was nothing, but then decided to tell me that he was upset because the police had brought up the Matichon newspaper article and then pressured him to say things about me and Chat that he denied were true. He had been thinking about it ever since.
*******
March 1, 1989 The second most unsettling day of my life began like any other day. The boys got up and went to school before I was awake. I didn’t hear them leave. When I finally woke, it was after eight o’clock. I went to the office thinking that it would be an uneventful day. The Glaxo program was eleven days away and the preliminary arrangements had all been made. The office was still locked when I arrived. I fumbled for the odd-shaped key that fit into the enormous padlock I had put on the door after a previous robbery. It was already hot and muggy. The sun was shining through the sliding glass doors to the balcony. I reached over to turn on the air-conditioner then walked into the kitchen to make some coffee.
David walked in soon afterwards, looking rather pale. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “I don’t feel well,” he responded, “but I’ll be better after a cup of coffee.” He grabbed a cup, spooned out two heaps of instant, drowned it in lukewarm water, sat down at his desk and propped up his favorite Garfield-the-cat greeting card with the message, “Don’t bother me under penalty of death.”
Kenji came in right after David. “Good morning,” he cheerily remarked. It was nine thirty by the time Kachon wandered in. Kenji handed him an assignment, then left the office to inspect a boat we were planning to charter for the Glaxo program.
Just after Kenji left, the phone rang. “This is Khun Noo’s secretary,” the voice on the line reported “The letters acknowledging the ten finalists of the S.I.T.E. essay contest are ready for you to sign.” “I’ll be right down.” I hung up the phone, left the office and strolled by Victory Monument and then took a city bus to Khun Noo’s office in Charn Issara Tower. The morning traffic was at its usual standstill and the ride lasted nearly an hour. After signing the S.I.T.E. letters, I caught a bus back to the office.
David was still on the computer when I returned, and he still looked very sick. “I think I’m going to bed,” he moaned. “Do you mind if Dan practices his violin in your apartment? I can’t sleep when he’s playing that damned thing.” “Of course, no problem,” I replied, handing him the key to my front door.
A few minutes later, Dan walked into the office, violin in hand. “Somebody’s looking for Chat,” he said. I looked up from my computer. “Tell whoever it is to come to the office and talk to me. Chat’s in school.” “There are three of them,” Dan said. “Well then tell three of them to come to the office.” Dan nodded then left. A couple of minutes later he returned. “They won’t come to the office. You’ll have to go to the apartment.” “Okay,” I said and continued typing on the keyboard. I didn’t know who Chat’s friends were, but I was anxious to complete my thoughts first. When I finished, I got up and went to the bathroom. I heard Dan’s voice outside the bathroom door. “They want you to come NOW!” he sounded agitated. I walked out wiping my hands on a towel and was confronted by a very irritated little man in baggy clothes who was yelling at me in Thai. He was talking so fast I couldn’t understand a thing he was saying. “Police,” Kachon said. “They want to go into your apartment” “The Police?” A chill ran down my spine. “What do they want?” Kachon watched as I accompanied the officer down the hall. “Stay in the office in case the phone rings,” I told him.
Two more men were waiting in front of my apartment door. I fumbled for my keys. Before I could find the right one, an officer impatiently reached past me and turned the doorknob. The door swung open. Dan hadn’t locked it. The three men immediately began a sweep of the place, tearing through everything. One officer found a bottle of pills in the bedroom dresser. He grinned like the Cheshire Cat and said, “Ni aria? What is this?” “Vitamins,” I replied. He looked disappointed. “What is this all about?” I asked. One of the other officers picked up a photo. “Who is this?” he demanded to know. “It’s Chat.” I thought they knew him since the pretext of their visit was to find him. “What is this about?” I asked again. Another officer found a picture in Chat’s desk. “Who are these boys?” I shrugged. I had no idea. It was a group of Chat’s school buddies dressed in their uniforms. The photo was taken during one of his school outings. At that point, Dan appeared in the doorway, violin still in hand. “There are three more of them in David’s apartment,” he announced. “Where is Chat?” an officer snapped. “He’s in school.” “Where is the school?” “It’s in Pratunam near the Indra Regent. Maybe there are some school papers in his desk that have the name.” At that, the officer opened the drawers in Chat’s desk and pulled out an envelope. Inside he found Chat’s report card with the name of the school printed on it. “And Nu?” he asked. “He’s in school, too. His school is in Lardprao. I don’t know the name of that one either.” I continued to ask for an explanation and I continued to be ignored. The officer then searched Nu’s desk and found a piece of paper with the name and address of the school. Soon after that, they joined their colleagues in David’s apartment.
I made sure that everything had been put back in place, and then locked the door and followed the police. David’s door was wide open. An officer dumped Dan’s luggage on the floor and was searching through the contents, while the others were going through David’s things. “Open that!” One of the officers demanded as he pointed to a cabinet. “I left the key in the office,” David said, then quickly motioned to me to follow him. David was in a panic. For the first time, it hit me that he might be in some kind of trouble. He told me he was arrested in the United States years before and jumped bail, scared that he would be returned to the prison where guards tossed him in with a group of hardened prisoners who set upon him like animals and beat him mercilessly. They kicked out all of his teeth and he had to be hospitalized for more than a week. Now he was petrified that the same thing would happen to him again. He said that he had been living in various countries in Europe and Asia since. He was worried that the Thai police might report his whereabouts to American authorities.
David and I returned to his apartment. The officer finished searching for Dan’s luggage and was replacing the contents. David unlocked the cabinet. The police removed his personal records, some albums with photos and a collection of magazine clippings he had been saving. During the search, a boy named Thep appeared at the door. Thep had been living in Mark’s house for a short time but preferred the freedom of the streets instead. He had struck up a friendship with David and would spend the night in David’s apartment from time to time, when he wasn’t running around with the other street kids. David tried to talk him into going to school, but he was too much of a free spirit and didn’t want to be tied down to anything. Thep had decided to take the bus to Trat to visit his father and came to ask David for money for the trip.
“You’ll have to come to the station with us,” the English-speaking officer said to all of us, including Thep. “We want to ask you some questions.” The elevator brought us down to the lobby entrance where two police pickup trucks were parked. I put my hand on the shoulder of one of the officers and asked his name. I wasn’t really too concerned for myself. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was more concerned about David’s problems with the US authorities. The four of us climbed into the back of one of the pickups and rode to Din Daeng Police Station. There, we were directed to the second floor and into an air-conditioned office. Two officers left the station with the names and addresses of the boys’ schools in hand. Three others took Thep into an interrogation room adjacent to the office.
After a few minutes, one of the men returned and went to a filing cabinet. He removed a long black truncheon that looked like a cattle prod, unscrewed a cap on the bottom, pulled out a number of batteries, checked their potency on a meter, replaced them and then returned to the interrogation room. “I hope that isn’t what I think it is!” David exclaimed. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. I was dumbfounded by this whole thing. One officer had told me that they wanted to ask us questions because of the Matichon Newspaper article. But if they were holding us for that reason, then I couldn’t understand what Chat and Nu had to do with it.
Inside the interrogation room, the police asked Thep if he and David had ever been sexually involved. When he told them that they hadn’t had sex, the officer went to retrieve the electric prod. Returning to the room, he ordered Thep to remove his clothes. The officer then shoved the electric prod into Thep’s genitals, sending an excruciatingly painful electrical surge through his teenage body. Then, the officer asked Thep once more if he and David had sexual relations. In an attempt to stop the officer from torturing him, he decided to tell the man that maybe they had done something once. That was sufficient for the officers. They then told Thep to put on his clothes and wait to sign a statement.
Soon after that, Chat and Nu were ushered into the office and ordered to be seated. I hugged them both and wished that I had a father’s wisdom to comfort them. Thep emerged from the interrogation room looking miserable and David asked him if he was okay. Thep nodded his head, but we were not assured.
The police then took Chat into the interrogation room. He was asked if I had sexually assaulted him, using the same terminology that was used in the Matichon Newspaper article. When he replied “absolutely not,” the police ordered him to remove his clothes and they shoved the electric prod into his genitals. He was in such pain and so intimidated that he agreed to say whatever they wanted. He decided that he would deny it when he wasn’t being tortured. The officers who had brought the two boys from their schools joined their colleagues in the interrogation room. By the time Nu was ordered into the room, there were five of them. He was asked the same question that Chat was asked. He said that I had done nothing to him. The officers pulled off his clothes and shocked him with the prod. He continued to deny that anything had happened between us, so they shocked him again and told him they would continue to do so until he died unless he agreed to sign a statement saying that I had at least masturbated him. Finally, he agreed to sign their statement. He didn’t understand why the police would do that to him. When he emerged from the room, his eyes were red and swollen. I asked him what had happened, but he was so afraid of the police that he wouldn’t tell me until later.
When Lieutenant Suthep Chanasithi, an English-speaking officer, returned to his desk from the interrogation room, he asked Dan, “Why did you come to Thailand and how long do you plan to stay?” Dan replied that he was visiting Thailand for a few weeks and that he would be leaving as soon as he finished performing with the Bangkok Symphony. The officer returned his passport and told him that he was free to go.
Kenji had arrived while Chat and Nu were being interrogated. He was too shy to ask Chanasithi what was going on, so he told Dan to tell Kachon to come to the station. Dan promised to talk to Kachon and suggested that it might be better if he moved to a hotel for the remainder of his visit. He was visibly shaken. I finally turned to Chanasithi. “You said that you brought us here to ask us questions,” I protested. “We have been here for nearly three hours, and you’ve ignored us. I have work to do in the office. If you need me, I’ll be there.” I got up and started to leave. “You cannot go,” he said stone faced. “As a matter of fact, you should call your embassy and probably get yourself a lawyer.” “Are we being arrested? If so, what is the charge?” “Wait for the colonel. He will decide. You can wait outside if you want.” “When will the colonel arrive?” I said flustered. “Later” “When?” I insisted. He shrugged. “Before midnight, relax. Are you hungry?” he asked. “I’m sending for dinner. Tell me if you want something.” I shook my head. How could I possibly eat?
“I don’t like the looks of this.” David said in a morose and desperate tone. I asked Chanasithi if I could use the pay phone. He told a uniformed officer to take me downstairs to the phone and stay with me while I made my call. I phoned Mark Morgan and told him that David and I had been arrested and asked if he could recommend a criminal lawyer. The only Thai lawyers I had ever dealt with had been corporate attorneys. Mark said that he didn’t know any but would try to find one.
When I returned to the second floor, David, Kenji, Thep, Chat and Nu were sitting on a wooden bench outside Chanasithi’s office. I silently joined them. From the second floor, we all sat and stared down at the courtyard below. The traffic on the street was at its usual rush hour standstill, but we paid little notice. We were all bewildered, wondering why this was happening to us. A couple of the officers who had interrogated Thep, Chat and Nu appeared and ordered the three boys to go with them. David, Kenji and I watched helplessly as the boys were put in the back of a police truck and driven away. David repeated his previous comment. “I don’t like the looks of this,” he said again.
Kachon arrived and went into the office to talk to Lieutenant Chanasithi. When he emerged a few minutes later, he reported, “The police said that you have to wait for the colonel. He cannot do anything. I don’t know why.” Food arrived. Chanasithi had bought dinner for David and me in spite of our refusals. Kenji and Kachon ate ours. Finally, Kachon decided he could do nothing and went home. Kenji offered to remain for moral support.
At about 9PM, the police truck pulled into the courtyard and the boys jumped out. They seemed to be in much better spirits, actually laughing and joking. They came up the stairs and joined us. “Bai nai Ma? Where did you go?” I asked “Bai rongphayaban, we went to a hospital,” Chat answered. “The doctor looked all over our bodies and in our butt.” “What?” I laughed. The boys then all broke out laughing too. This had become comically absurd. “Keystone cops,” David said.
Just then, Chanasithi appeared and ushered us downstairs to the office where we had spent so much time two days earlier reporting the theft. The officer who had taken our report looked startled. “Is there something else?” he asked fitfully, thinking that we were there to give him more paperwork. “We are not here because of the theft,” I told him. David, Kenji and I sat down on a wooden bench, while the boys were instructed to sit in front of two uniformed officers who were typing something on their antiquated typewriters. Chanasithi handed a file to another officer.
An officer came out of a small radio room. “Steve Raymond, telephone,” he announced. I followed him back into the room and picked up the receiver. “Hello, this is the duty officer at the United States Embassy,” the voice on the line said. “Mark Morgan called and asked that I contact you to see if there’s anything I can do.” “Oh wonderful!” I said to the officer. I hadn’t told Mark to call the embassy, because of David’s precarious situation. “I haven’t done anything, I said. “This is all a misunderstanding. Whatever the charge, I’m not guilty.” I was agitated and a bit angry at Mark. But from the conversation, I assumed the Embassy was still not aware of David’s involvement. When I finally calmed down, the duty officer told me that he’d send Para-Consul Pat Hansford to visit the next day in case I was still in custody. “That would be fine,” I said and hung up the phone.
I returned to the reception area and heard the three-star officer complaining to the others who were prepping statements from the boys. “What is this?” he boomed. “There’s nothing in this file except a Matichon newspaper article and some notes.” He then sent someone upstairs to get the Lieutenant to explain what they were supposed to do. Chanasithi came down and told him that the boys would repeat what they had been forced to say in the interrogation room. He looked at the three boys and told them in a threatening tone, “As soon as you have given your statements, you can go home.”
Chat didn’t have his residence papers with him to prove that he was legally a resident in my apartment. He was told to go back to the condominium and get them. The three-star officer decided to take the statement from Thep. He looked more and more irritated as the conversation progressed. We could not hear what Thep was saying, but whatever it was, it did not please the officer. He suddenly burst forth in an orgy of complaint. Using a few words that Kenji did not care to translate, he told someone to go upstairs and get Chanasithi again. “What is this all about?” he asked Chanasithi. “This boy says nothing has happened and he doesn’t have any statement to make.” Thep was refusing to repeat what the officers ordered him to say after he had been shocked with the electric truncheon. A second officer gave up trying to extract a statement from Nu, as well, so Chanasithi waited for Chat to return and then took all three boys upstairs to the interrogation room again to force them to sign the papers.
Just before midnight, the three of them came back down to the reception area. A few minutes later, the pompous police officer whose arrival two days earlier had prompted everyone to stand at attention walked into the courtyard. “The colonel!” an officer exclaimed. Again, everyone leapt to their feet and bowed as he entered. What bad luck that our fate would be in the hands of the pretentious Colonel Khongdej Choosri! He sat down at a desk and grabbed the logbook of the day’s activities. “Tell him I want to talk to him, Kenji,” I pleaded. “Wait,” Kenji responded. Just then, the Colonel turned to Chat and asked him to come closer and talk to him. “Why isn’t Chat waiing him?” I whispered to Kenji “You can’t see Chat’s face,” Kenji said. “He’s doing all he can just to stand there without crying and falling completely apart.”
When the colonel was finished talking to Chat and after what seemed like an interminable period of time, he turned to me and indicated that I could talk to him. I walked up to the desk and sat down. “Are we under arrest?” I asked. He nodded. “Why?” I blurted. “Is it concerning Chat and Nu? I love those boys; I would certainly do nothing to hurt them.” He looked at me with anger in his eyes and said in perfect English, “What you do is wrong!” I was agape. “What I do is wrong?” I couldn’t believe what I heard. His officers had just tortured three teenage boys with electric shock, but he was telling me that what I do is wrong. From what universe was his moral compass? His staff had violently abused the boys, he said something to Chat that terrified him and then he had the audacity to tell me that what I do is wrong.
Choosri rose to his feet, looked at me with utter contempt and walked out. Moments later, David and I were taken to a row of grungy jail cells. The boys were then ordered back upstairs by Chanasithi and the other officers who had been torturing them. David suddenly turned to me. “Talk to them,” he pleaded. “Don’t let them put us in the cells with the other prisoners,” he pleaded. “You don’t understand. You just don’t understand. It’s dangerous. Kenji, will you stay? They might beat us.” He was white with fear. I asked the officer if we could take the one empty cell and he allowed us that much.
The iron door closed behind us with a metallic clang, followed by the hollow sound of the key turning in the lock. Suddenly, I was gripped by a feeling of panic. The reality hit me. I WAS IN JAIL! The tiny six-foot by six-foot cell was disgustingly filthy. Cockroaches scampered in and out of cracks and up the walls covered with graffiti. The squat toilet and adjacent faucet were black from years of grime and dried excrement. An oily film of blackish brown dirt clung to everything. There was nowhere to sleep but on the floor. Kachon had brought me a pillow, but the guard jerked it away. “You’re in jail. This is no hotel.” The man scowled. David and I tried to sleep, but sleep was impossible. We rolled up extra shirts which Kachon had brought and placed our heads atop them. The mosquitoes were out in force and the noise of the passing trucks was incessant, with large container trucks constantly downshifting as they exited from the expressway. We tossed and turned all night long, hoping for daylight when we expected to be able to post bail and get out of this hellhole.
*******
The worst day of my life began as the light of day filtered through the brown smoke that seemed to permanently hover over the city. At 6AM, there was a change of shifts and every officer coming in for day work gawked at us, as if the sight of imprisoned farangs was a spectacle. Visitors arriving with food for the other prisoners would giggle when they saw us. I began to feel like an animal in a zoo. All I could think of was getting out. Bail had been set at 100,000 baht (approximately US $4,000). I didn’t have that much cash in the office, but Mark offered to post it, so that I could get to a bank, reimburse him and withdraw another 100,000 for David.
Kachon arrived with two plastic bags of rice and meat at 8AM, but neither of us could eat. “Water, Kachon. We’re thirsty,” I implored. He disappeared, and then quickly returned with two bottles of water, which we gulped down within seconds. Even though we couldn’t eat the food he had brought, I was grateful for his presence. The other prisoners weren’t as amused by our incarceration with a Thai man at the cell talking to us. “Kenji go to Mark for money,” Kachon said. “He’s going to come here very soon.”
Time dragged on. Besides wanting to get as far away from this place as fast as I could, I had a nagging fear that someone from the travel industry would see me, or someone from the news media would show up. I knew that would be the end of my business. I couldn’t sell another tour program if my reputation was shot. But I was certain, too, that the police would soon discover their mistake and release us.
The boys were still upstairs in the interrogation room, so I asked Kachon to go up and see how they were doing. “Chat and Nu sleep upstairs on the floor,” Kachon reported back. “The police say they must stay here.” “But they have school today,” I complained. “Don’t the police care if they miss their classes?’ Kachon shrugged. “They have to get ready for their final exams,” I said angrily. “If they don’t take their tests, they’ll have to repeat their classes next term. Would you go get Nu’s father and Chat’s sister to see if they can get the boys out of here?” What I didn’t know was that the police would not release them because they refused, even after being tortured and beaten, to sign the forms that the police wanted in order to charge me with a crime.
“Okay. When Kenji come,” he said. Every minute seemed like an eternity while we were waiting for Kenji to come with the money. At 10:30 he finally appeared, waved at the two of us, and then went to the office with an envelope containing my bail money in hand. A couple of minutes later, he returned with an officer who fumbled with a ring of rusty keys, found the one he wanted and slid it in the lock. The sound of freedom, I thought, metal scraping against metal. I grabbed the shirt I had used as a pillow and started to walk out. The officer stopped me and pointed to David. “You,” he said. David and I looked at each other in bewilderment. He pointed to himself, questioning the man’s intention. The officer nodded. David shrugged, grabbed his things and stepped out of the cell. Kenji and Kachon followed David into the reception area. Minutes dragged on. An hour passed, then two. They were still in the reception room. Tension and anxiety were all I could feel. What was happening? Why didn’t Kenji just pay the bail money and get me out? I felt sick and exhausted from worry and lack of sleep. The courtyard was jammed with people filing reports or making claims. The noise of the traffic, the exhaust fumes, the clacking of the old police typewriters all combined to stretch my nerves to the point of snapping. Finally, Kachon reappeared. “What’s going on?” I asked anxiously “The police are asking David some questions” “Good!” I said. “Finally, they got around to asking some questions. Now they’ll realize that they made a mistake and that we had nothing to do with the story in Matichon. What’s taking so long? You’ve been in there for two hours.” “The policeman has to ask David too many questions,” Kachon said. “I have to speak in English to David and to the police in Thai. On every question, he has to type and he types very slow. After finished, he going to ask you some questions too.” “Well, it looks like I’m not going to make it to the bank today,” I moaned.
A few minutes later, David reappeared, accompanied by the officer with the keys. He was ordered back into the cell and I was ordered out and taken into the air-conditioned reception area where I was seated in front of another uniformed officer. He began asking questions. Though I understood some of it, Kenji translated everything for me and then translated my replies into Thai for the officer. The policeman was indeed slow, hunting through a forest of keys on the typewriter before pecking one with a finger. “How long have you known Chat and Nu? How long have they lived with you? Do you give them money? How long have you lived in Thailand? What business do you work for?” It was laborious. After about an hour, the officer stopped typing, looked at me and said, “This is not the same as the story in the newspaper.” Kachon then explained to him that the newspaper story had nothing to do with us. “Khun Steve khon dee mak. Steve is a very good man.” He said over and over in Thai. The officer was sympathetic. He seemed to realize that a mistake had been made. For the first time, I felt that we were getting that message across. “Will this be in the newspapers?” I asked timidly. “Give the reporters a false name,” he advised. “What??!!” I screeched. I was frantic. I looked around. What reporters? I thought I would be getting out on bail.
Just then, a plainclothes officer escorted David in again. “Come with us,” the man said to me. The two of us were quickly taken to a Toyota police car in the parking lot. “Get in the back,” he barked in English. “Kachon, get in,” I cried. “Come with us.” “He can’t go!” the officer said flatly. I protested. “But the policeman with the three stars said that he could go with us.” The officer looked at me sharply, and then relented. But, in any event, Kachon’s presence would very soon become irrelevant.
The police car slowly crawled through the congested street while the fumes from cars, buses, trucks, motorbikes and tuk tuks wafted through the open windows. The heat and humidity were suffocating. I was sopping wet with perspiration, my clothes matted to my body, which leaked from every pore. It felt as if there was no oxygen in the air. The car finally pulled to the curb on Sri Ayudhaya Road. David and I were ordered out and quickly escorted into police headquarters. Having just experienced the most surreal 24 hours of my life; I was ill prepared for the ignominy that awaited me as the police ordered me into a large auditorium.
“Reporters”, I shrieked, trying to bolt away, as two officers grabbed me and propelled me forward. Suddenly I was face-to-face with still cameras, video cameras, microphones, photographers and newsmen. I was dumbstruck, not knowing why this was all happening. Nothing made sense. At the front of the auditorium were three tables. I was ordered to sit behind one, which was covered with photographs of naked babies and young children. I turned to Colonel Khongdej Choosri and demanded to know what was going on and why I was there. “You know why”; he said as he gestured at the photographs. “What do these have to do with me?” I cried. “I’ve never seen these pictures in my life.” My heart was racing so quickly that I could feel the pulse pounding in my temples like a jackhammer. I turned to the reporters and repeated the repudiation in Thai. “Mai koei hen ni!” I shouted over and over again. The police colonel seized me by the arm and tried to push me down onto the chair. I resisted. “Mai koe hen ni”, I yelled, gesturing wildly. “I have never seen these!” One of the taboos of Thai culture, considered the epitome of bad manners and always counterproductive, is raising one’s voice in public. In fact, social dictates allow for any number of ways to avoid confrontation. I was definitely providing a media event for the reserved and impassive Thai people. With television cameras rolling and tape players recording every sound, in a matter of hours, the gyrations of this ‘mad-man’ would be witnessed by millions of people around the world.
The highest-ranking officer at the press conference, Police General Manas Krutchaiyan, then walked up to me and thrust a photograph in my face. Speaking in an unnaturally loud voice so that not one person would miss it, he roared, “This is a picture of you in bed with a young boy.” I looked aghast at the snapshot. The photo revealed a white foreigner lying naked on a bed alongside a Thai boy. The foreigner did not even remotely resemble me and I did not recognize the boy. The general turned to a subordinate and asked: “It’s him, isn’t it?” Then, without waiting for an answer, or showing the photograph to anyone else, he quickly put it into his briefcase. It was simply a prop for his theatrical performance. Had I been in the picture, it would have been used later by the prosecution as evidence in my trials, as would the pictures of naked children in front of me, but I never saw either of them again. In an act that would have made Houdini proud, General Krutchaiyan was using smoke and mirrors to distract the media and draw their attention away from the real reason that they were there. The press conference had been called so that the head of the country’s Police Department could explain to the world why a Thai policeman had just inexplicably shot and killed a Vice Governor of Tourism on a busy Bangkok Street and why that officer was then shot and killed himself by another one of the general’s employees. Both of these incidents were a major loss of face for the general and the Thai police department, so rather than bring up that difficult subject, General Krutchaiyan used the entire press conference to tell the world that his department had just heroically busted a child sex trafficking ring.
As a uniformed officer began distributing press releases to the media, I was nearly crying with helplessness. I sank into the chair and covered my face with a large manila envelope containing my money and passport to hide my burgeoning tears. Colonel Choosri snatched it away, leaving me glaring at a copy of the press release. It was written in Thai, but in English were my name, David Groat’s name and Mark Morgan’s name. General Krutchaiyan addressed the assembled reporters while Colonel Choosri leafed through several photo albums on the table. I looked at them in stunned disbelief. Inside were pictures of naked babies. The journalists were being told that I operated a sex tour business. The general said that I brought pedophiles from around the world to Thailand, presented them with photographs of these infants, whom he claimed were residents of Mark Morgan’s children’s shelter, and then charged them to have sex with a child of their choosing. It did not dawn on the journalists to question why most of the pictures were of one- or two-year-old babies, yet there were no young babies at the shelter. The press release stated that Mark’s shelter was nothing but a front for child prostitution. Because the reporters were avaricious, hungry for a scandalous story that would induce readers to buy papers and viewers to tune in; they seemed to eagerly accept what the police were telling them without question. None of them made any attempt to ask me questions. As an aside, General Krutchaiyan briefly mentioned who shot and killed the Vice Governor of Tourism, then without taking questions, said that the press conference was over. To my utter astonishment, the entire assembly of journalists dutifully turned off their recorders and started packing up their cameras.
Now I understand what rape does to one’s psyche. It’s tremendously demeaning and such a violation of the feeling of self that it is debilitating, giving one a feeling of total helplessness. General Krutchaiyan and Colonel Choosri raped me that day. The sexual component of rape is unimportant; it’s the psychological and emotional toll that remains with the victim. The most important element for the rapist is total control. They dominated my spirit and in a few short minutes, ruined everything that I had worked a lifetime to create. Rapists invariably are people who have been psychologically and sometimes physically violated at an early age, making them mentally damaged and emotionally insecure. This insecurity manifests itself in the need to attack others and dominate them, which is what Krutchaiyan and Choosri did to me at the press conference. Back in the police car, all I wanted to do was commit suicide however I could. My dreams, my career, my business, my reputation, my freedom, gone! All I could feel was misery. It didn’t matter that I had not done what those two had accused me of doing. The members of the media perceived them as authorities who would tell the truth. In one agonizing hour, my euphoric life in Thailand had been extinguished.
When we returned to Din Daeng Police Station, I was so overwhelmed that I rushed from one cop to the next, trying to find the one who had told me to “give the reporters a false name.” But in my state of mind, all of them looked the same. I grabbed the arm of one and blubbered frantically, “They wouldn’t let me!” He looked at me as if I was crazy and at that moment, I was. David and I were thrown back into our cell. Suddenly, I hugged him and said, “It’s all over!”
Moments later, an officer opened the cell and called me out. A young lawyer from Siam Legal Aid had arrived. It was the firm that the Embassy staff had recommended to Kenji. The lawyer had taken the envelope with the bail money and paid my bail. I was fingerprinted and released. The police had confiscated my passport, but I thought I’d get it later. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I returned to my office, but it wasn’t the same. Something fundamental had changed. Its sanctity had been violated. I picked up the phone and called the American Embassy. “Where did you go?” Para-consul Pat Hansford asked. “I was at Din Daeng Police Station.” “Why couldn’t you wait for us to return, then?” I asked, not realizing that she could not speak Thai and therefore was unable to learn where we had been taken or when we would return. I told her about the press conference, hoping for a little compassion. Instead, she admonished me for not being at the station when she arrived, as if I had made the decision on my own to attend the press conference and had broken a pre-arranged appointment with her.
After a shower and shave, I decided to go back to Din Daeng because David was petrified of being left alone with other prisoners. Kachon and Kenji were joined there by Marcus, an 18-year-old American who came to Thailand with John Cummings when he and his wife were on their way to India. The four of us agreed to take shifts throughout the night to be with David. I was finally beginning to reunite with my sanity. The enormity of what had occurred had not fully sunk in. As evening arrived, Marcus and I walked across the street to a restaurant for dinner. As we sipped a beer, I glanced at the second floor of the police station. I was worried about the boys who were still being held there by Chanasithi because they were refusing to sign his papers. Kenji had contacted Nu’s father, and I planned to go to Ubon to bring Chat’s mother down to Bangkok. I hoped the parents would be able to pressure the police into releasing their sons.
“You’re taking this much better than Cummings did,” Marcus said. “Those last few months before John left Thailand, I had to play wet nurse to him. He would just sit or lie on the bed. He never went out. He had chills and fever, but the medicine didn’t seem to help him. I never want to go through that again.”
Marcus and I paid the bill and went back to the jail to check on David. Kenji and Kachon wandered in at the same time. “You made the top story on all television stations,” Kenji reported. “It was not good. It was really bad as a matter of fact.” As he told me the details of the news stories, Nu’s father, brothers and sister arrived. Kachon took them upstairs where Nu was being held and the rest of us arranged shifts to stay with David throughout the night. At midnight I returned to an empty apartment.
*******
I woke up in a sweat. It was still dark outside. I couldn’t get the nightmare of the press conference out of my head and dreaded what the newspapers would say. Exhausted but unable to fall back to sleep, I took a shower just to kill time. I was agitated, restless and my stomach was churning. At last, the dawn sky began to light the city and colors reappeared. I left the apartment and went to the newsstand next to Robinson’s, frightened of what I would see. I stood there gawking. My throat tightened, yet I also felt a masochistic titillation. There I was, sprawled across the pages of most of the morning editions. The exception was Thai Rath. The country’s largest newspaper had thankfully decided not to report the story. However, the article in the Englishlanguage Nation Newspaper with an accompanying photo from the press conference covered most of the front page. The other English language newspaper, the Bangkok Post, ran a smaller picture and report on page three. The newspaper that had fueled this entire ignominy, Matichon, ran an inside column on the story.
Because I couldn’t read the stories in the Thai language newspapers, I turned to the one in The Nation. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a piece of gutter journalism. As I had only partially understood what General Krutchaiyan was telling the reporters, I didn’t know until this moment the extent of the defamation. The press release that the journalists had been given said that I was running a sex tour ring and that Mark’s home was a front for child prostitution. As I read the entire unbelievable story, I actually felt a sense of relief, thinking that nobody would believe this. It was just too absurd.
I went back to the apartment and called Mark Morgan. “Nobody’s going to believe this,” I said to him. “It’s so utterly ridiculous. The simplest details aren’t even accurate. They call your home, ’Mark Morgan Incorporated’ instead of the Bangkok Children’s Shelter.” “Where did the police get my name?” Mark asked. “I don’t know. I certainly never brought you up and Chat or Nu would have no reason to mention you. David told the investigating officer that he renewed his visa so that he could help with the Bangkok Children’s Shelter, but I don’t even know if he mentioned your name.” “Why did he say that?” “Because it’s the truth. That’s what he told the Thai Embassy in Singapore. He was doing your books and helping with your mailings,” I said. Mark groaned.
“Why don’t we call our own press conference and tell the truth,” I suggested. “That sounds like a good idea, but I should talk it over with Khun Thammarat. I’ll call you back.” Thammarat Narksuriya was a former television celebrity who had joined the Phalang Dharma Party and went into politics He was on the board of directors of the children’s home. Mark relied on him to set up the foundation so that everything would be legal. I went to the office and put the newspapers on Kachon’s desk, then hurried to Din Daeng Station.
I told David that I made an appointment with Khun Puttri at Siam Legal Aid and would pick up bail money for him on the way. “Hurry,” he implored. He was sounding increasingly desperate. My bank balance would not cover both his bail and my bail, so I tried to borrow the balance on my credit card. But the bank would not let me make the transaction without my passport, and my passport had been confiscated by the police. I went back to the station, explained to an officer why I needed my passport, and was assigned a chaperon to accompany me back to the bank. Such an odd assignment and waste of an officer’s time, I thought. After all the years in Thailand, I still didn’t understand that money was the only thing that motivated the police.
When we entered the bank, the American manager saw me and beckoned me into his office. “What’s this all about?” he asked. “It’s all a lie,” I exclaimed. “I think the story was created by a competitor, or maybe Tone, the manager I fired in 1987. Last year someone tried to sabotage my residence visa by telling immigration that I shipped women overseas for sex. The renewal was held up until my lawyer convinced the immigration officials that it was not true. Now this!” “They should make up their minds. Is it women or is it children?” he joked.
When we left the bank, I paid a taxi driver to take the police chaperon back to the station, and then continued to Khun Puttri’s office. Siam Legal Aid was on the second floor of a building in a Silom soi. Inside, it looked like the office of a relatively affluent law firm; not ostentatious, but substantial. The receptionist ushered me into Puttri’s office. A goodlooking man in his early forties rose to shake my hand. As soon as he spoke, I felt comfortable. Not only was his English impeccable, but his manner indicated he was used to dealing with farangs. I explained what had happened and told him that I would be returning to the police station to pay David Groat’s bail. “Come back at 4PM with David,” Puttri instructed, “and I’ll arrange a meeting with the director of the firm.”
When the taxi dropped me back at the station, David was holding court with an entourage of visitors: Kenji, Kachon, Marcus, my company driver Vic, plus Lu, Al and Joi, three female free-lance tour escorts who worked for my company whenever we had groups in town. “The police were really surprised when the ladies came to visit,” David said with a smile. “I guess they believe their own bullshit and don’t think we have any female friends.” Again, the absurdity of the whole thing hit me, and I started to laugh. Then he suddenly turned grim. “The police have taken Chat and Nu someplace, but Thep is still here. He came to the cell a couple of hours ago and told me he couldn’t hold out much longer. I think the police are beating him now.” He was almost shaking. I knew he cared a lot for that feisty street kid. I went into the captain’s office and posted David’s bail. “Let’s get out of here,” he said when the cell door finally swung open. Vic was waiting outside to return us to the office. David, Kenji, Kachon, Lu Al Joi and I all squeezed into Vic’s Toyota Crown and drove back to Victory Monument.
At the condominium, David went with us to the office, grabbed a cup of coffee, and then retreated to his apartment to wash his rancid smelling body. I was still physically and emotionally drained, but I decided that I still had to take care of what business I could before our appointment with the lawyer. I started making phone calls. My first was to the Embassy. When Pat Hansford picked up the phone, she said, “Why didn’t you tell me there were two of you?” “When I talked to you last, I said we had been arrested,” I replied feebly, knowing that I had intentionally not mentioned David by name. Again, she was brusque and accusatory. Then I called some of my colleagues in the industry to gauge their reactions to the news stories. I tried to create the impression that all was business as usual. “Sandy isn’t in,” his receptionist said when I called to apologize for not getting the S.I.T.E. newsletter to Sandy Ferguson on time. I had a feeling he was in, but didn’t want to talk. Next, I called Khun Sawalee at T.I.C.A. to suggest airline participation in our S.I.T.E. contest. “The chapter has the money to pay the air fare,” she stated flatly, inferring there was no need to follow up on my suggestion. Cold as a fish, I thought as I hung up. Finally, I called my biggest competitor; Sumate Sudasna Ayudhaya, to ask him to take over my future programs. I didn’t know how fast the story would have travelled around the world, but I didn’t want my clients to suffer for my problems and I knew Sumate would do a good job with the programs. “I’ll commission you on anything that comes through,” he said. “Thank you, Sumate. I’m sure I can use the money at this point.”
At 3PM, I woke David and the two of us caught the bus to Khun Puttri’s office. We were directed into a boardroom with a large teak table. Puttri was joined by his law partner, a secretary to take notes and the young lawyer who had arranged for the bail at Din Daeng Station. As I told my story, Puttri turned to his partner and said, “It’s not at all like the other case.” He said that the firm was currently handling the case of a man arrested for taking sexually explicit pictures of young children at the Rose Hotel the year before. I wondered if those pictures were the ones the police put on the table in front of me at the ‘kangaroo court’ press conference. “What about all the newspaper and television stories?” I asked. “Oh, that’s nothing,” Puttri said assuredly. “The police here always make up big stories for the papers, especially when it involves foreigners. Don’t worry about that. It won’t be the first time the press was used to ruin somebody’s reputation. It doesn’t mean anything in court.” Maybe not, I thought, but in the business world it meant that I was finished. “The police may want to search your office,” Puttri continued. “They’ve alleged that you ran a sex tour business, so they’ll need to get evidence.” “They can’t take my current files,” I protested. “I still have groups scheduled to come in.” You’d better make copies of the important papers,” he said. The rest of the meeting was devoted to strategy. I asked them to get the boys out of jail, so we agreed to hold another meeting with their parents. I was to spend the weekend going to Ubon to pick up Chat’s mother. As I got up to leave, I asked Puttri if we could go home. “Will the police come back?” I wanted to know. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “Once you’re out on bail, they will leave you alone. You can go home and relax.”
*******
“Thammarat doesn’t think it’s a good idea to call a press conference.” The jarring ring of the phone had awakened me from a sound sleep of more than 12 hours. “Instead, we decided to go around to the newspapers and give them our side of the story,” Mark went on. “We went to three or four newspapers yesterday. We picked those that Thammarat has a good relationship with. The Nation reporter even said he was interested in doing a favorable story about the shelter, similar to the one the Bangkok Post ran last year. I think this is the best way to go about it. Where would we hold a press conference anyway?” “We could rent a meeting room at the Dusit Thani for Christ’s sake.” I felt that Mark was taking the easiest way out, which I didn’t think was the best way. I wanted to put the bastards in the police department on the defensive. Let them try and prove any of what they claimed to be true while the media was watching. “I’m going to go check the newspapers and see if they printed what you told them,” I said. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
I threw on my clothes and headed to the newsstand. When I returned, I called Mark back, seething with anger. “What are you doing to us?” I screamed. This article says that you are claiming to have nothing to do with me and David. Instead of denying the lies and telling the truth, goddamit, you’re trying to save your own skin and you’re hanging the two of us out on the line!” “That’s not what I told them, "He replied feebly. “They misquoted me.” I was livid. I had been publicly vilified, and Mark was making things worse. When I hung up, I sat for a moment trying to compose myself. This must have been Thammarat’s idea. That’s why he didn’t want to hold a press conference. He wanted to try and cut his losses by denying any association with me and my business. In any case, Mark’s decision to allow the lie to fester would eventually be the ruin of his children’s homes. Had he done what I wanted and squelched the entire fabricated story in the bud, the two of us might have been able to restore what we had left of a life in Thailand, his children would have grown up in a nice home and Chat and Nu would have had a much brighter future. Instead, his selfish reaction would ruin it for all of us.
I got up and went to Groat’s apartment. He agreed that our ‘friend’ Mark was throwing us to the wolves and deserting us. “He’s a schmuck,” David said with a tinge of bitterness. After lunch, I went to find Chat’s sister. In the soi, I ran into Nu’s father. “The police won’t tell me where the boys have been sent,” he complained to me in Thai. “First, they said that they were at a children’s home. I went there and couldn’t find them. Now they say the boys are at a children’s prison in Pakred. I’m going there now.” “If you find them, let me know where they are,” I said as he and his two youngest children went to catch a bus to Pakred. I went to the shack where Rekha lived and found her and her stepfather preparing food for the day’s sales at Victory Monument. “My lawyer wants to meet with your mother and Nu’s parents on Monday,” I explained. “Would you go to Ubon with me to get your mother?” “No, I can’t leave. I have to sell food.” Then she turned to her stepfather and asked him to go. I told him I would pay for the ticket and he agreed immediately. He seemed to like the idea of getting out of Bangkok and going home. “I’ll go and buy two tickets and meet you back here at 7PM. There’s an 8:30 bus,” I said.
When I walked out to catch the city bus to the terminal, I felt lonelier than I had ever felt in my life. I was still in shock. Everything seemed so unreal. I wanted to find someone to ride with me to the Northern Bus Station. It was only a half hour away, but I didn’t want to go alone. I wandered out to the food stalls to find a friend. Any friend would do. I ran into Chat’s friend Ot, the boy who had brought the Matichon newspaper to David’s apartment three weeks earlier. He agreed to accompany me to the station. He knew what had happened, but he didn’t talk about it. The traffic was at a standstill, which bothered me more than usual. I didn’t talk to Ot, but his mere presence was comforting. I only bought a ticket to Ubon for Chat’s stepfather and the return tickets for him and Chat’s mother. I had decided that I was not in the right frame of mind to handle a sixteen-hour bus ride to Ubon.
When we returned, I thanked Ot and went to David’s for a gin and tonic. He had dinner prepared, so we sat and commiserated with each other. At seven o’clock, I asked if he wanted to go to Northern Station with me. “I’m too much of a wreck,” he said. “I don’t feel like going anywhere. Lock the padlock on the door so that no one will know I’m home. Come back here when you get back. I don’t want to be alone.”
Tickets in hand, I walked downstairs and headed towards the soi. A voice behind me called out, “David!” It was repeated. When I paid no attention, the same voice called out, “Steve？” I looked behind me. The building’s security guard was standing next to a uniformed policeman. Both seemed cheerful. “Well,” I thought, “They’ve discovered they made a mistake and they’re coming to tell me everything has been cleared up.” Instead, the officer politely asked in Thai that I go with him to the station. My emotions were so fragile that I couldn’t handle being arrested again. I broke into a howl of despair. “Chee wit mot,” I cried to a tenant who had just walked down the stairs, “My life is finished.” She looked at me like I was nuts and walked on. I turned around and started walking towards Rekha’s shack again. The officer followed me. I told him that I had to give bus tickets to somebody and that I’d be back. He kept walking behind me. “Okay” he said. At Rekha’s house, another officer in plain clothes was standing inside questioning her. I handed the stepfather the ticket and told them I was being re-arrested.
When the officer and I returned to the condominium, there were two other uniformed policemen waiting for us. “Where is David?” one of them asked. “I don’t know,” I told them, hoping they wouldn’t find him. ““You know where he is. Tell us.” “I told you I haven’t seen him.” “Get in the truck!” I climbed into the front seat of the police pickup. An officer sat on each side of me. On the way to Din Daeng, one of them pulled a vial of white powder from his pocket, and said, “You were selling this, weren’t you?” “What is that?” “You know,” he growled. “It’s heroin. The FBI wants you. You were in Thailand selling this.” In a moment I was going to lose it. I felt like screaming and shouting and kicking, but I was helpless. First, they accuse me of running a child sex ring and now they are accusing me of selling heroin. “Why are you doing this?” I cried.
When the cell door thundered shut behind me, I sank to the floor of the retched cell and began to think about my life, as if it were not going to exist anymore. “It had been a good life,” I thought, “And maybe I was going mad.” “God, I hope David got away,” I thought. The hours passed and with each passing minute, I became more and more optimistic about his flight. It was a perverse pleasure, but it was pleasure nonetheless.
Just before midnight, the door of the cell opened and David shuffled in. I stood up. His clothes were torn and filthy. I thought they were covered with mud, until I saw bandages. “Oh God, they beat you!?” “No,” he looked at me. His eyes were swollen with tears. He started to sob and blubbered, “I tried to kill myself.” I grabbed him and held him close. For several minutes, the two of us just stood there in the center of the cell holding each other in an embrace. Neither of us could speak. After what seemed like an eternity, he said quietly. “After you left, the police pounded on the door. I was so paranoid that I thought it was a neighborhood lynch mob coming after me. The banging stopped, then started again a few minutes later. I took a knife and slit my wrists. The apartment is a mess! Then I thought about Thep. If I killed myself, he would live the rest of his life feeling guilty. He’d think he was the cause. I covered my bleeding arms with a towel and called the Embassy. They called the police who broke down the door and rushed me to the hospital. I’ve got a lot of stitches in this arm. It hurts like hell, but they gave me something to ease the pain.”
*******
The mosquitoes were voracious and we no longer had the luxury of extra shirts and pants to use as pillows. We laid our heads on the wooden floor, stared at the ceiling and tried to close our eyes. In the middle of the night, I felt something crawling on my cheek. I leapt up, shuddering involuntarily, and flicked away a monstrous cockroach. It was hours before I could lie down again. I began pacing the floor like a caged animal. Back and forth, back and forth; the rhythm seemed to calm me. It only irritated David, but he just lay silently nursing his self-inflicted wounds.
I tried to logically determine who might be responsible for ruining our lives. Puttri said the police often create stories, but they wouldn’t have been able to do it on their own without someone feeding them information. It couldn’t have been just the Matichon newspaper story. Ulit, the house father whom Mark had fired, had a motive for implicating his ex-boss, but would have had nothing against Chat, David and me. Besides, he knew that the proper name of the home was the “Bangkok Children’s Shelter”, not “Mark Morgan Incorporated” as it appeared in the press. Conversely, a nasty competitor might have had motives for implicating me, but certainly none for hurting Mark’s shelter. The common denominator was missing.
Mid-afternoon, Kenji’s smiling face mercifully appeared at the bars. “What happened?” “I don’t know!” I cried. “The police claim the FBI asked them to re-arrest us. They told me I was wanted for selling heroin.” David knew why the FBI wanted him. He had a warrant for his arrest in the states. But I had no idea why I had been picked up with him. The allegation that I had been selling heroin was as ridiculous as all the others. “Call the Embassy,” I beseeched Kenji. “I want to know what this is all about. Tell them to send someone over to explain why the US Government is asking the Thais to hold me. I’m not wanted for anything in the states. Then call Puttri as soon as his office opens tomorrow and ask him to come down to see if he can get us out.”
Kenji slipped plastic bags of food and bottles of water through the bars and left. I looked at the fetid cell and felt sickened by it, not wanting to eat inside such a putrid, foul-smelling place. David was thinking the same thing. We glanced at each other, then in unison said, “Might as well,” and went to work cleaning it up. The duty officers looked at us with amazement. They had never seen prisoners voluntarily scrubbing a cell.
Later that evening, Colonel Choosri arrived for his daily station check. He spotted the two of us and walked over. Smiling gleefully, he said with a sanctimonious air of contempt, “So the FBI wants you.” He turned and walked away, chuckling to himself. I blurted out, “They don’t want me, they want him,” gesturing at David. Choosri then started laughing louder. I was furious with myself for allowing this egotistical arrogant man to anger me so much that I had become base and selfserving. I turned on a friend who desperately needed compassion and kindness. Revulsion swept over me and I tried to assuage the pain of betrayal by talking about how much I disliked Choosri. David said nothing. His silence was chastising and I felt a sense of deep shame.
After David and I had finished scrubbing years of accumulated excrement from the toilet and grime from everything else, I felt a little more human. Only the mosquitoes kept me awake now, but because of David’s attempt to kill himself, the police refused to give us bug spray. Evidently, they thought he might try to swallow it.
Kenji arrived just after 8AM and brought a stack of newspapers. “It’s not good!” he exclaimed as he shoved them through the bars. I asked if he had called my lawyer or the Embassy. He hadn’t. He said it was too early. I was aware of Kenji’s shyness and aversion to any kind of confrontation, but I couldn’t help feeling impatient. The Nation was continuing its sensational attacks. The photograph of David and me at the press conference was rerun, this time, blanketing the cover of the features section and accusing us of being the type of foreigners who bring AIDS into the “Land of Smiles.” It was just the type of scare mongering that I had objected to when Tim Smucker wrote his article.
Kachon arrived with breakfast, but the newspaper stories had again destroyed my appetite. I asked for a pen and note paper and wrote detailed instructions for Kenji, Kachon, Lu, Al and Joi. A representative from the incentive house was due at the airport in three days. The Glaxo Pharmaceutical group was due to arrive two days after that. “You’re in charge now, Kenji,” I said. I had been training him for over a year and he had always done a good job, but I worried about the client’s perception of his abilities. He was only in his early twenties.
After they left, the day dragged on endlessly. I kept hoping to see Pat Hansford. Finally, an American named Ron Fry arrived. “I’m here from the Embassy. Pat Hansford was busy and couldn’t make it. I’m filling in.” “Why has the FBI asked for my arrest?” I demanded. “I don’t know anything about that. I don’t work in the consular section. I’m only doing this as a favor.” Then he told me how lucky I was to have been arrested in Thailand. “The system here is similar to ours. A lot of other countries are much worse.” He pulled some papers from his briefcase. "These are Privacy Act waivers. I’ve been asked to have you sign them. It authorizes us to release any information we have on you.” I had nothing to hide and believed that this was all a mistake, so I signed the papers. I checked every blank, authorizing the Embassy to give any information about me to anyone that asked, including the Thai police. I thought that if I couldn’t trust the American Embassy, then who could I trust? I had been brought up to believe that my government would always be on my side and do the right thing when it involved US citizens. I was incredibly naïve! Instead of helping me, U.S. Embassy officials would use the permission I gave them to waive my right of privacy in a concerted effort to harm me. In true Trumpian style, they repeated the false narratives created by John Cummings and Tom Eisenman over and over again, and used those fabrications to publicly mold people’s perceptions of my guilt to conform with their distorted sense of reality.
“Will you call my mother?” I asked. “Sure, if you want,” he replied. The government that I had believed would stand up for my rights, was instead contravening them. Just before I signed the forms that Ron Fry handed me, David Copas, the security attaché at the Embassy wrote a letter to the Thai Police requesting that I be held without bail. The letter said that I had been identified by San Francisco Customs as a suspect only and that customs believed that I owned a travel service which is alleged to arrange child sex tours in Thailand. It went on to say that the US Attorney in San Francisco expressed extreme interest in my arrest in Thailand.
Kenji, Kachon and Puttri’s young assistant from Siam Legal Aid arrived while I was signing the waivers. Fry tucked them into his briefcase and departed. “Thai law says the police can keep you here for seven days,” the lawyer explained. “Then they have to transfer you to a regular prison.” I didn’t want to hear that. “Get the elusive Pat Hansford on the phone,” I demanded “Tell her that I want her to explain the Embassy’s actions to me.” The lawyer nodded and then left. Kenji and Kachon went with him and then David and I settled down for another night of fighting mosquitoes.
*******
“You made the papers again,” Kenji announced when he arrived with our breakfast. Incredulously, I gazed at the two English-language newspapers. This time, the front page of the Bangkok Post heralded our re-arrest, stating that I had been taken in at the request of US authorities. However, the article said that Embassy officials were not able to divulge the reason. The embassy staff had not yet received my signed waiver when they gave the information to the newspaper. However, as soon as they had my signed permission, they spent the next two years telling the Thai police, the court and the newspapers all the details of the charges in San Francisco. The Nation, meanwhile, repeated the allegations made by the police at the press conference.
“Tone called,” Kenji continued, referring to my former office manager who I had fired. “He told me that he read the story in the newspaper, and then he started laughing.” “Is he responsible for this?” I wondered aloud. I had always suspected Tone of calling immigration in an attempt to have my work permit rejected. But Kenji looked dubious. This type of deviousness was beyond Tone’s limited capabilities. Nevertheless, I kept thinking I could clarify everything if there was but one investigative journalist willing to listen to the truth. My anger kept growing that Mark hadn’t helped me call a press conference the one day that I was out on bail.
Soon after Kenji and Kachon left, David and I were ordered to gather our things. We were then handcuffed to four other prisoners and packed into a police van. We drove through Chinatown and entered a courtyard not far from Bangkok’s Giant Swing. The doors of the van swung open and we were ushered into a rambling old two-story building where we sank into a row of folding chairs that faced a wooden stand.
After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, a judge in a long black robe entered from a side door, accompanied by a woman carrying a stack of files. He seated himself behind the stand, while the lady stood nearby. She handed him the files one by one, which he silently read. As I observed this ritual, I crossed my legs. One of the guards rushed over and angrily motioned for me to uncross them. Apparently crossing my legs was a sign of disrespect. The six of us were ordered to our feet and, as the judge called out our names, I felt my wallet move in my back pocket. I reached behind me and grabbed a hand. The prisoner next to me was trying to lift my wallet. I couldn’t believe the audacity of the man.
“Tham arai?” I asked. “What are you doing?” The judge stopped what he was doing and looked at me. “He just tried to steal my wallet,” I blurted out. A guard unlocked the chain that held me and David to the other prisoners, then shoved us toward the judge’s stand. “Just sign here,” the judge said as he slid two documents towards us. “I’m not signing anything until I talk to a lawyer,” David muttered.
The document was written in Thai and it was obvious that the court felt no compunction to provide an interpretation. I refused to sign it as well. This flustered the judge. He ordered his secretary to go find someone who spoke English. A couple of minutes later, she returned, shrugged and said there was nobody available who could translate.
After a second attempt to prod us to sign, the judge ordered the guard to take us away. We were led through a back door, then a second door and into a hallway echoing with a hundred noisy conversations. To the left and right were cells crammed with prisoners in uniform brown short sleeved shirts and pants. We were put into one with about 50 Thai prisoners, who were either sitting on a horribly filthy cement floor or were hanging on the bars like chimpanzees and yelling to visitors outside who yelled back, each trying to be heard above the cacophony. A squat toilet sat on a raised cement block at the rear with two yellow-streaked urinals beside it. Behind the toilets was an open sewer that gave off a disgusting odor of urine and excrement. Combined with the stench of fifty sweating bodies in densely humid weather, the smell was overwhelming.
“This isn’t it?” I cried to David. “I hope not,” he said quietly. We could not imagine spending a few hours here, much less weeks or months. Through the bars of another cell, I spotted a western face and noticed that he and the others with him were in chains. I called out, “Do you know how long we have to stay here?” His eyes were wild, distant, as if he was not consciously here. “I’ve been in all the prisons,” he muttered. “Do they have beds in the prisons?” I asked with some measure of hope. Without realizing it, my question meant I was preparing myself to spend more than a day or two locked up. “Sure,” He said. Then he smirked and turned away. I rushed back to where David was sitting. “The guy in the next cell said that we’ll have beds,” I exclaimed.
Just then, Kachon appeared at the screen facing the outside courtyard and called to us. “Thank God!” I cried. “How long do we stay here?” “You no live here long,” he yelled back. “Are they taking us somewhere better than this?” “Yes,” he replied. “They take you to other jail. Is better than here.” The young lawyer from Puttri’s office was standing behind Kachon. I asked about the forms that we had refused to sign. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a formality. You must sign them.” “If we sign them, does it mean that we are accepting incarceration?” David asked. The long English word threw him. He looked bewildered for a minute, and then said, “It doesn’t mean anything. It just says that you will be remanded to the prison for twelve days. They have to remand you every twelve days until you’re charged with a crime. You’ll have to sign again in twelve more days.” At that moment, a guard passed the forms through the bars and ordered us to sign them.
Kachon sent in some fried rice wrapped in newspapers and soft drinks in plastic bags. A couple of hours later, a guard opened the door and called out, “Sateefen Lehmon.” I followed him into the hallway, past the cell with the wild-eyed farang, to the reception area. The lawyer asked me to sit down and then said; “There is no warrant for you in America, so you can bail out. But because the US Embassy requested your arrest, we must get a letter from the Embassy indicating you are not wanted in America so you can be released. I’ll get in touch with them and ask for the letter. We should be able to get you out tomorrow.” “Tell the Embassy I want someone to come and explain why I was arrested,” I again demanded. When I returned to the cell, I was afraid to tell David the news. I didn’t want him to feel any worse than he already felt. “What was that all about?” he asked. “The lawyer,” I replied “Why did he call you out and not me?” I just shrugged.
A few minutes later, a guard came into the cell and sat down. He called each prisoner by name and, as we came forward, he took our fingerprints. His manner was gruff and demanding. He ordered each prisoner to squat in a line. Nothing was offered to remove the black ink from our hands, so everyone rubbed it onto the floor rather than wipe it on our clothes. We were forced to squat for half an hour in one spot, which was excruciating for those of us who seldom, if ever sat in that position. Thais are used to it. They often eat at home while squatting, as most Thai homes don’t have dining tables. But westerners are not.
Finally, the cell door swung open and we were paraded single file down the hallway and through a double entrance into the back door of an ancient blue bus. Everyone scrambled for a seat, but most of us were forced to stand, crammed so tightly that we could hardly breathe. Guards toting shotguns climbed aboard and the bus crawled away from the curb into city traffic, creating a very slight, but welcome breeze. Fortunately, the ride was short. We rode through a gate and entered a parking lot surrounded by steep concrete walls, then backed through a second gate and jerked to a halt. We poured out of the bus into a single file march to a putrid green barracks-style building. Once inside, we were commanded to squat once more along the wall.
This was Bangkok Special Prison. One of the guards made an announcement which I understood to be our bathing and eating schedule. We subsequently lined up behind two tables to surrender our cash and valuables for which we were given receipts. We were then stripped, searched for contraband and forced to bend down and “spread our cheeks.” Once we had reclaimed our clothes and a bit of our dignity, we were marched out the back of the building, through a well tended garden, into a long rectangular shaped cafeteria. “This is much better,” David said. After the cells in the Din Daeng Police Station and the holding cell at the courthouse, it seemed almost pleasant.
The cafeteria was lined with wooden tables and benches. On the tables were metal trays containing lumps of brown rice and limp overcooked vegetables. Things were definitely looking up, but I could barely eat the dinner. After dinner, we were assigned to a cell on the first floor of another two-story barracks-style building. When we were ordered to squat again, one prisoner mumbled something inaudible. A large burly man walked up to him and viciously kicked him several times. Everyone cowered in fear. The point had been made. No further comments were forthcoming from inmates. The large man then stood in the center of the room and began telling us what to expect. Suddenly, he unleashed a flurry of punches and kicks at another prisoner, seemingly unprovoked. I didn’t understand what had set him off, but when he finally let up; he walked to a corner away from everyone else, sat down and looked me in the eye. Then he motioned for David and me to join him. Reluctantly, we complied.
“You’re the two Americans who had sex with children,” he said in excellent English. “I heard about you and I knew you’d be coming through here.” David and I were both practically shaking in fear, anticipating the worst. Instead, he said, “My name is Joe. Would you like a cup of coffee?” Within minutes, he was speaking to us like we were old friends. He talked about his American nickname, which many Thais give to themselves, and about his home and family. I soon learned that he was related to Suchada Yuvaboon, the owner of Bangkok’s magnificent Rose Garden. When I told him I knew Khun Suchada, he became even friendlier. Assuming that he was a guard, I asked when he would be getting off to go home. “I hate this fucking place! I’ve been here for years,” was his response. I was momentarily confused. Then I realized that he wasn’t a guard at all, but instead a prison trustee. “Tomorrow you’ll move to building three,” he said. “There, your status changes. As far as the guards are concerned, you are no longer a prisoner. You become a customer. If you want food, messages to go out, favors done, things brought in, you must pay the guards. They will treat you well in building three because they want your business. Tomorrow look for an Australian named Peter. He’ll explain to you how things work. He’s been here for a couple of years.” Abruptly, Joe decided that he was sleepy and told us to go back to our spots on the floor. “I feel much better now,” David whispered.
*******
I felt refreshed when I woke. The air was better; there were fewer mosquitoes and no semis rumbling outside keeping me up all night. We were aroused at 6AM by Joe, barking orders like a drill sergeant. The cell door banged open. Everyone leapt to their feet and formed a long single line stretching from the toilet in our cell into the hallway and out to the courtyard. Plastic buckets were filled with water from a holding tank, passed from prisoner to prisoner as in a fire brigade, and emptied into a water tank inside the cell. The building had no plumbing, so we had to bring the toilet water from outside. Once the tank in the cell was filled, prisoners began mopping the wooden floor with damp rags. “At least it’s clean,” I thought gratefully, but Joe’s booming commands continued to keep me on edge.
Everyone then grabbed a toothbrush, soap, a towel and a pair of thongs and lined up outside the building. We stood before a large water tank resembling a feeding trough for horses, spaced ourselves equidistant from one another to our front, rear and sides, and stripped down, then tied sarongs around our waists. A guard blew a whistle, signaling us to fill a plastic bowl. A second whistle was the cue to pour water over ourselves; the third was for us to lather up, and the fourth to rinse off. I didn’t quite get the knack of the thing and was constantly out of synch, soaping when I was supposed to rinse. David started laughing at my lack of coordination and the resultant admonition from a guard. After bathing, we were given a few seconds for brushing teeth and dressing. Then we were once again told to squat. A guard made me roll my long pants up to my knees, which made the squatting even more uncomfortable. Joe would later explain to us that only guards are allowed to wear long pants. One guard then began to describe the prison monetary system. He said that we were allowed 40-baht worth of coupons each day. We could not use cash. Any money that we had turned in the day before was on our ‘card.’ Forty baht was deducted from the total on the card each day that we were given coupons until the money was finished. If anyone wanted more money after that, someone on the outside would have to deposit it into his account.
We were then allowed to walk around the courtyard, where hundreds of prisoners were standing around talking. I asked one of them where I could use the coupons and he pointed to a creaky structure with a corrugated aluminum roof and a wide entrance, through which inmates were streaming in and out. We wandered inside and looked around. Dirty wooden counters lined the walls. Some of them held large steaming pots from which ladles of food were drawn and dumped into plastic bowls. It didn’t look appetizing, so I bought a cold bottle of soy milk. As I was drinking it, a tall lanky farang walked up to us and said, “I saw you come in last night and Joe told me to look for you. My name is Peter.” His Australian accent was as strong as Kenji’s. “Your case was so highly publicized that you’re bound to be sent to Building Two and put in chains. That’s what happens to people with high profile cases. You sit inside all day long attached to the wall. It’s not fun. You’ve got to pay a bribe or you’ll probably be sent there tomorrow.” “How much?” David asked. “Ask Joe,” Peter replied. “He’ll know.”
We walked back to our building and asked Joe what it would take to keep from being put in chains, but I told him that I would probably not have to pay, as I expected to be getting out on bail. He gave me a bemused look and said, “I’ll check for you, too.” Minutes later, Joe returned and told us that it would cost 3,000 baht for each of us. “By the way,” he added. “I haven’t heard anything about you being released on bail.” At 08:00 we were ordered to attention as the Thai National Anthem blared from a nearby loudspeaker. Afterwards, each prisoner in our building was called for an interview, inspected for tattoos and identifying marks, fingerprinted again, and then directed to squat on the cement floor and wait.
After a while, we were taken to Building Four for haircuts. Peter had told me to arrange something with the guards, or I would be shaved bald. “How could I explain that to a client from Glaxo?” I thought. I pleaded with the guard, but he would not acknowledge me. In desperation, I began slipping behind the other prisoners in line, hoping beyond hope that I could forestall the inevitable. But soon, there was no one left in front of me. I was ordered to sit in the barber’s chair. In a last desperate attempt, I offered the barber some coupons if he wouldn’t cut all my hair off. Without wavering, he tore into my scalp with his razor and I tensed with each clump that fell to the ground. It was over in a couple of minutes. I felt the top of my head. He had spared only a few wretched wisps, as if he’d mowed a lawn and missed a blade of grass or two. I stood up and started to walk toward the gate. Suddenly, the barber’s voice rang out. “Where are my coupons?” I turned around, furious at his gall. “But I’m bald!” I shrieked “No, you’re not,” he said, pointing to the few cartoon-like strands that still clung to the top of my scalp. In a rage, I fumbled for some coupons and threw them at him.
After the haircuts, we were ordered to go to the medical compound for cholera shots. I watched the doctor closely, fearing that the needles would be reused and AIDS would be the legacy of my short stay in Bangkok Special Prison. Mercifully, new needles were used for each shot and I breathed easier. I would learn later, however, that doctors had only recently begun using new needles each time and that hundreds of prisoners had previously contracted the dread disease while being processed through.
At lunch time, we were allowed to go to the central compound once again. I anxiously looked for Peter. Although I found the idea of bribing guards reprehensible, I did not wish to repeat my experience with the barber and end up chained to a wall. Peter assured me that everything had been arranged. Joe was in a foul mood that afternoon. He was like a time bomb, subject to sudden violent explosions. He began to savagely beat a retarded prisoner for not following his instructions. The rest of us, made keenly aware of our helplessness, could only watch in agonizing silence. Witnessing the beating was extremely difficult for me. I knew nothing I could do would stop him, yet I felt like a coward for not trying. If his outbursts were intended to intimidate us, they had certainly fulfilled their purpose.
Building assignments were given out later in the day. David and I were sent to Building Three as Joe had predicted. When we arrived, we crouched in front of the building chief’s desk and bowed low. “So, you like to do indecent assault.” He said in Thai. He didn’t expect a response, but I timidly countered that a big mistake had been made. He ignored me and went on with a lecture. Afterward, I was assigned to the second floor and David was assigned to the first floor. A guard took me upstairs and unlocked a solid metal door with a barred window. I stepped into a small room with a wooden floor and looked at the forlorn faces of ten Thai men and one Pakistani. They were seated on pads against three of the walls with their shoes and thongs lined up along the fourth. In one corner was a raised platform containing a squat toilet. I bowed to everyone as I entered. There was no space for me along the walls, so I was forced to lie down in the middle of the floor. I tried to close my eyes, but suddenly I was aware of a very strange feeling. A wave of icy shivers sliced through my whole body. I trembled, felt sick and then started to have chills, which came in spasms. I sweated and shook with my head turning hot one minute, then my body turning cold as ice the next. My thoughts were a blur. I thought that I just might die in this place. One of the other prisoners covered me with a blanket and motioned to my shoulder, pantomiming an injection. Then it hit me. Cholera from the shot was rushing through my system. My cellmate’s act of kindness made me feel better. Gradually, my thoughts became less frenzied and my body seemed to calm down as the chills began to subside. Soon, my only thought was wondering when the lights would go out. They never did.
*******
We were awakened abruptly at 6AM. The chills were gone, but I was exhausted. I had been sick all night. The mosquitoes added to my misery and I wondered what it would be like to have malaria and cholera at the same time. My arm was in terrible pain and throbbed with every heartbeat. The newest prisoners were expected to carry the buckets of water to fill the tank for the toilet, but I was temporarily exempted because the Pakistani had just arrived two days earlier and had been assigned the job for a week. The way I felt, I was very happy for the reprieve. I had no sarong to wear for the morning shower, but the Thai man who had covered me with his blanket during the night gave me his. He introduced himself as Napodol Na Ayudhaya, a very prestigious old Thai name. I wondered how someone from such a family wound up here. Napodol showed me how to tie the sarong in front so that it wouldn’t unravel during my shower.” You will need a bowl,” he said. “You can use mine this time.” It was not only necessary for the twice daily showers, but it doubled as a rice bowl.
After the morning shower, prisoners lined up in front of a table to collect their daily supply of coupons. I ran into David there and we walked together to the central compound for breakfast. Two free meals a day were provided, but they were so bad that anyone who could afford it bought his own food. The food sold at the commissary was bad, too, but it was certainly better than the free brown rice and fish heads.
When breakfast was finished, we walked around the central compound. Nine buildings surrounded the courtyard. Each area was called a “daeng,” which means frontier or border. Prisoners from each daeng were allowed access to the central courtyard, but we were not allowed to go into another daeng. The courtyard held the dining hall, processing center, library and commissary. In the center was a raised platform where the guards sat.
“What are visiting hours here?” I asked Peter. “Between 8:30 and 11:30, then between 13:00 and 14:30,” he said. “You’re allowed fifteen minutes per visit.” I was desperate to learn what had happened to the boys and to talk to Kenji about the Glaxo program. The incentive house client was due to arrive today and the group was due to arrive in two days. “How do I get a message outside? Is there a phone I can use?” Peter laughed. “A phone? You’re joking. The government doesn’t like prisoners communicating with the outside. Newspapers and radios are strictly prohibited.” “But how does one communicate with a lawyer?” I asked incredulously. “You pay a guard to make a phone call for you.” “But how do you pay a guard if you’re not allowed to have any money inside?” “You arrange with a guard to get hold of a friend of yours to bring it in. You’ll have to pay an additional 20% to the guard who brings in the money.” I thought: “First the police fabricate a preposterous lie to imprison me, then they re-arrest me without charging me with a crime, and now I have to give them money so I can get a message to my lawyer.” Then I thought about what Ron Fry from the Embassy had said: “The system here is similar to ours.” Was he lying or just uninformed?
I was so exasperated that I paced up and down the courtyard. An hour later, a message arrived for me to go to the welfare section. “You have a visit,” Peter said. Outside the welfare building, I was ordered to squat in the hot sun until my number was called, then marched to another area and ordered to squat again. My leg and back muscles were beginning to feel the strain from constantly being forced to squat.
Eventually, a bell rang. A group of prisoners came out of the visiting area and then I went in with the others who had been squatting in the sun with me. We sat on stools in front of a wire mesh screen. A few feet behind it was a second screen through which visitors squinted in an effort to locate those they had come to see. The distance between prisoner and visitor was considerable enough to necessitate yelling in order to be heard. Thus, within seconds, one became engulfed in a barnyard of noises. Kenji and Kachon suddenly appeared. “This is impossible,” I shouted. “How can I give you instructions for the Glaxo program? How can we communicate? Why wasn’t I released on bail yesterday?” Kenji, as usual, took my volley in stride and responded, “I don’t know.” He had found out nothing from the Embassy or from my attorney. Kachon held up a bag of toiletries, food and two cartons of cigarettes, which could be used for currency inside. “What about the boys?” I cried. Kachon told me that they were at Pakred Children’s Prison, but that otherwise they were okay. For that much, I was thankful. I had worried that the police were continuing to torture and beat them. “I need shorts,” I shouted over the din. “They make me roll up my trousers.” Kachon nodded and promised to return later with shorts and the lawyer.
With my share of the cigarettes, I hoped to barter for a mattress. I had a hard time falling asleep on the hard floor. A prisoner in the cell next to ours had created a mattress by sewing some old rags and blankets together. He showed it to me and said what I thought were the numbers eight and two. I took it to mean eighty-two baht, thought that was very fair and started to give him a combination of coupons and cigarettes. “Mai chai,” he said, shaking his head, “Paet song” and grabbed eight packs of cigarettes. Rather than admit my elementary knowledge of Thai had been insufficient to understand the difference in tones between the words two and pack, both of which are written in English as song, I smiled and accepted the deal.
A few hours later, Kachon returned with Voratham, a legal assistant from Puttri’s office, and with the bribe money to keep David and me out of chains; which he presented to one of the guards as if it were a common business transaction. Kachon passed himself off as an interpreter and was therefore able to join us in the small lawyer’s room, which was marginally better than the regular visitors’ area. There was only one screen separating the lawyers from the prisoners.
“The Embassy refuses to write a letter,” Voratham began. “We can’t apply for bail until we receive a letter from the Embassy stating that there is no warrant for your arrest in America. We called Consul General Ed Wehrli, but he won’t do it. This puzzled me. “Why not?” “I don’t know,” he said. “Why won’t Pat Hansford come to visit?” I asked. “She said she couldn’t come because she’s busy,” he replied. “You’ll have to get the letter from the Embassy yourself.” “How am I supposed to do that from in here?” I asked in disbelief. “Write a letter,” he suggested. “But my business… I have to get out now.” “Write a letter and I’ll pick it up tomorrow. But the earliest we could get you out would be Monday.” I groaned, “The Glaxo program arrives on Sunday. They have flight arrivals all day long and that night they have a dinner cruise. What a disaster!” I felt powerless and at the mercy of the US Government. They were destroying any opportunity I might have to salvage what remained of my business, or rather, to go out of it with some honor. “When you come back tomorrow, bring Kenji with you,” I said. “I can at least give him instructions from in here. It’s impossible in the visiting area.”
Kachon and Voratham left and I returned to the cell to detail everything that Kenji would need to know. “What will we tell the client?” I wondered. We couldn’t tell her I’m in jail. I hoped that she hadn’t seen the pictures of me at the press conference, which had been shown on television news programs all over the world. Friends in Japan, Australia and the United States would later tell me they had seen it. The other inmates returned to our room cell at 5PM and the guards locked the door. They emptied the plastic bags of meat and rice that they had purchased at the commissary into their bowls, and then gathered in small groups to eat. I sat on my lumpy mattress and wrote feverishly. First, I wrote detailed instructions for my staff and then I wrote to Ed Wehrli, the Consul General, asking for the letter stating that there was no warrant for my arrest in the United States.
Afterwards, I got up and went from prisoner to prisoner, introducing myself and asking each person’s name. I didn’t need to tell them why I was here. The charge was posted on the wall, along with everyone else’s. In Buddhist Thailand, a case of “anachan”, which is usually translated into English as indecent assault, but literally means “immorality”, is considered a minor crime. In Christian countries, however, the crime known as child molestation is considered to be worse than murder when sex is involved. I related the details of my arrest, but they were all skeptical when I told them I hadn’t done anything. “Nobody ever admits that he is guilty when he first arrives,” one man said. “Later we always learn the truth.”
Most of the prisoners in my room were older Thai men, so Peter called it “the old men’s room.” The average age was around 50. These were not typical prisoners, but rather members of Thailand’s upper class. One man had once been an elected Member of Parliament; another was a former naval officer and a third, ironically, owned a travel business and was an official of C.A.T., the government organization that we had called to get the telex line repaired.
At 20:00, everyone stood for the singing of the king’s anthem, which some of the men followed with a Buddhist chant. Then everyone sat down, picked up a book to read or went to sleep. I was exhausted and tried to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes the memories of the past week, or worries about the Glaxo program came to mind and I couldn’t get the rest my body craved. My mind raced from incident to incident, trying to understand why the Embassy might be refusing to write the letter. I still believed that Police General Manas Krutchaiyan and Police Colonel Khongdej Choosri had created the whole story about my business to draw attention from the police shootings. But why had the US officials requested that I be rearrested? It was all very confusing.
*******
After breakfast and the National Anthem, David, Peter and I spent the morning pacing back and forth in front of our building, while Peter explained how the Thai legal system operates. He had been fighting a drug case for four years. He said that the Thais do not believe in speedy trials. Instead of contiguous court sessions, they are often held months apart. Many times, witnesses or even lawyers do not appear and cases are constantly delayed, forcing prisoners to be incarcerated for years before a verdict is finally reached. There are two appeals courts and each may take additional years. If a prisoner is acquitted, the prosecutor has the right to appeal the acquittal, which means that a person may be tried three times for the same charge, something that is unthinkable in the United States. It is not inconceivable or even uncommon for a case to remain in the courts for years while the accused languishes behind bars and is ultimately found not guilty. Unlike in the states, defendants in Thailand are considered guilty until proven innocent. Because the police are appointed by the King, they are perceived to be intrinsically moral and correct, while anyone they arrest is deemed guilty. If a defendant pleads not guilty, but is then found guilty by the court, the sentence is doubled. Most Thais plead guilty rather than take a chance on a system that is weighted against them.
Voratham, the lawyer from Siam Legal Aid arrived late in the morning with Kenji and Kachon. “Did the incentive client get in?” I asked Kenji as I sat down on the stool. “She’s okay. She asked where you were. I told her you were up country and couldn’t get to the airport to pick her up.” I handed the detailed instructions to Kenji through an opening in the screen when a guard spotted me, rushed over and said,” Mai Dai!” I looked at Voratham and pleaded for assistance. “Why can’t I give the notes to Kenji?” The guard told the lawyer that everything must be read before it can be given to anyone. He snapped the papers out of my hand and walked off with them. I was desperate. Kenji needed my notes to function effectively. There was enough pressure on him already. Minutes later, the guard returned and said he was unable to find anyone who could read the material. Voratham explained that one of the letters was an important one from me to the Embassy. The guard took it to yet another officer who spoke a little English. Though I was positive he wasn’t able to understand what I’d written, to admit that would have meant to lose face. He told the other guard that it was okay, so it was given to my lawyer. But Kenji was denied my notes. “I’ll mail this today,” Voratham said. “Mail it?” I almost screamed with exasperation. “Take it to the Embassy and get them to write a letter while you’re waiting!” He looked at me as if I was crazy and said he would have a service deliver it. I spent the next half hour giving Kenji the instructions that took hours to write down the night before. I had begun to resign myself to the probability that I would be imprisoned during the entire Glaxo conference. I left my visitors thinking that Voratham must have considered me to be obnoxious. I couldn’t help it. I was feeling hopeless and depressed.
In the afternoon, I wandered back to the courtyard where an undersized iron cage now sat in the boiling sun. It looked like the type of thing in which a wild circus animal might be kept subdued. Inside it, a prisoner was curled up in a fetal position, unable to stretch out. Each time he tried; the black iron bars scorched his skin. It was over 90 degrees or 33 degrees Celsius in the shade and the cage had been placed so that it would receive the worst of the sun’s blistering rays. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Thailand is a civilized country, I thought. How could human beings treat other human beings so inhumanely? I approached the cage, thinking I would offer the man a drink of water, but a guard chased me away. I hurried back to Building Three to tell David and Peter what I had just witnessed. “That’s the tiger cage,” Peter said. “The guy in the cage was probably caught selling cigarettes. The guards make money on cigarette sales and they get angry if anyone skims off their profit.” I went up to my room feeling sick. Thailand, the “Land of Smiles,” the “Real Magic Kingdom”, my promised land filled with gentle loving people was only the image. The real Thailand was cruel and inhumane and I was living in its bowels.
*******
I had no visitors the next day and most of the time I spent pacing back and forth in front of my building. Peter came by from time to time and would take my mind off my woes with his ramblings about life in “Mahachai”, the name given to Bangkok Special Prison by the inmates because it faced Mahachai Road. “Our building was supposed to be for Thais only,” Peter said. “Foreigners aren’t supposed to be in this prison at all. There have been so many complaints from embassies about conditions here that foreigners are usually shipped out as soon as they receive their charge papers. Whenever the prison commander walks past, all foreigners are supposed to hide. “ “You mean the commander doesn’t know that there are foreigners here?” I asked incredulously. “Oh, he knows we’re here. It’s just the way the Thais do things. If they don’t see us, it’s like we don’t exist. It’s part of the Thai attitude. It’s all right for anything to happen as long as it happens out of sight. That’s why your case was such a big deal. It was in the newspapers. It was public. Sex with young people is not uncommon. Most Thais have sex at an early age.” “But I didn’t create the publicity. The police did,” I snapped. “That doesn’t matter. The police can do nothing wrong.” “But we didn’t do anything…” “Come off it,” Peter cut me off with a deprecating smile. I shot an angry glare at him and he knew instantly that I was offended. “Anyway, that doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’re guilty of being responsible for the publicity.” I was furious and tenser than when I started pacing.
I went up to my room seething over Peter’s remarks and stewed in a corner. My whole body was as taut as a violin string. Then I remembered that I could get a massage for the price of a pack of cigarettes. I reached into my rolled-up mat. The cigarette carton was gone. Even the pair of Levis that I had rolled the cigarettes in had been taken. I went out into the hallway. “Someone has taken my cigarettes,” I said to the first person I saw. “Tell the commander:” he said sympathetically. I continued downstairs and reported my loss to the guard on duty. He just shrugged and his expression conveyed extreme disinterest, even irritation. I went outside and ran into David. “There are thieves in here,” I growled, not realizing the absurdity of my statement. “Hmm, probably,” he replied with a smirk. “This is a prison, remember?” Dejectedly, I went back inside, maneuvered through the bodies on the stairway that were watching television and shuffled into the room cell. The depression was overwhelming. I felt so totally powerless. I felt like I was losing everything. “Why?” I cried, beating my fist into the floor. “Why?”
*******
Following the National Anthem in the morning, several prisoners lined up to go on outside work crews. Most of them weren’t work crews at all, but escapes for wealthy and powerful prisoners. One particularly well-to-do businessman went out the front gate every day with a work crew, climbed into a waiting limousine, then returned in the limousine each evening when the work crew was due. Others staggered back in the afternoon so drunk they had to be assisted by fellow prisoners. Yet another one who had been a professional golfer left the prison every day with his clubs, played golf all day, then returned in the late afternoon.
I sat glumly in front of my building watching the crews depart when a message came for me to report to welfare. I took a number, squatted in the scalding sun for fifteen minutes, and then was called into the visiting area. My niece, Maureen and her husband Ken were waiting on the other side of the screens. “Where have you been?” I asked. “Didn’t you see my picture in the papers?” “No,” Maureen replied. “We haven’t seen any newspapers at all. We found out you had been arrested when we called Kenji. We were at a bungalow in Koh Samui just relaxing on the beach. How can we help you?” “Go to the Embassy and make them write a letter to get me out of here.” I replied. “We’ll go there tomorrow. What else can we do?” “Help Kenji with the Glaxo group!” Then, remembering that they were on their honeymoon, I backtracked. “No, forget that.” “Have you told Grandma yet? Do you want me to call her?” Maureen asked. I had asked Ron Fry from the Embassy to call my mother, but since I hadn’t heard if he followed through with my request, I thought it might be best for me to talk to her whenever I get out on bail. “No, I don’t want her to get worried when there’s nothing she can do,” I said.
When the bell rang signaling the end of our visit, I reluctantly bid them farewell, but walked back to Building Three feeling relieved that someone from my family was here to help. In the evening, I looked out through the bars of my window and saw a clear sky. I knew that only a couple of miles away, the people from Glaxo were boarding a cruise on the Chao Phraya River. I watched the clock and reflected on what they were doing minute by minute. Now they were boarding. Now they were being serenaded by Dan’s classical violin. How is the catering? Does the boat look alright? Now they’re leaving the dock. Now they’re serving dinner. Did Kenji buy enough wine? I was tortured with worry. I had spent so many years here and in San Francisco involved in the planning and meticulous execution of incentive programs that it was part of my soul. And part of my soul died that night. After much tossing and turning, I fell asleep and dreamed that the cruise was a disaster.
*******
Ken went to the US Embassy as soon as the Consul office opened for the day. At first, a consular officer told him that the letter I had asked him to get would be written immediately. He waited. Nothing happened. As the hours dragged on, the staff began to backtrack. They couldn’t issue the letter. Someone else would have to write it. When lunchtime arrived, they were still prevaricating. Ken refused to leave. He was doing what I had asked Voratham from Siam Legal Aid to do. After lunch, an officer came to the waiting room and told Ken that the staff was trying to figure out how to word the letter so that they couldn’t be sued. Finally, mid-afternoon, Ken was given a letter signed by Ed Wehrli, Consul General. The letter was a blatant lie. It stated that there had been no United States Government or Embassy involvement in my arrest or incarceration in Thailand. Yet, eight days earlier, the Embassy’s Security Attaché had written a letter to the Thai Police stating that they had “extreme interest in (my) arrest”. Because I had previously been released on bail, this was understood by the Thai Police to be a request to re-arrest and hold me without bail. The letter went on to say that no warrant had been issued for my arrest in America, however unofficially, the Embassy had received word that state police in California wished to question me upon my return to the United States and that the Embassy “could not rule out the possibility that there may be a warrant issued for Mr. Raymond in the future”.
By the time Embassy officials handed the letter to Ken, visiting hours were over. Expecting him to return with the letter, I had become frantic, pacing nervously all day. I had all my hopes set on being released immediately. Fifteen hours later, the San Francisco Police Department issued a warrant for my arrest, based on an interview that Police Officers Tom Eisenman and Glenn Pamfiloff had with Pablo Luna, a boy who John Cummings had told the police to talk to. Four years earlier, my Filipino partner and I held a party at my house in San Francisco. I invited John Cummings and he brought the boy from Sacramento to attend the party with him. When they arrived, Cummings took me aside, told me that the young boy “was available” and that he had been having sex with him. He had given the boy LSD at the party and he thought that I would also like to have sex with him. He assumed that I had followed through with his offer and so he brought the boy with him the next time he came to visit. But I told Cummings then that I wasn’t interested in Pablo because he was so young and I hadn’t done anything with him at the party.
*******
Ken arrived at the prison immediately after the National Anthem. The Embassy staff had given him a visitation letter that allowed his entry into the lawyer’s room. He handed me the letter from Ed Wehrli and apologized for Maureen not accompanying him. “Is there anything else we can do for you?” he asked “Is there anything you need?” “Please go to Siam Legal Aid with a copy of the letter and tell Puttri to get me out of here,” I pleaded. “Tell him I’m angry that he hasn’t worked harder for my release. I’m stuck in here while my business is falling apart and it seems like he isn’t doing anything.” “I’ll go to his office today,” Ken assured me. “Do you want us to stay in Bangkok to help?” I looked at him and tried to be a martyr. “You don’t have to stay,” I said “You’re on your honeymoon.” I didn’t really mean it. I desperately wanted them to stay for support and to help me get out, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I had been self-sufficient for twenty-five years and I was used to being the benefactor. I couldn’t accept the fact that my life had spun so far out of control that I needed help. “You and Maureen go back to Koh Samui and then go to Phuket and Phang Nga. I was still being the tour guide.
When he left, I wanted to run after him and beg him not to go. Instead, I went back to Building Three and started writing a letter to Consul General Ed Wehrli. It turned into a major dissertation. I tried to appeal to his business sense and wrote that I needed to get out in order to take care of the myriad details of the dissolution of my business. Even though I was fuming inside, I tried to make the letter friendly and recalled how helpful he had been when David Wood died in 1986. I told Wehrli the letter he had written would confuse the Thai authorities and they would not understand his intent, although I understood his intent. I knew that he intended for me to remain in prison, so I offered to return to prison after taking care of my business. I didn’t know why, but my government was actively working to deny me the basic rights guaranteed to Americans in our constitution by asking a foreign government to imprison me without due process, then lying about it. I finished the letter and put down the pen. I had become so engrossed I hadn’t realized day had turned to night. I looked through the bars. Out there where people were free the Glaxo group was watching our fireworks display.
*******
The Glaxo program turned out to be a disaster. All the materials needed for their conference had been left at the airport. While Kenji and Kachon were out taking care of me and the myriad details of the functions and activities, nobody was in the office to take telephone calls. Each time the staff at the airport phoned to tell us that the materials were there waiting to be picked up, there was no answer. Everything sat there until the program ended.
Soon after Glaxo left, some wealthy clients of Travelco, the first incentive house that my San Francisco office ever worked with, arrived from New York. I had promised the people at Travelco that I would look after their VIP clients The owners of Travelco had become good friends, as well as customers. Their clients were staying at the Oriental Hotel, but a few days after they arrived, Kenji came to report that the clients had refused to pay part of their bill at the Oriental and had booked a flight to Chiang Mai, without informing Lu and Al; the two tour escorts who were taking care of them. “That does it,” I howled at Kenji. “Go to Siam Legal Aid and tell Puttri that if they don’t apply for bail, I’ll find another lawyer.” Puttri had received the letter that Ken procured from the Embassy, but he wasn’t using it to try and get my bail reinstated. His intransigence and lack of obvious resolve was infuriating.
Meanwhile, Peter had been telling me about his lawyer. “Soombattsiri is a crook,” he told me. “But in Thailand, you cannot win unless you have a crook as a lawyer. Puttri, unfortunately, is one of the only honest lawyers in the country.” “But I want an honest lawyer,” I argued. “The next time you see him,” Peter said, “Ask him how many cases he’s won. My lawyer is a snake, but he wins almost every case. You’ve got to pay off the prosecutor and the judge or you’ll lose.”
That afternoon, David and I were called to the lawyers’ room. Kachon was standing there with two men. “He’s a lawyer. He says he can help,” Kachon said “He says here is Thailand. Is not belong to American government. Don’t worry. He says he can get you out from the jail. No problem, really! You don’t have to worry about American government. Is not controlled by America.” As angry as I was by Siam Legal Aid’s intransigence, I wasn’t quite ready to drop Puttri. I didn’t really know what to do. Was Peter right? Did I really need a crooked lawyer? Puttri had promised to apply for bail if only the Embassy would give them another letter. But, on the other hand, the Embassy had recommended Siam Legal Aid and maybe they did so only because he would do what they wanted. “Why don’t we ask them to get the boys out of jail,” David said. “If they can do that, then we can hire them to get us out.” I turned to Kachon. “Ask them how much it would cost to get Chat, Nu and Thep out of jail.” Kachon spoke to the lawyers, then said to me, “He has to ask his boss how much he going to charge. He come back tomorrow tell you how much.”
The next day, the three of them returned. “Sixty thousand baht,” Kachon reported. My heart sank. “Sixty thousand baht!” I cried. “That’s outrageous!” “Because the lawyer has to pay some money to police and welfare,” Kachon replied. I didn’t know what to do. “I’ll think about it and let you know.” I got up and left. David followed me out of the lawyer’s room and turned on me with fire in his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell him to do it,” he snarled. “We need to get the boys out of jail.” It wasn’t his money, I thought. He isn’t offering to contribute anything. Chat, Nu and Thep hadn’t done anything wrong, but they were also in prison. Why should we have to pay anything to get them released? Later that afternoon, Kenji came for a visit. “Pay Kachon’s lawyers to get the boys out,” I instructed him.
The lawyers returned with Kachon the next day. “The boys cannot go out because welfare doesn’t take the money,” Kachon reported. “Get Chat’s sister and Nu’s mother and tell them to sue the police to force them to release the boys. Tell the lawyers to use the money for that.” “Okay, no problem,” Kachon responded. “Sue them for torturing the boys, too,” I added. “Okay, okay,” he said and turned to go. I wasn’t sure if he could do what I asked. Still, his two lawyers seemed to genuinely care. I hadn’t seen Puttri in two weeks and when Voratham came in, all he did was tell me he couldn’t apply for bail without a new letter from the Embassy. Yet, these two were saying the US couldn’t keep me in a Thai prison.
On the morning of March 31st , David and I were called to the lawyers’ room once again. As we were taking our seats in front of the screen, Voratham rushed in on the other side. “Bad news,” he reported. “A warrant has been issued for your arrest in America. Here is the number of the penal code and the name of the San Francisco District Attorney that you must contact if you have any questions.” He held a paper up to the screen. It read 288 (A) and the name Peter Cling. “You have been charged with oral copulation of an eleven-year-old boy.” It took me a minute to realize what the man had just said. At first, I thought he meant that a warrant had been issued for David. When I realized it was for me, I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say. After regaining my composure, I said, “Get hold of Kenji and bring him back with you as soon as possible. Bring all of the records you have on my case and the case file, as well as the two hundred-thousand-baht bail money that you are holding.” He understood that he was being fired and he started to apologize, but I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I stood up and walked out of the room.
By the time I arrived in Building Three, I was in tears. I couldn’t face anyone. I started to pace back and forth in front of the building. I couldn’t focus on anything. David told me to pull myself together, “or they’ll think you’ve lost it and send you to the nut hospital.” How could there be a warrant for my arrest in America? Except for a short visit for a stockholder’s meeting and to see my mother in 1988, I hadn’t been there for almost two years. What eleven-year-old boy had said that I had given him a blow job? Eleven years old, my god! Who did I even know that was eleven years old? How could I find out what this was all about? I was prohibited from communicating with the outside world. In the meantime, the news media in America, Japan, Europe and Australia repeated the lies and accusations against me as if they were a foregone conclusion. I still could not understand why there wasn’t a single investigative journalist, just one reporter from anywhere, who was interested in what I had to say.
The most disappointing account of all appeared in a travel trade magazine, written by Imtiaz Muqbil, someone I knew, but a journalist who obviously felt no compunction to investigate the truth of the story. It carried the headline “S.I.T.E. chief arrested.” Kenji brought a copy to the lawyer’s room and handed it to me through the bars when the guard wasn’t watching. The article sealed the coffin on my career. Its very existence meant that anybody in the travel industry who may have possibly missed stories in the mass media would certainly get a chance to read about it in the travel press. Muqbil’s story was as misinformed as those appearing in the Thai newspapers, but he expanded on the lies. He incorrectly asserted that I must have known about the ‘impending arrest” ahead of time because I had called a competitor and asked him to take over my accounts. Sumate had evidently told Imtiaz that I called, but he jumped to the conclusion that I had called before I was arrested. He then obfuscated the issue entirely and appealed to homophobia by reporting that some of my colleagues in the travel industry believed me to be gay. Imtiaz is Indian and homophobic stories are common fodder for Indian reporters. Indian society is notoriously homophobic. Consensual gay sex would not even be made legal in India until September of 2018, almost thirty years later. However, this was Thailand, so such comments had nothing to do with the issue of my arrest, nor did his subsequent disparagement of Mark Morgan’s efforts to raise money for the children’s shelter at travel industry functions. The tone of the entire article was vicious. It was all the more hurtful because it had been written by a colleague who hadn’t bothered to investigate the story.
After reading the article, I resolved that, if no one else would print the truth, I would. That was when I began to write what would eventually become this “Kafkaesque Nightmare”, originally published in 1994 as: “The Poison River” and then revised and updated during the covid lockdowns in 2021.
*******
I was called to the lawyers’ room the day after Kenji handed me the story from Imtiaz Muqbil. It was so crowded with inmates and their attorneys that I couldn’t find a seat. Kachon and Kenji appeared with the two soi lawyers. They came to tell me that they had failed once more in their attempt to free the boys. “A warrant has been issued for my arrest in America,” I said to Kenji. "How much would these guys charge to take our case?” Kenji turned and asked the two lawyers in Thai. “Three hundred thousand baht,” he said, “To make everything as if nothing happened.” “That’s exorbitant,” I objected. “I don’t have that much right now.” “They said that they needed that much to pay off the police, the prosecutor and the judge,’ Kenji explained. I said, “Get me out and I’ll borrow the money.” They agreed to apply for bail when my next ‘review date’ came up. That was when I would go through the meaningless ritual of being ordered to appear in a plaza, where I would have to squat in the hot sun and wait the appearance of a judge who would call out my name and order that I remain incarcerated for another twelve days. Like all court functions in Thailand, these proceedings were held in Thai. When foreigners attended, an Indian man translated what the judge said and asked if there were any questions. Any time a prisoner actually had the nerve to ask one, he would either be dismissed out of hand or told that the question would have to be decided by a higher court.
One afternoon as I walked past the welfare building, the vice commander of the prison spotted me. He asked what I was doing. When I told him that I was just getting some exercise, he beckoned me to follow him. We crossed the main courtyard, walked past the dining hall and entered a door marked “Daeng Six”. To the left was a guard post and beyond it, hundreds of Thai prisoners. Some were manufacturing paper bags, while others were scraping what seemed to be some type of animal hide. The guards rose to attention when the vice commander entered. He ignored them and continued through the factory. Outside the building, police buses and private cars were being worked on my dozens of prisoner-mechanics. We turned a corner, walked through a barber shop and into an office.
The vice commander offered me a chair and a cup of tea. I was unprepared for such deferential treatment from a prison official and wondered what he wanted. Then he said, “Will you teach me English?” I was flabbergasted but eager to do something that would make me feel good, so I readily accepted. He began to talk to me and ask me to correct his grammar. He told me about his family and his home on the outskirts of Bangkok, and complained about his financial position. I kept thinking he was going to ask for money. I corrected his English and he seemed quite appreciative.
The following day at an appointed time, I returned. This time, he only wanted to learn the proper names and slang terms for a woman’s anatomy. He asked for suggestions on how to go about picking up an American blonde lady and showed no perception of the sensibilities of a western woman, assuming they were all available for a price. The rest of the sessions were similarly focused and I felt increasingly uncomfortable with them. However, the ability to wander in and out of another building at will gave me a certain amount of respect from the other prisoners and guards. “I’ve been in this place for over two years,” Peter marveled, “And I’ve never been allowed into Daeng Six.”
In the evenings, I studied Thai with Phisan, the man in my room who had worked for C.A.T. and owned the travel company. A kind and gentle person, he had been sentenced to a year in prison for having accidentally run over a drunk who stumbled into the path of his car. It was his bad fortune that the drunk happened to be a general in the Thai army. The studying and teaching gave me something real to hang onto. It gave my existence a purpose, for which I previously had no conscious appreciation. When I wasn’t studying Thai or writing the notes that would become the basis for this manuscript, I was teaching American songs to the other prisoners in the room. Our favorites were “I wanna go home” and “Please release me.”
Miraculously, the prison held a small library where I found “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare”, which I ravenously devoured. I had done a number of Shakespearian plays in High School. Macbeth had been my favorite play, but I soon discovered the genius of Hamlet, while The Merchant of Venice enlightened me with the realization that even a genius could be a bigot. I had previously held the belief that only stupid or psychologically disturbed people like Donald Trump were bigots.
The lawyers usually accompanied Kenji and Kachon when they came to discuss the upcoming National Traveler’s Life Insurance Incentive program. Unlike the lawyers from Siam Legal Aid, the new legal team seemed to demonstrate they were genuinely interested in my welfare. “Glenda Broderick said that some of her friends told her not to work with us,” Kenji reported to me just before the arrival of the incentive group. “But she doesn’t believe the stories in the newspaper and sent the money anyway.” I had known Glenda since the seventies when we had worked together in the same tour company in San Francisco. Her unwillingness to swallow the now common belief that I was a heinous criminal, made me wonder if others who knew me might have the same reaction. I even allowed myself the fleeting fantasy that just maybe I could save my career.
On the evening of April 11th , a guard came to the door and told me that I was to report to the courthouse the following morning for a hearing on my bail. After breakfast, I donned a brown shirt and brown shorts, the de rigueur uniform for court appearances, and then went to an area behind the receiving area to stand in line with other prisoners for chains. Shackles were then fashioned from steel plates that had been bent around our ankles by a guard using an enormous crude vise. I carried the chain itself high enough so that I wouldn’t drag it behind me like a dog on a leash.
We were then herded onto a bus with barred windows. It was packed so tightly with other prisoners that it was difficult to breathe. The door slammed shut on us and it felt like we were in an oven, drowning in sweat and the smell of body odor. We lurched forward as the coach began the slow drive to the courthouse. There, we were pushed into a holding cell as putrid and foul smelling as the one in which I awaited my transfer to Mahachai. By 13:00 almost everyone had been called to court. Out of the original eighty prisoners, only three were left with me in the holding cell. A couple more hours passed before a guard finally called my name. I stood up in anticipation, gathered my chains and started down the hall. Because a prisoner had once thrown his shoes at a judge, I was accompanied out of the building in bare feet, across a parking lot and up the stairs to the second floor. Kachon and one of the lawyers were waiting outside the door.
The courtroom was filled with desks. At the rear, the judge sat behind a desk stacked with files and papers. He motioned for me to take a seat facing his desk. “Is your name Steef Raymond, Steephen Raymond, Stephen Douglas Raymond, or Steepen Douglas?” he asked. As Thais only have two names, he was evidently puzzled by both the middle name and the shorter version of my first name. I proceeded to explain, but afterwards, he still appeared confused and called in my lawyer who began to speak in animated, yet reverential tones. He talked so rapidly that I couldn’t understand a thing. He then pulled Consul General Ed Wehrli’s letter from my file and repeatedly pointed to it. Finally, the judge turned to me and asked that I sign some papers.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I hoped to be called for release in the evening, but no one came for me. The next day was April 13th , Thai New Year; a very important holiday in Thailand. While most of the country was celebrating and National Traveler’s Life Insurance Company was arriving at the airport, I sat in a cell full of self-pity. Two days later, on Friday evening, the guards summoned me to be bailed. My spirits soared. I gathered my clothes, gave away the rest of my possessions, bid everyone farewell and went to the reception center. There, I watched other inmates getting processed out and continued to wait. I had no idea why I hadn’t joined them. Finally, I was called to sign for my wallet and watch. “FBI want you,” the officer said. “You go to America.” He started to laugh and my heart sank. “They won’t even let me try to prove my innocence,” I thought bitterly. “They accuse me and then take me away and leave the issue unresolved so that the world believes their lies. The bastards!”
I was led through the gates to the prison parking area and ordered into a police pickup. One of my lawyers was waiting for me. When he saw the police escort, he ran up to ask what they were doing. A guard said something to him and climbed in behind me. “Follow us,” I yelled. The pickup drove out of the parking lot, circled the block and stopped at a police station adjacent to the prison. The guard jumped out and quickly moved me inside to a cell. It was just like the one at Din Daeng. Hundreds of bugs and cockroaches scuttled across the floor and into the cracks in the walls. Seven other prisoners sat in the cells, talking and eating. My lawyer appeared immediately after they locked me in. He began to argue with the officers who brought me from the prison. “Din Daeng wants him,” I heard one of them say. The lawyer didn’t quite know how to respond, but he promised to return in the morning.
Sometime later, I asked a guard for a drink of water. He told me it would cost. I offered him ten baht. He snapped up the bill, sneered and then threw it back at me. I pleaded with him to take more, but he ignored me. I retreated to a corner and put my head in my hands. A transvestite in the cell offered me some Mekong Whiskey. I thanked her, but declined and instead reached into my bag for a note pad. I spent much of the night writing letters to the newspapers suggesting that authorities were trying to cover up the truth by sending me back to America. Then, I sat facing the wall to hide my eyes, and cried myself to sleep.
In the morning, two officers woke me up, handcuffed my hands behind my back and threw me on the back of a motorcycle. As we raced around corners, I pictured myself getting thrown from the cycle and, with my hands cuffed behind my back, landing on my head. I arrived shaken but safe at Din Daeng Station. Inside, the officers greeted me with uncharacteristic friendliness. I couldn’t understand their change in attitude. The man who had taken my statement just before I was taken to the press conference, actually offered to buy my lunch. Like an old pal, he told me to join him at the outside restaurant adjacent to the station. I meekly followed him and the others to a table. I was very suspicious of their friendliness. At first, I wondered if they were going to poison my food. During the meal, the officers kept glancing at their watches and looking over at the entrance to the station, as if they were waiting for someone to arrive. Midway through lunch, a few more policemen drove up, spotted us and came to our table.
“How much did you pay?” Lieutenant Chanasithi asked. He was the officer who had tortured and beaten the boys before taking them to a children’s prison. “What?” I didn’t understand his question. He looked irritated. “The lawyers,” he growled. “How much do the lawyers want? How much is the bail? How much do you still need to pay?” “Ask the lawyers,” I responded. My reply was not what he was looking for. He suddenly stomped off. Another one turned to the officer who had bought my lunch and said, “He needs to get out so that he can get more money from the bank.” Then I realized that their change of attitude was because they were expecting to receive some of the money that I was paying the lawyers. The officer who had invited me to lunch then stood up and asked me to follow him. We went into the air-conditioned office where he handed me a form written in Thai. “Sign this and you’re free to go,” he said. “Don’t forget you have court next Friday.” At first, I couldn’t believe my ears. “You’re free to go.” I grabbed the pen and scribbled my name. I didn’t know what was going on, but I didn’t care.
I burst out of the station and into the street. “Do you want a taxi?” an officer called out. “No,” I called back. “I just want to walk down the street.” The smells, the sounds, the feel of freedom had never been so exhilarating. I was free and it was WONDERFUL to be free. I inhaled the air deeply, and then tossed the letters I had written to the newspapers the night before into the first trash container I passed.
*******
I immediately went to my apartment. After looking around to make sure that everything was in place, I went to the office, hoping to find either Kenji or Kachon. No one was there. I headed to Bob’s apartment on the sixth floor. After we told Bob that we could not find the money he had left with David, he returned to Bangkok and then learned that David and I had been arrested. He decided that Thailand was not such a good place to retire, after all, so he gave his apartment keys to Kenji and left the country. Kenji had moved into his apartment to stay until the prepayment Bob had paid to the owners ran out.
When I knocked on the door, Kenji opened it. I fell into him and burst into tears. Some of his friends were in the apartment and my reaction caused them to turn away in embarrassment. As soon as I was able to compose myself, I sat down on the sofa.
“It’s not just happening here, “Kenji said “It’s happening in America, too. Some other people have been arrested. It’s all because of John Cummings. He got arrested in November and he told the police to arrest other people.” Having studied law, Cummings knew that the more people that he could get arrested, the more time he would get deducted from his own sentence.
“Arrest other people for what?” I asked Kenji, who just shrugged. What Kenji was saying didn’t make any sense. How could I get arrested in Thailand for something Cummings had said in America? I still believed that my problem had been caused by the Thai police and that they had created the story of the ‘sex tour ring’ at the press conference to draw the attention of the media away from the story of the Thai policeman who had killed a government official. “Kenji, thank you for being here when I needed you,” I said in earnest. “I’m dying for a beer. Will you go with me?”
Although he was entertaining his friends and was exhausted from working the National Traveler’s Insurance program, he could see I needed to be with a friend. We walked across Phaholyothin Road to Foremost Restaurant and had a drink. Afterward, I invited him to a movie, but he wanted to call it a night. When we returned to Bob’s apartment, Kachon was there, so I talked him into going with me to see “The Rain Man” with Dustin Hoffman. It was a great movie, but I couldn’t focus on it. Too much had happened in the real world for me to escape reality. Only my body had been freed. They still had my soul.
When we got back, I asked Kachon to lock the door from the outside so that if the police came, they would think I wasn’t home. I went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. My fear of being hauled off in the middle of the night was indelible. “What if they come?” I kept thinking. “If they come through the door, where could I hide?” I climbed into the closet and piled a bunch of blankets over myself. I finally fell asleep, locked in my apartment and hiding in the closet.
The following morning, I went to brunch with my niece Maureen and her newlywed husband Ken. They had just returned from Koh Samui. I thanked Ken for obtaining the letter from the Embassy and credited him with securing my release. When I described my fear of the police and how I had spent the night in my closet covered in blankets, I started to cry. I surprised myself. I had not realized how fragile I’d become, or how willing I was to show it.
During my incarceration, one of my Thai competitors had faxed the newspaper articles about my arrest to Joe Vieira, a client from San Diego who had just arrived in Bangkok with his customers from KGB radio. Vieira had written to me after receiving the fax, requesting a meeting at the Royal Orchid Hotel. As emotionally difficult as it was to meet with him, I decided to go through with it. So, after Ken and Maureen had gone back to their hotel, I went to meet Joe at the Sheraton. I arrived at the hotel a few minutes early and spotted him having drinks with a Turismo Thai tour company representative. When I walked up to them, Vieira jumped up. “You’re early!” he screeched. “Did you do this on purpose?” His reaction caught me by surprise. I was no longer a respected business partner. I had become an embarrassment.
The Turismo Thai representative excused himself and I sat down. Vieira did not bother offering a perfunctory drink. He made it evident that he simply wanted to sever our relationship as quickly as possible. I assured him that I would do whatever was necessary to assist the transition to another destination management company as expediently as possible. I told him that I didn’t want either him or his client to suffer as a result of my personal problems. Then I stood up and excused myself, trying to retain as much dignity as possible. I had expected the meeting to be difficult, but it really drove home the message that things would never be the same.
After a second scared and restless night locked in my apartment, I Knew I had to find another place to stay. I called Lu, one of my tour escorts, and asked if I could stay with her for a short while. She lived at Pratunam, not far from Victory Monument. I thought that she was westernized enough to be comfortable with such an intrusion. She welcomed me, but when I moved in, she moved down the hall to stay with Al, another of my female escorts. That night, my driver Vic, plus Lu and Al took me to dinner. Then we all went to Al’s apartment to play scrabble. They were doing all they could to cheer me up and I loved them for it, but I couldn’t snap out of my miserable state of mind. I was so emotionally devastated, I found it impossible to fake a smile, much less concentrate on a board game, so I excused myself early to go to bed.
Soon after my release, my mother called. I assumed that she knew I had been arrested, but she only called to confirm Maureen and Ken’s return flight. I think I shocked her when I apologized for all the worry I must have caused. She didn’t know what I was talking about. After the press conference, ABC had carried the sensational story, but neither my mother nor any of her friends had seen it. She was usually tuned in to a PBS station, which didn’t carry such stories. Ron Fry, the officer from the Embassy who had promised to telephone her, did not follow through. It was now obvious that the only thing he had cared about was getting my signature on the Privacy Act waiver, so that the Embassy could do as much harm as possible by telling the Thai police and the media about my warrant in the states. They had wanted to dig my grave and I foolishly gave them the shovel. They were determined to do nothing to help and everything to hurt. I had signed the form because my civics class in high school taught me that my government would always stand up for my rights and never engage in the type of Machiavellian behavior in which my government was now engaged. Even today, the US government is still spouting the kind of propaganda that made me believe such things. At the 2024 Democratic convention, when President Biden said “We will continue to work to bring Americans wrongfully detained around the world home” all I could think of was that it was US government officials who had “wrongfully detained” me.
The following evening, I joined Ken and Maureen at a Mexican restaurant in the Patpong area for a farewell dinner. Their flight was scheduled to leave the following morning, so after dinner; they went to their hotel. In the past, whenever I was near Patpong or Soi Cowboy, I visited one of the gay bars; but after Ken and Maureen left, I simply found a taxi and went home. I had no desire to visit any of the clubs and a one-hundred-baht drink was a luxury I could no longer afford.
I struggled to retain some semblance of normalcy, but I was not emotionally strong enough to help Kenji and Kachon with the National Traveler’s Life group. However, two Unisys Incentive programs were due to arrive soon, so I began spending most of my time in the office working on the details of their itineraries.
A couple of days after my release, Kenji told me that David Groat had asked him to get $2,000 that he had hidden in a box in Bob’s apartment and bring it to him at Bangkok Special Prison. That was the same amount that had been taken from the safe just before our arrest. It was now obvious that David was the thief, and equally obvious that he had been the one who stole money from my office twice before. I thought about the comment made by the police officer who had taken our report. He had said: “You should know who took the money, since the two of you are the only people with keys to the safe”. David had suggested that we go to the police and get fingerprinted, evidently to draw suspicion away from his larceny. I now wondered if the reason that he had been in prison in America was that he was a thief.
One afternoon, Chat’s mother, Nu’s mother and I caught a bus at Victory Monument for the two-hour ride to Pakred Children’s Prison. When the boys appeared in front of me, I fell apart. I don’t know how a father feels knowing he had let his kids down, but I imagined that what I was feeling was pretty close. They were too embarrassed by my emotional outbreak to speak. A sympathetic prison counselor allowed me to give Chat and Nu enough money to pay for the upcoming semester and she gave her word that they would be able to attend school again. After the boys left the visiting area, an older man appeared. He identified himself as the prison supervisor. “The boys tell me that you are a good man,” he said in perfect English. “Will you continue to take care of them when they are released?” “I hope so,” I replied, “but after all of this is over, I don’t know if I’ll be able to.” “They love you,” he said. “They want to go back and live with you. We know now they are only here because of the police. The police at Din Daeng are no good!” I was so grateful for his words that I had to bite my lip to keep from breaking down again. This was one of the few times that I felt validated about anything in months. Finally, someone in an official position saw what I desperately needed the world to see.
The first of the two Unisys programs arrived in Bangkok a few days after my release. When my staff of six people arrived in the office dressed in their company uniforms; when the hostess with her flower garlands was busily arranging them for transfer to the airport; when everyone was getting the beer and soft drinks ready for the arrival transfer; my adrenalin jolted me out of my malaise. Everything suddenly seemed normal, as if the events of the previous two months had been a terrible dream and the reality was that things were just as they had always been.
My escape, however, was short-lived. While the hotel and transfers had been prepaid, the client told us that he had contacted another tour operator to take care of the activities. When we learned that the lucrative part of the program had been given away, the nightmare hounded me again. Soon after the departure of the first program, a longtime friend from Universal Sky Tours, the incentive house responsible for the Unisys programs, called to tell me that his wife and the wife of the Unisys meeting planner were coming to Bangkok. I mustered all of the courage that I could and went to the airport to meet them.
When I arrived at the Shangri-La Hotel the next morning to take the clients on a cruise of the canals, the hotel’s catering manager spotted me. I watched as he dashed behind a pillar, and then peeked out from the other side, obviously astonished at seeing me. When I caught him watching, he turned quickly and scurried off in the other direction.
I thoroughly enjoyed the four days that I spent with the two ladies. They acted as if they knew nothing of my predicament, and I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer the information. I did say, however, that their program would be the final one I would handle in Thailand. When they asked why, I skirted the issue, but indicated that I had some problems with corrupt police officials. Otherwise, I did my best to maintain a glittering image and to pretend that I was still in control of my fate.
I was scheduled in court on the Friday following my release. I appeared with Kachon and one of the two lawyers. The three of us sat in the visitors’ area discussing my case when suddenly I realized that there had been a communication breakdown. My lawyer didn’t know that a warrant had been issued for my arrest in America after Ed Wehrli’s letter was written. I jumped up and started to leave the courthouse. The lawyer was baffled by my sudden behavior and asked Kachon what I was doing. “He doesn’t even know what’s happening,” I cried to Kachon. “Tell him that I’m going to wait in a restaurant until I’m sure the police aren’t going to re-arrest me.” A little while later, Kachon found me and assured me that all was well. Everything had been extended for twelve days. I simply had to sign a paper acknowledging that I would return on May 4th . “Tell the lawyers to come to the office so that we can discuss everything. I don’t want any more mix-ups,” I said to Kachon. I then added 50,000 baht to the 60,000 I had previously given the attorneys when they arrived later that afternoon. Afterwards, I felt much better about their grasp of the issue and was confident they would do a good job.
The second Unisys program arrived a week after the first. This time, I went to the airport with the staff to greet the group. An escort accompanying them had called earlier from Singapore and insisted to Kenji that she be allowed to set the prices of the optional activities. I wanted to meet her and make sure she was happy, even though I knew that Universal Sky Tours had approved the activity schedule and she did not have the authority to change it.
Kenji went to the Regent Hotel to make sure that everything had been properly arranged. When he arrived, he met Malcolm MacKenzie, the Director of Sales and a colleague from S.I.T.E. He told Malcolm that I would be arriving with the group, so Malcolm collared me just after I walked in the door. “What is this all about?” he asked. “Come into my office and tell me.” I followed him and then repeated what I had been telling anyone who would listen since my arrest. “What do you plan to do now?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I said. I really didn’t. I had flirted with the idea of trying to keep my business alive by doing legitimate night club tours, visiting jazz clubs and live entertainment night spots, but no one had ever attempted to do a night club tour of anything other than sex clubs in Bangkok, and to arrange it would be difficult.
The second Unisys program was going much more smoothly than the first. But on the third evening, Kenji reported to me that the escort who called from Singapore had negotiated on her own with the jewelry store. She had told the shopkeeper to make sure that all the commissions from the sales went to her. Normally, commissions were split evenly among all the escorts. As everyone was going in for dinner, I pulled the woman aside and explained to her that all escorts split commissions. “But they don’t need the money as much as I do,” she had the temerity to say. “They don’t have car payments and house payments.” Of course, my escorts had just as many financial obligations as she did, but her arrogance and insensitivity were so odious that I refused to argue. I simply decided I would visit the store the next day and tell the owner that the commissions needed to be split between her and my escorts. That was not to be.
*******
The morning after the Unisys dinner at Sala Rim Naam, I appeared for my scheduled hearing. A friend from San Francisco was passing through Bangkok and agreed to accompany me to the courthouse. The two lawyers met us at the courthouse and told us to wait in the restaurant until I was called. So, we waited. Morning turned into afternoon. I was getting antsy about heading off the greedy Unisys escort at the jewelry shop. At 4PM, the lawyers finally led me into a small courtroom. The judge was absent, but a clerk called me to the front, told me to report again on the 23rd and asked me to sign the paper. As I was signing, a police officer handed my lawyer a charge sheet, then walked up behind me with two other officers, grabbed my arm and clasped a handcuff to my wrist. My heart jumped to my throat. I looked at my lawyer and screamed “why?” The police officers started laughing. They thought my outburst was humorous. One of the officers then shoved me into a chair. A minute later, he snapped the other bracelet on a Thai man and ordered us to follow him. When we walked back into the waiting room, I looked at my friend and he smiled. I then held up my arm to show him that I had been handcuffed. “Oh no,” he exclaimed. “What Happened? Do you want me to take your things?” I started to give him my wallet, which contained $1,000 in cash and traveler’s checks, but the guard shoved me along. As we headed to a holding cell, the guard said, “US police want you. Every day we talk. Every day they send telex.”
Someone yelled at me from another holding cell. “Steve!” I looked up and saw David Groat. He was smiling from ear to ear. “What happened?” he asked. “I don’t know.” Just then, the lawyers and my friend Michael appeared at the window across the hall. “We talk to judge. Everything okay. One hour you go out. Just wait.” One of the lawyers yelled. The lawyers disappeared then returned a few minutes later. “Bail now 300,000 baht. You have?” I had already paid 200,000 for bail. “I don’t have another 100,000 baht!” I shouted. Then I looked at Michael. “Do you have a hundred thousand baht?” I implored. “I’ll pay you back.” “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything,” he said. I began pleading frantically. If I don’t get out now, I won’t get out until after the trial. I know it.” “I’m sorry,” he repeated.
David heard our conversation and asked if I had any cash on me. “About 3,000 baht and some American money,” I said. “Hide some in your shoe,” he instructed. “Give it to me inside.” I stuffed a thousand baht into my shoe. “Line up,” the officer growled in Thai. Slowly I moved to comply. I then repeated the process I had gone through two months earlier. I assumed that David had arranged with the prisoner checking shoes not to check mine. Unfortunately, it was one more assumption I shouldn’t have made. My shoes were searched and the inmate who found the secreted cash beamed as he handed it to an officer, who started yelling at me. “You go soi!” he screamed, referring to the building where inmates are chained to the wall. Another officer then went to fetch Joe who told them that I didn’t know what I was doing. Since they knew that I had been in before, that didn’t fly. Joe took me aside. “This will cost you some money,” he said. “How much?” I asked. “Five hundred baht.” I agreed to pay the bribe and suddenly it was as if the incident hadn’t occurred. I was then dispatched to Building Four with Joe and the new prisoners. But I was furious at David for telling me to hide the cash and at myself for listening to him. All he could say was, “I thought you’d hide it better.”
Because we arrived on Thursday at the beginning of a holiday weekend, processing was delayed until the following Monday. Thus, we remained with Joe throughout the weekend. This was very unfortunate for two retarded men who were shackled to each other with their hands behind their backs. They were kept like that for three days and not permitted to eat or drink. When Joe and the guards were preoccupied, I managed to sneak them some food, water and coca colas from the commissary, but I knew that if I was caught, I might be sent to the ‘soi’ and shackled to the wall.
Joe was as friendly to me as he had been when David and I first arrived in March. Every day, he invited me for coffee and then for lunch and dinner. The first night, he told me that David and I would be moved to Khlong Prem Prison at Lardyao because we had received our charge papers, “unless you pay the guards to keep you here.” “Ask Kenji for six thousand baht,” David said to me. “Otherwise, they’ll send us to Lardyao. Peter says it’s much worse there. I started to hedge about paying money for an obscure benefit, particularly since the money would go to my oppressors. I resented David’s insistence, particularly after learning about his thievery. It wasn’t his money.
The following afternoon, Kenji, Kachon, Lu, Al, Joi, Vic and two additional freelance escorts came to visit. They had just seen off the Unisys group at the airport. They crowded around the screen to tell me that the Unisys escort had learned of my arrest and had grabbed the $8,000 in jewelry commission money, leaving them with nothing. I knew that she would report my arrest to Universal Sky Tours and there was nothing I could do about it. My business was finished, so it didn’t really matter anymore, but I felt sorry for my girls, who had worked hard and had been bilked out of their share of the commission.
After the holiday weekend, Kenji came back with the lawyers. “I need 6,000 baht for a bribe to keep us here,” I told him. Bangkok Special Prison was much closer for everyone than Khlong Prem at Lardyao, and I would try to make it as easy for Kenji, Kachon and the lawyers as I could. Unisys was the last program for which we had received deposits before my arrest. All other groups had cancelled, and no more payments would be coming in. I wanted to close the company honorably so I told Kenji to take the 200,000-baht bail money and pay the bills.
I asked Kenji to call my mother and see if she would contact friends in America who might be willing to help. “Tell her to call Warren Mohr,” I said Warren owned a small incentive house and had been my first employer in the travel industry. He often told me I was like a son to him. By his own admission, he was worth millions of dollars. If anybody could afford to loan me $12,000 for a year of two, he could. Kenji relayed my message to my mother, and she telephoned him. His terse reply was that he discussed my request with his wife, and they had decided that my case had generated too much publicity. They didn’t want to get involved.
Soon after my re-arrest, Chat and Nu were released from Pakred Children’s Prison, and they moved back to my apartment. Kenji moved in with them to supervise and make sure they went back to school. I suspect the reason they were released had to do with pressure on the authorities from their parents; and perhaps from the lawyers, and to a lesser extent, the conversation I had with the Prison Supervisor. Unfortunately, Thep’s father didn’t care enough about him to go to the prison and sign the papers, so he had to remain there. Thep had been living on the street because his father kicked him out of their home. After they registered for the new semester, Chat and Nu came to Bangkok Special Prison to visit.
My re-arrest made me realize that my new lawyers didn’t really know what they were doing. They assured me that nothing would happen unless I was found guilty during the trial. Then, the week after my re-arrest, they called me to the lawyers’ room to ask what I thought of the charge. “What charge?” I asked. “You never gave me the charge sheet. Where is it? What have I been charged with? Give me a copy and I’ll get someone to translate it.” They just shrugged. They had come to discuss my charge, but they had not brought the charges with them. A week later, Kenji brought a copy of the charge sheet. I took it to one of my English-speaking friends in the prison and asked him to translate it. Finally, two-and-a-half months after my arrest, following all of the allegations made by the police to the media and the front-page stories alleging I had been involved with child pornography, pedophile sex tours, and operating a child sex and prostitution ring, I learned that I was being charged with one count of masturbating Nu, who had been so intimidated that he signed the charge that the police made up. There was no charge involving Chat, so in the end, Chanasithi was unable to get Chat to sign, even after the torture.
The next time I saw one of the lawyers, I asked what he needed to fight the case. “Two hundred and fifty thousand baht more,” he said. “I know what your fee is,” I snarled at him in Thai. “I mean what information do you need? What do you need to fight the case?” He looked at me as if I hadn’t understood him, so he increased the amount. “Three hundred thousand baht,” he said. I gave up trying to communicate with him and walked out of the lawyers’ room.
My first court appearance had been set for the next day. Again, I dressed in a brown shirt and brown shorts. My ankles were chained, and I rode the caged bus to the courthouse. The other lawyer showed up without the one who had talked with me the previous day. He was not prepared, so he requested a postponement. He told the judge I hadn’t yet chosen an attorney. He didn’t know how right he was. His request for a delay was the final straw. The next time Kenji came to visit, I told him to contact the lawyer that Peter had recommended: Sombattsiri Nabadalung. Peter had warned that Sombattsiri was a crook, but I decided that if I was going to hire a crook, at least I’d hire a competent one. I’d given up hope that I could win a court case in Thailand with an honest lawyer. Everything that had happened since my arrest indicated that the entire system operated on corruption. Honesty was not the best policy; it didn’t even seem like a credible option. The trial hadn’t even begun, and I had gone through two law firms and was about to hire a third.
One day in late May when David and I were exercising in front of the building, word came that the Embassy had sent someone to see us. It had been almost three months since my impassioned plea to talk to an Embassy representative. David grabbed me and said, “Don’t say anything. Treat them the same as you would cops.” “I won’t say anything.” I intended to let them do all the talking. We entered the lawyers’ room and took seats. Two middle-aged women came up to the other side of the screen and sat down. One introduced herself as Marcia Pixley, a US consulate representative who said she would be visiting me regularly from now on. She introduced the other woman as “just a friend who came along to keep me company”. David introduced himself and then Marcia turned to her friend, gestured toward me and spoke as if she were disgusted to even have to say my name; And this is Steve Raymond.” I was taken aback. I hadn’t prepared myself for such open hostility from my government representative. I thought they would at least be a little more subtle, but Marcia made her feelings about me obvious. She threw me off guard and bruised my sensitive ego so much that I overreacted. I wanted her to question the false accusations against me. My resolve not to speak disappeared and I gushed forth with a barrage of information, intended to elicit her sympathy and to get her to understand that I was not guilty. David sat in stunned silence as I gave Marcia all the details of my case, the date of my next court hearing, the fact that I hoped to delay my case until I could find out what the warrant in America was about, and then I made the most unbelievably dim-witted remark I have ever made; by telling her where the US Government officials could find my passport. David tried to kick me to shut me up, but I wanted so desperately for the US government to know that we were not guilty. Instead, I had just condemned myself to what would end up being more than a year locked in an immigration jail. After Marcia reported our conversation, US officials immediately went to Din Daeng Police Station, picked up my passport and then cancelled it. Because I had revealed that I was thinking of delaying the case, the Embassy sent a letter to the court asking that it be rushed.
When we finally walked out of the lawyers’ room, David understandably began a tirade of verbal abuse.” You fucking idiot! Are you fucking nuts?” he screamed. “She represents the enemy.” I knew he was right, and I felt rather stupid. On the other hand, I still had trouble thinking of my government as my enemy.
Kachon succeeded in contacting Sombattsiri, who then came to see me at the prison. He was a short bug-eyed little man who looked like a Thai version of Peter Lorrie. I asked how much he needed as a retainer. “Thirty thousand baht,” he replied. That figure sounded refreshingly reasonable, so I instructed Kenji to give him fifty thousand, assuming that would take care of him for a good part of the trial. Sombattsiri’s English was good, and he assured me that he was quite competent. “I used to be the top prosecutor in the government,” he said, “My brother is one of the top policemen in the country.” He was making the point that he had connections if I had the money. Sombattsiri had ten days to prepare for my next court session, and he assured me that he would be working full time to prepare my case.
The following afternoon, Sombat returned to the prison with my personal bank book. “What are you doing with that?” I asked. “Kenji gave it to me because there wasn’t enough money left in the company account,” he answered. I was dumbstruck! Although I hadn’t yet received a financial accounting, I calculated that, after paying all the bills, the company account should have held twice what I had authorized Sombat to receive. Kenji had not only failed to provide me with the records but he had also given my personal bank book to someone who Peter described as “a crook”.
I reluctantly signed a withdrawal slip and he left. I kept both Kenji and Kachon on the payroll and hoped to continue paying them until my trial was completed. But if all my company funds were disappearing, I wouldn’t be able to do that any longer. On June 14th , the day before my court appearance, Sombattsiri returned with Kachon to ask for additional funds. Kenji had told him that we had just received a final payment for a group and he wanted it. I had not had one court appearance with Sombattsiri and yet he asked for and received money three times. For some inexplicable reason, Kenji was telling this “crook” about my company and personal finances. When I tried to talk to Sombat about the case, he refused to talk about anything except money. I was stuck and I knew it. Tomorrow was the beginning of my trial, and he represented my only hope. Reluctantly, I signed the check over to him, while demanding to know if he had given Chat and Nu assurances that they could tell the truth in court without fear of reprisals. “I was planning to talk to the boys today,” he said without a shred of guilt. “You mean you haven’t talked to them yet?” He then told me that he had planned to go to my apartment and meet the boys when they returned from school. “Have you talked to the boy’s parents?” I asked, “Do you know if the prosecutor plans to call them to testify?” “It’s standard,” he replied. “The prosecutor will call the boys, the parents and the police.” “You promised to talk to the prosecutor. You said you were going to take him to lunch. Have you talked to him?” He ignored my question. He obviously hadn’t done anything after telling me that he would work full time to prepare my case. He had spent the previous nine days figuring out how he could get me and Kenji to give him more money, without a thought about the trial.
“We have to go now,” he said, “so that we can meet the boys when they return home.” At that, he stood up and left. I sat and watched as he and Kachon walked out of the building, and then shook my head and returned to my cell.
The following day, I went through the whole process of being chained and then squatting and waiting to be called. When I heard my name, I picked up my chains and dragged them into the small courtroom. Nu was sitting with the prosecutor behind a table on the left. He was looking down at the floor and he refused to look up. “Nu,” I called out. He looked up briefly, shot a glance at the prosecutor, shook his head and looked back down. Chat’s mother came over and put her hand in mine as a gesture of support. “What’s wrong with Nu?” I asked. She just shrugged and walked out.
Then Sombattsiri sat down alongside me. “I’m going to ask for a postponement,” he said. “I don’t know what Nu is going to say.” “Haven’t you talked to him?” I asked incredulously. “Not yet,” he said. “Nu went to a friend’s house after school yesterday, so I didn’t get to see him.” This man was so deceitful and lazy; I was astounded that I had made the fateful decision to put my destiny in his hands. It seemed that every decision I had made since my arrest was making my situation worse. The judge accepted his request for a postponement and set the date of the next hearing for June 22nd . I returned to the prison dismayed by my inability to find a decent lawyer.
When Kachon and Kenji came for their next visit, I asked them for a commitment to press Sombattsiri. I was still upset that Kenji kept giving Sombat my bank book and information about our financial situation, but I had to remind myself that he was young and not to reprimand him. I couldn’t afford to alienate anyone who was trying to help me. Believing that the boys would tell the court they had been tortured, I asked Kachon to contact the newspapers and have them attend the next court session. Kachon knew a reporter at Thai Rath, so he promised to contact his friend. Both of them said they would do what they could to make sure that Sombat was prepared for the next session. A few days later, Sombattsiri appeared in the lawyer’s room. “I need two hundred thousand baht.” “What on earth for?” I choked. He had already taken a hundred thousand from me and had only gone to court once but had done nothing to prepare for my defense.
He looked at me with a straight face and said, “I need to pay the boys for their testimony, and I need to pay to get some witnesses.” “What!” I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. He obviously hadn’t even read the details of my case, nor had he talked to Kenji or Kachon, after promising three weeks earlier to “work full time” on it. “You don’t need to pay the boys, goddammit. All you have to do is assure them that the police will not hurt them again if they tell the judge about the torture. They love me. Plus, you don’t have to pay for witnesses. I have all the witnesses you need who will testify on my behalf.” I was furious at this scoundrel. “You’re not getting any more money from me until I see some positive results!” I stormed out of the lawyer’s room convinced that there was no such thing as justice in Thailand.
*******
June the 22nd was to be a pivotal day in my case. After the chains were clamped on, I was herded on and off a bus and then waited in a holding cell to be called. But I still wasn’t sure if Sombattsiri had talked to Chat and Nu, or if the newspapers would cover the proceedings. Again, I was forced to squat in front of a desk while I waited for a deputy. Thirty minutes later, one appeared. I stood, gathered my chains, and followed him barefoot through the guard’s station and upstairs. We went into a much larger courtroom than the one we were in the previous week. Five people whom I did not recognize were seated on a bench in the rear. I hoped they were reporters. The prosecutor appeared with his assistant, donned his robe and sat behind a table to my left. Then Sombat walked in, set his briefcase down and took out his robe. “Did you get a chance to talk to Chat and Nu?” I asked. “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. “I took them to my house last night so that the prosecutor wouldn’t be able to get to them and scare them. I told them the police couldn’t do anything else to them. Don’t worry. Everything is okay.”
The judge entered and took his seat behind a raised desk. A court reporter followed and sat to his right at a small table with an antiquated typewriter on top. The judge asked my lawyer and the prosecutor if they were prepared. When they said that they were ready, he instructed the prosecutor to call his first witness. Nu’s father entered the courtroom. He was unsteady and I knew instantly he had been drinking. The prosecutor asked if he knew that I had a sexual relationship with his son. “I don’t know anything about that,” he responded. “The first I knew that there was a problem was when I read about it in the newspaper, so I went to the Din Daeng Police Station to find my son.” He continued by telling the court that Nu had been happy living with me, and he was one of the best students in his class. “Did you go into Mr. Raymond’s apartment to visit Nu?” the prosecutor asked. “I went to his apartment a couple of times to do some work for him,” he replied. After Sombattsiri asked a couple of irrelevant questions, Nu’s father was dismissed. Instead of taking a seat in the courtroom, he asked to be excused so that he could get a drink. He returned to the courtroom a few minutes later.
The judge told the prosecutor to call the next witness. Nu timidly entered the courtroom and was instructed to stand behind the podium in the center, facing the judge. After pledging to tell the truth, he looked at the prosecutor. I could only understand part of what was being said. I was so angry that a good kid like Nu was being made to go through this indignity that tears welled up in my eyes. I wanted to scream. When Nu turned and pointed at me, I tried to control my emotions and listen to his testimony, but I still couldn’t understand what was being said. The prosecutor completed his cross examination. Sombat picked up his notes and stood in front of Nu, then asked Nu to describe his treatment by the police at Din Daeng. A shy boy, Nu spoke so softly that the judge asked him to speak up in order to be heard. He recounted the incident in detail, stating that the police had picked him up at his school, taken him to Din Daeng Station, forced him to undress, then applied electric shock to his genitals and told him they would continue until he died if he refused to sign their statement. He said that he had signed the statement only because he had been forced to do so. He said that he loved me and that I was very kind to him.
When Nu completed his testimony, Chat was brought into the courtroom. He was angry. “I love Khun Steve,” he said. “He’s like a father to me. The Din Daeng police shocked me with electricity so that I would sign their statement.” Then, during the cross examination by Sombat, Chat continued. “He didn’t run a sex tour business. I worked for him in the office, and I helped with the luggage truck when his groups arrived.” I could understand Chat much more clearly. I knew that he was releasing some of the anger that had built up over the past four months. He was not behaving at all like the demure quiet boy I had known in February.
Kachon had always been late for things, arriving at the office well past his scheduled shift. Yet, when it was extremely important that he be on time, he always came through. But he was tardy today for what seemed to me to be the most important assignment I had ever given him. He and the reporter from Thai Rath entered the courtroom after Chat had finished his testimony. I angrily glared at Kachon. I was so frustrated that I had been constantly thwarted in my attempts to get the truth out. Fortunately, after they walked in, the judge summarized the witnesses’ statements. It did not have the dramatic impact of hearing the testimonies from the boys, but it was better than nothing. I could only hope it would sufficiently motivate the reporter to publish what they had said.
Following the court session, I was returned to Bangkok Special Prison. A couple of hours later, a directive was sent to the commander of my building, and I was called to see him. He explained, as I squatted, that he had been instructed by the commander of the prison to keep me locked up in the building. “You have a new case in America,” he said. “The US Government says that you are a security risk, so we can’t let you leave the building during the day. You must remain inside.” “What new case?” I asked him. But he didn’t know. He only had orders that I could no longer exercise outdoors, go to the commissary for food, or visit Daeng Six to teach English to the Vice Commander.
That afternoon, David Lyon, who replaced Ed Wehrli as Consul General at the Embassy, wrote an order revoking my United States passport. The following day, Phisan brought me a tiny article that appeared on the bottom of page eight in Matichon Newspaper. It mentioned that Chat and Nu had testified about the police torture and concluded with a short terse comment about the inefficacy of the police actions. Nothing was printed in Thai Rath or any of the other newspapers.
Through handwritten letters to the Embassy and verbal messages via Marcia Pixley, I continually requested an explanation of the charges against me in the United States. When I asked Marcia, she said that she was not authorized to say anything about it. This struck me as something straight out of Kafka’s “The Trial”. When I said as much, she agreed to bring in someone who could explain, and even wrote me a letter to assure me that someone would come within the month. No one ever came. During one visit, Marcia made a cavalier remark about Bangkok Special Prison looking like a country club in comparison to Khlong Prem. Her comment made me feel like inviting her for a long stay in the ‘country club’, or just ask her if this prison was so much better, why did foreign governments rigorously protest the conditions here?
Marcia came for a visit on June 29th and handed me a letter from David Lyon which informed me that my passport had been revoked. The reason given for the revocation was the issuance of the California State warrant on March 14th . Yet, the Code of Federal Regulations that had been copied and presented to me along with the letter specifically stated that passports could only be revoked based on federal warrants of arrest, not state warrants. The letter also stated that I could appeal the revocation, if I so desired. I then sent Consul General Lyon a letter requesting a hearing on my passport revocation.
In July, Marcia came to the prison with Lowell Strong, who identified himself as an FBI agent. I asked him to explain the details of the charge against me, but he refused. “Your charge is a State of California matter,” he said. “I’m a federal agent, so I cannot comment on it. There is no federal warrant for your arrest…. yet,” he said ominously. Marcia looked surprised at his last comment. Strong began to talk about my return to prison in the United States. After hearing David Groat’s horror stories about American prisons, I told him I’d rather be in a Thai jail. “We are going to take you back,” he said flatly. “Not if I don’t want to go back,” I snapped, as I stood up and walked out of the lawyers’ room. I was sick of being pushed around and having my life trampled on by people who would not know the truth if it stood up and hit them in the face.
After I told David what I had said to the FBI agent, he castigated me: “You shouldn’t have said that. Don’t tweak them. Act like you’re going to do what they want. What you did is dangerous! They’re the enemy and they’re holding all the cards.” Once again, I knew he was right about the US government officials, but I really didn’t know what to say to these people. They kept thwarting my attempts to bail out of prison and to get the truth out. I wished that I had a good American lawyer who could explain what I should do.
Just after the visit from Marcia and Lowell Strong, a prisoner arrived in Building Four covered with bruises. He had been charged with raping and then killing a three-year-old girl. The police had arrested him in Khlong Toey, the largest slum in Bangkok. While he was in custody, they beat him until he confessed that he had murdered the girl while high on heroin. The guards told the other prisoners in his building what the man had done. They jumped on him and beat him senseless. When he regained consciousness, Joe and the guards beat him again and kept it up throughout the night. The next day, the man was transferred to Building Two and chained to the wall. The other inmates in the building burned off his pubic hairs with a cigarette lighter, then 14 of the 15 other prisoners in his cell sodomized him. The physical abuse continued for the rest of the week. Finally, the guards gave the prisoner a rope and released his chains from the wall. With the help of a couple of the inmates, the man hung himself from a ceiling fan.
Sombattsiri came to visit one day in early July to tell me that he had just spoken to my mother. Kenji had given Sombat my mother’s phone number, and he called to ask her for more money. “She said that she sent you a check for three thousand dollars,” he asserted. “She said to tell you to sign the check over to me.” The man was like a rodent, sniffing in every crevice he could find; searching for money, while paying little or no attention to the job he was being paid to do. I had just received the check from Kenji and had hoped to use it for personal expenses, plus to pay the rent on the apartment so that Chat and Nu could continue to live there and remain in school. My mother had unwittingly placed me in a difficult position. Although Sombat had spent only a few hours on my case, he had already received more than 150,000 baht. But I believed that if I didn’t pay him, he would quit, and the system would destroy me.
My next court session was held on July 20th . Just before nine o’clock, I was brought into the courtroom as the prosecutor was donning his robe. The only other person in the courtroom was his assistant. Outside in the hallway, the officers from Din Daeng Police Station were waiting to testify. Through the doorway, I saw Lieutenant Chanasithi. I glared at him, but he averted his eyes. The judge entered the courtroom. Sombattsiri had still not arrived. We waited. The judge seemed to keep himself busy with paperwork for a while. Finally, at 9:45 he told the guard to return me to the holding cell. Dejectedly, I sat on the floor in the filthy holding cell wondering what had happened to my lawyer. A few minutes later, a deputy called my name. I picked up my chains and followed him back to the courtroom. When I arrived, Sombattsiri and Kachon were both in the courtroom waiting for me.
A woman whom I had not noticed earlier stepped up to the podium and took the pledge to tell the truth. I looked questioningly at Kachon. He took out a small notebook, wrote on a piece of paper and then handed it to the guard to give to me. The note said: “Woman from hospital. She checked Chat and Nu. She says nothing showed about sex.”
When she stepped down and the judge had finished paraphrasing her testimony into his tape recorder, a police officer took the stand. He identified himself as Police Sergeant Wasant Ngarmsompong, one of the officers who arrested me and searched my apartment. He looked scared and nervous. He told the judge that he and his fellow officers had been instructed by Police Major Tharin Chantaratip to arrest the foreigners at my apartment and David Groat’s apartment. He testified that there had been no complaint and that they found nothing in the apartment. He then lied and told the judge that Chat and Nu were in my apartment when he and the other officers arrived there. Unfortunately, I was unable to follow his testimony and was unaware that he was not telling the truth. Then Sombat cross-examined him and asked why he had sent the boys to prison and why he had taken my passport. He claimed to know nothing about the boys’ incarceration, and he also denied taking my passport. When he stepped away from the podium, he was visibly shaken. Kachon passed a note to me after the sergeant’s testimony, which read: “His boss told him to say Chat and Nu in apartment. He says he sorry.” Kachon was telling me that the police officer had just perjured himself because his supervisor had instructed him to do so.
Next, Lieutenant Suthep Chanasithi entered the courtroom, stepped to the podium and identified himself. I glowered at this child abuser who had tortured the boys, but he would not look at me. He told the judge that he arrested me because of the Matichon Newspaper article and that he searched my apartment and found nothing. He talked about interviewing the boys and then he lied and told the court that the boys had been in my apartment at the time of the arrest. Like his predecessor, he seemed to be very nervous during his testimony. Sombat asked him why the boys had been taken to Pakred Children’s Prison. He perjured himself a second time and told the court that he knew nothing of their incarceration, yet Chat and Nu had told me that Chanasithi was the one who tortured them, then took them to the childrens prison and checked them in. He embellished his perjury and stated that he had not taken them there and didn’t know who had. Chanasithi stepped down, still averting my glare. He then signed his perjured statement and took a seat next to Sergeant Ngarmsompong.
I turned to Sombat and asked him to meet me downstairs in the lawyers’ room to discuss the testimonies that had just been given. He agreed, as a guard stepped up to return me to the holding cell. A few minutes later, Kachon appeared across the hall from the cell and held up a bag of fried rice that he had purchased for my lunch. “Where is Sombat?” I asked. “He not come,” Kachon said. “He go already.”
Sombattsiri did not come to the prison the rest of the week. My next court date was scheduled for the following week, and I wanted to discuss what had happened in the last session. When Kachon came to visit, I asked him to go to Sombat’s house and bring him to me. “I need to talk to him,” I said with urgency. The next day, Kachon came to report that my mother had spoken with Sombat and she was going to send him bail money. Sombat told her that he thought he could bail me out if she would give him another two hundred thousand baht. I was frantic. I had grown to mistrust anything the weasel said, and I believed that now he was poised to take my mother’s money. “Tell her not to send anything to Sombat,” I said. “Tell Kenji to call her right away!”
The day before I was scheduled to appear in court again, Sombat came to the prison. “Kenji says you want to sell your computer,” he said as I took a seat. “I’ll buy it.” I ignored his comment and asked him who the next witness would be. He, in turn, ignored my question and said that if I gave him the computer, his fees would be totally paid. The company computer was less than a year old. I paid 150,000 baht when I purchased it new. I had already given Sombat nearly 150,000 baht and I didn’t plan to give him anymore. “Okay, I’ll pay you 70,000 baht for it,” Sombat continued. He wasn’t interested in discussing the case at all. He acted as if the case was irrelevant. When I refused to give him the computer, he sat detachedly as I read my notes and asked him questions about the trial, which he refused to answer. He then stood up and said that he would give me some cash for the computer and credit the remainder. Then he left without saying anything about the trial or answering any of my questions.
That afternoon, Mark Morgan came for a visit. I had previously asked him to see if he could sell the computer for me. “I’ve checked around,” Mark said. “A friend told me that your computer is only worth 25,000 baht. I’ll give you that much for it.” “Sombat says he’ll give me 70,000 baht for it, and he hasn’t even seen it. I know it’s worth much more than 25,000 baht. “Does he know that it’s broken?” Mark asked. “Broken? Since when?” “I tried to use it the other day and it wouldn’t bring up data. I’ve sent it to be repaired.” “Kenji said it was working all right when you had it picked up from the office,” I fired back. I didn’t believe him, and I was irritated that people were picking over the carcass of my business assets like a bunch of vultures.
“Something funny is going on at the office,” Mark said, abruptly changing the subject.” Kachon hocked your typewriter the other day and I had to pay five thousand baht to get it out of hock…. And I wouldn’t trust Kenji, if I were you.” Then he offered to pick up my office equipment and take it to his shelter. “Will you try to sell everything for me?” I asked. “I’ll try, but at least if the things are at my house, you know they’re safe.” “Okay,” I sighed. “But I want to talk to Kenji before you do anything.” I left the visiting area wondering who I could really trust. Mark said I couldn’t trust Kenji, but I was wondering if I could trust Mark. It seemed to me that he was undervaluing my computer so that I would sell it to him for next to nothing. Meanwhile, Kachon was taking office equipment to a pawn shop.
That night I couldn’t sleep wondering if anyone’s motives were honorable. When morning broke and it was time to prepare for court, I was a nervous wreck. I hadn’t closed my eyes all night. I wearily dragged myself to the courtyard and had the chains clamped on again, had my fingerprints taken again, squatted in line again, stood for the National Anthem again, climbed into the crowded bus again, dragged my chains to the holding cell again, waited on the filthy floor again, picked up my chains again, squatted in front of the deputy’s desk again, struggled upstairs to the courtroom again, and again waited for Sombattsiri to arrive. Everyone else was ready to go and, this time, instead of sending me back downstairs, the judge, visibly annoyed at Sombat, announced that the trial would proceed, whether I had a lawyer or not. I thought my ears were deceiving me. Not only was there no interpreter to explain what was happening, but the prosecutor was allowed to proceed without anyone in attendance representing me.
The prosecutor called another officer from Din Daeng to the stand. He told the court that I was arrested after the Matichon article appeared. The prosecution had never produced any evidence cited in the infamous article tying me to the story, but the article was once again being presented as evidence I had committed a crime. I couldn’t follow the officer’s entire testimony, but when he had finished, the judge asked if I had any questions. “I want an English-speaking translator,” I said. This confused the judge. He had heard me speaking Thai to Kachon and assumed that my language ability was sufficient to understand the testimony. “I want a translator,” I repeated. The judge said something to the clerk who got up and left the courtroom. After a few minutes, she returned with another woman. The judge said something to her, and she turned to face me. “Do you have any questions?” she asked in English. “Yes, I have a question,” I said. I looked at the officer and angrily asked; “Who made up all the stories?” Everyone just stared, so I repeated my question. The interpreter turned to the judge and told him that I wanted to know what evidence the police had. I understood her. “No! Who made up all the stories that were in the newspapers? Who made up all the stories about me?” The judge stared at me bewildered, not knowing what to say.
Kachon and Sombattsiri walked into the courtroom two hours late. There was no mistaking the smell of Mekong Whiskey on both of them. “Where have you been?” I asked. Sombattsiri ignored my question and asked for a transcript of the officer’s testimony. The clerk handed it to him. He read the first few lines and then asked the same questions he had asked the other officers: Who took the boys to Pakred Prison and who took my passport? The officer claimed to know nothing about either the boys’ incarceration or my passport, so Sombat excused him. “Ask him who made up the stories!” I demanded. Sombat looked at me and spit, “I told the judge that one of your competitors made up the stories about you.” “I don’t care what you told the judge,” I scowled. “I want to know where this whole thing started. I want to know the truth!” He turned away and refused to say anything else. The truth was unimportant to him, but the answer to my question had been haunting me for months. Where had this whole thing started? “The police will know who told the stories to them. Who did all of this to me? Ask him where it all came from!” “Matichon,” Sombat replied tersely. Communication was almost impossible with him. “Will you please come down to the lawyers’ room and talk to me?” I pleaded. Again, he promised and again I waited for naught. I could have strangled the man. I was taken back to the prison with no idea what would happen next.
Soon after that strange day in court, an article appeared in the Bangkok Post about the police at Din Daeng Station. It said the police there had used electric shock torture on a Thai man named Samnao Khamthawee to force him to sign a confession. The man had gone to the newspaper and exposed the practice. The article opined about how barbaric and unbecoming it was for a developing democracy like Thailand. A few days later, someone wrote a letter to the editor of the Post reminding readers that torture had also been used by the Din Daeng Police to collect evidence against “two Americans charged with committing indecent acts against teenagers.” The author of the letter went on to say that “regardless of the fact that these two Americans did not fit the description in the Matichon article, the police in their quest to find a suspect arrested the two Americans who lived in the area.”
Kachon visited the prison one day and told me that Sombat had received a check from my mother for two hundred thousand baht. Kenji had been unable to reach her in time to stop the check. On the following Monday, Sombat came to the prison and asked for David Groat. “Why didn’t he ask to talk to me?” I wanted to know. “He only came to have me sign some papers,” David replied. David had no money and had not paid Sombat anything, yet my mother and I had paid him 350,000 baht. Furthermore, Kenji had just gone with Sombat to pick up my computer from Mark’s home. He didn’t trust Mark and thought that my office equipment was better off in the hands of my crooked lawyer. Sombat knew that he had milked me for everything he could, so there was no reason to talk to me anymore. Now he was setting his sights on a new target, hoping to wring something out of Groat.
Meanwhile, a very large American with a massive physique arrived at Bangkok Special Prison. A practicing medical doctor who worked out with weights every day, Dick had been running a clinic in Bangkok that served the city’s poor. He and his Thai wife lived quite modestly, as he only charged patients who could afford to pay. Under pressure from her mother, who had expected him to bring in much more money, his wife announced she was leaving him and taking their only child. When she came with a female companion to collect her things, he snapped and viciously attacked the two women. Realizing that he had almost killed them, he called the police and gave himself up. Now he wanted to know if I could recommend a lawyer. Peter had told him about Sombattsiri and I should have mentioned how crooked and greedy Sombat was, but I didn’t.
The next time Sombat came to the prison, he asked to talk to David and Peter, but refused to call on me. When we heard that Sombat was at the prison, Dick and I headed for the lawyers’ room. A guard stopped us and asked for our pass, but we brushed past him and told him our lawyer was waiting. He was not used to such audacious behavior from prisoners. He just stood aside and stared, intimidated by Dick’s massive physique.
When we barged in, Peter and David were talking to Sombattsiri. They were visibly irritated that we had prevented them from spending their precious few minutes with the elusive lawyer, but I was so angry that I didn’t really care. “What about my bail?” I said, almost choking. “Yes, I received the money from your mother,” Sombat replied. “When can I bail out?” I demanded. “I don’t know. I’ll apply, but the Embassy has your passport.” This was not a revelation. He knew all along that the Embassy had my passport. Suddenly, Sombat’s eyes lit up like a neon dollar sign. He had spotted the face of a new farang and instantly began schmoozing with Dick, whom he had not yet had the opportunity to fleece. When I insisted that we talk about my trial, he ignored me as if he was deaf. Peter interjected. “He didn’t call you,” he complained, “And I need to talk to him.” Reluctantly I stopped talking and waited for Dick to finish, and then the two of us returned to our building, unimpeded by the guards.
Kenji arrived for a visit the next morning. “Mark came in the middle of the night and cleaned out the office,” he said. “There’s nothing left in it.” “He took everything?” I asked incredulously. “Everything” “I told him that he could take the equipment to sell, but I hadn’t told him that he could take the desks and everything. I instructed him to tell you to come and talk to me about it before he took anything.” Kenji said, “Everything’s gone. I don’t really trust him.” Oh, wonderful, I thought. Now Kenji is telling me that he doesn’t trust Mark, the week after Mark told me not to trust Kenji. “Did Kachon hock my typewriter?” I asked. “Yeah,” Kenji replied. “He was going up country to talk Thep’s father into coming down to Bangkok to get Thep out of Pakred, but he didn’t have the money, so he hocked the typewriter. I told Mark about it, so Mark went down and got it back.” The bell rang to announce the end of the 15-minute visit. “Tell Mark to come and talk to me,” I yelled at Kenji as I was standing up to leave.
The day after Kenji’s visit, David and I were told that we would be transferred to Khlong Prem. The Din Daeng police demanded to know why I had not been moved to a high security facility after being told by the US government that I “had fled the US to avoid prosecution,” so I was supposedly a security risk. David scurried about the prison trying to get the order reversed. He talked to the guard who had received our bribe and was responsible for the list of transferees. “It’s out of my hands,” he told David. “This order has come from the commander himself.” Before we left, I paid a guard to inform any visitors who came to visit me at Bangkok Special Prison that I had been transferred to Khlong Prem.
*******
On the morning of August 4th , my last day at Bangkok Special Prison, I rolled up my mat, gathered my things and assembled in the central courtyard with six other prisoners, including David. While we awaited our transfer, a trustee who worked at the welfare shack delivered a letter from Rick Stokes, a friend from my years of political activism at the Harvey Milk Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club and a San Francisco defense attorney. At my request, my family had contacted him to represent me when I returned to the states. I tore open the envelope and eagerly read the contents, hoping that it would give me answers to some of my questions. Rick wrote to explain that he was moving to Puerto Rico and would, therefore, not be able to take my case in the United States. Instead, he recommended another gay attorney and former colleague: Bruce Nickerson.
The letter went on to say that the charges against me in the US were the result of statements made to the police by John Cummings. It said the charges involved a boy from Sacramento by the name of Pablo Luna and that a Utah businessman named Howard Ruff, the publisher of an investor’s newsletter called “The Ruff Times” was responsible for much of what had happened in Thailand. The letter created more questions than it answered. Why would Cummings have mentioned me to the police and what could he possibly have said that would lead to charges in America? Before he and his wife visited on their way to India, I had rarely seen Cummings. “Who was this Howard Ruff?” I wondered. Why did he want me imprisoned and what had I done to him? The name Pablo Luna was vaguely familiar. Then, I remembered. He was one of Cummings’ ‘foster sons’ who lived with John and his wife Marge in Sacramento. I met him when I stopped at their house once on my way to the mountains for a camping trip with friends. But what did one of Cummings’ foster sons have to do with any of this?
I originally met Cummings at Sonoma State University where I had been majoring in psychology. In the sixties, I was an active supporter of the civil rights movement and had created an all-volunteer organization for mostly black and Latino youth. My South Park Youth Organization found jobs for young people who had dropped out of school, taught skills like cooking and sewing, operated a summer camp program and one year took seventeen of the young people around the United States. Since most of the boys and girls had never seen snow before, I had decided to take them to the mountains for a snow trip when I met Cummings. He offered his car to help with transportation. After the trip, Cummings volunteered to help with some of the other activities.
I had hoped to associate the South Park Youth Organization with the United Way, the fundraising organization that would have assured its continuing existence. But one day, Cummings informed me he had heard a director of the United Way say he wasn’t interested in helping the South Park Youth Organization because; “Steve Raymond is a queer.” Cummings then told me that he liked boys. I was flabbergasted. At the time, sexual activity between members of the same sex was illegal in the United States and the American Psychiatric Association had declared homosexuality to be a mental disorder. That was the year of the Stonewall ‘riot’ and the gay rights movement was in its infancy. Although I had confessed my sexual preference to my mother four years earlier, I didn’t think anyone else knew. Except for one discreet relationship just after I was discharged from the Air Force in 1965, I had not been sexually active.
After I got to know him better and learned that he was constantly scheming, I thought in retrospect that it was doubtful the United Way directors had an opinion about my sexual preference. But Cummings convinced me they did, so I didn’t approach them about helping my youth organization. Cummings college nicknames were “J. Wakefield Snake” and “Cummings con and corrupt” because he was always plotting cons and scams. He had a telephone ‘black box’ which enabled him to make free long-distance phone calls. He became a mail-order Bishop in the Universal Life Church so that he could ‘ordain’ Ministers and hold wedding ceremonies for quick bucks. He once boasted that he had conspired with two employees of a San Francisco backpacking store to steal the owner’s merchandise while he and the owner, a disabled veteran, were having dinner together. He then opened “The Hermit Hut”, his own backpacking store in Santa Rosa with the merchandise that his employees had stolen.
Over the years, we saw less and less of each other. I was an anti-war demonstrator from the lower middle class, while Cummings was from a wealthy family that was politically conservative. He became an Evangelical Christian and never accepted his own homosexuality, eventually marrying an Evangelical Christian woman and outwardly denigrating gay people; while I moved to San Francisco after college and became a politically active member of the gay community.
*****
The seven of us were moved to a holding cell at the courthouse. Morning turned into afternoon and then early evening, before we were finally loaded onto another caged bus. Everyone, of course, was manacled, some with unusually large and heavy chains. The bus crawled through Bangkok’s traffic for two hours, before we arrived in Nonthaburi. This town had always held pleasant memories for me. I felt that its aged bicycle samlors and crowded river pier exemplified the exotic and exciting nature of the country that I loved. The coach dropped off two prisoners at Bangkwan Prison in Nonthaburi, and then turned onto Ngam Wong Wan Road towards Lardyao, finally pulling up to Khlong Prem, the largest prison in Thailand, euphemistically dubbed “the Bangkok Hilton”.
A massive iron gate was thrown open, and through it, we dragged our chains, our mats and our meager personal possessions. We proceeded down a dark hallway into a second gate, through a courtyard, and on through a third gate. There, everything was searched, including our valuables which had been sent separately. Miraculously, my wallet still contained the thousand dollars in cash and traveler’s checks, which I had to sign for and then return. Then we stood and struggled forward through more iron gates than I could count, before arriving at another large courtyard and a cluster of drab green buildings resembling army barracks. My ankles were chafed and cut from dragging the large chains, my back was excruciatingly painful, and my knee which had popped out two days earlier when I was exercising, was throbbing.
David heard that arriving prisoners at Khlong Prem were required to stay in chains for the first month. “Don’t worry,” he assured me. “I think I can get our chains removed. The guards at Mahachai told me who to contact here, and they owe me.” I didn’t quite understand what he meant, but he always seemed to be working on one scheme or another. I couldn’t imagine having to wear these things for a full day, much less a month. They were excruciatingly painful after only a few hours.
We marched into one of the drab green buildings, which looked more like what I had imagined a prison to look like. Dozens of cells lined the interior on two levels. Catwalks with railings covered the upper-level cells, while those on the first floor faced a central courtyard. “Now this is a real prison,” David said with some bizarre admiration. “Bangkok Special was a joke.” We were searched a second time by a trustee and then taken upstairs to a ten foot by six-foot cell. It had an uninviting cement floor and, at the rear, a three-foot-tall cement wall divider setting off a tub filled with rancid water and a dirty squat toilet covered with what I thought was mud. There were no ceiling fans, and the air had a strange odor. A weak 25-wat bulb provided barely enough light to see and a screen, which had at one time been installed as protection from mosquitoes, was torn to shreds and flapped loosely from the bars on the window.
All five of us were crowded into the tiny cell. “This was the cell where Abdul Aziz killed himself,” a trustee said to us in English as the iron door thundered shut. Abdul was a devout Muslim who had been in my room at Bangkok Special Prison. He was extremely depressed because his mother back in Iran was dying and his arrest had brought shame to the family. Although he had only been sentenced to eight months for a minor offense, his imprisonment caused him great humiliation and he could not bear it. The Thai prisoners had treated him contemptuously at Mahachai, but I tried to counter that by offering him food, postage stamps and stationery to write home, and by lending a sympathetic ear. He was transferred to Khlong Prem around the first of July. Two weeks later, he committed suicide by slashing his wrists. Evidently no one had occupied the cell since Abdul’s death. Many Thais believe that ghosts live where people have died, so the trustees had been reluctant to enter the cell after the body was removed. The ‘mud’ I had seen on the toilet and the rear of the cell was dried blood and the odor was another remnant of the tragic ending of Abdul’s life. David, obviously the most anally fixated among us, immediately began to clean it while Thai prisoners in other cells taunted us. “Do you see Abdul?” they asked. Although it was not easy, the five of us managed to find space to sleep.
In the middle of the night, David screamed and jumped up. “What’s the matter,” I asked after being jolted awake. “I’m all wet,” he cried. “My mat is soaked.” We had all failed to notice a hole which was bored through the cement wall of the tub and a spigot that had been left open.
At 06:00, the door was opened. We woke up and then gathered our bowls, soap and toiletries for showers. The others preceded me downstairs and were gone before I could maneuver my aching knee and back, gather my things, pick up my chains and hobble along. I had difficulty finding the bathing area, but when I finally found one, I set my toiletries down and wondered how I could get my pants off with my ankles in chains. “Farang ab thi non, Khrap: Foreigners bathe over there,” the man next to me said, as he pointed in the direction of a small pond. I picked up my toiletries and my chains and painfully hobbled past the pond to a vine-covered trellis that surrounded an entranceway.
When I looked through the entrance, I couldn’t believe my eyes! There was a village bustling with energy. I looked upon a maze of walkways and 60 to 80 open huts, each with bamboo fencing, plus a store, a restaurant, an area for weightlifting, a place to cook and a theater. I dragged the chains further, wincing from my throbbing knees and the chafing chains. When I managed to smile at Thais, they smiled back. But westerners were either outright hostile or suspicious. Nearby was an open trench filled with sewage so polluted that, I was to later learn, the oxygen level of the water was zero. At last, I came upon the tub. David was in front of it struggling to get his pants down through the steel anklets that held the chains to his legs. Another prisoner was assisting him. I hobbled over and prepared myself for similar acrobatics.
After bathing and drying off, I started back towards the cell. I planned to rest but was stopped in the village by a bearded blond-haired prisoner. “You can’t go back to the building until 4PM,” he said, speaking with a German accent. “In the meantime, you can leave your things in my area.” He introduced himself as Michael Roenisch and welcomed me into his hut. He offered me a chair and said, “Would you like a cup of coffee?” “I’d love one!” I exclaimed. “I’ve been here three years,” he said calmly, “and I’m still going to court. I don’t know when my trial will finish” Then he quickly changed the subject. “This area is called “The Garden”. It’s for foreigners only. Everything here is paid for by us. We paid for the huts, the walkways; we even paid to have the water pipes brought in here.” He went on to explain that new prisoners could buy huts as they became available, but there was no more room left to build new ones. Prices started at about six thousand baht. Once a hut was purchased, the prisoner owned it until he decided to sell it or was released. Without a hut, one had no place to go between 06:00 and 16:00. “Cells inside the prison building may be purchased also,” Michael continued. If one wished to move into a cell owned by another prisoner, one had to pay a nominal fee. However, if one wished to purchase a cell, paint it, put tiles on the floor, put in a fan and a good light, the cost was about three thousand baht. Once a prisoner purchased a cell, he could choose his cellmates.
Michael had purchased a private cell for fifteen thousand baht, but the prison was becoming too crowded, so prison officials no longer sold private cells. New prisoners were initially placed in the worst cells, thereby encouraging them to spend money to move into nicer quarters. Besides renting cells and collecting money to build huts in the garden, the guards supplied whatever prisoners wanted, for a price. Several prisoners at Khlong Prem were heroin addicts and constantly high on the drug. Guards sold the heroin, but if the very same guards found the powder they had sold in a cell during a search, they would beat the prisoner and add time to his sentence. On the other hand, prison addicts with enough money could make the charge disappear by paying the commander of the prison.
Expecting Kenji or Kachon to bring money soon, I hadn’t really worried about going to Khlong Prem with only a few hundred baht in my account. But here, foreigners only received one free meal a day, sometimes consisting of three uncooked eggs and rice or turnip soup. The prisoners operated a restaurant in ‘The Garden’ that offered mid-morning and mid-afternoon meals which were quite good. Meals cost between twenty and forty baht each, so by the end of the week, I was broke and forced to exist on rice and raw eggs. Marcia Pixley had brought some vitamins to Mahachai and that helped, but I was always hungry.
Not long before my arrival, Michael told me that a few hundred baht would have gone twice as far. Prisoners had been purchasing food from a supermarket that was delivered to the prison every day. However, the prison commander realized that he was missing out on a great source of revenue. He opened his own supermarket inside the prison, doubled the prices, and banned food from the outside. The official line was that the change was instituted because heroin was coming in with the food shipments. But everyone on the inside knew that there was only one source of heroin, and that was the guards.
David’s great scheme to get our chains removed did not materialize. Every day, they became more and more painful. The chafing created sores on my ankles that got progressively worse. I had a pair if wool socks, which I wore to prevent the open sores from becoming infected. My lower back had also become a concern. Dick, the doctor at Mahachai, told me that I had a condition called spina riffida occulta, which meant that a piece of my spine hadn’t developed fully. He had given me exercises that would alleviate the pain, but I couldn’t do them with my legs in chains. Besides the physical discomfort, wearing chains twenty-four hours a day slowly diminished what remained of my selfesteem. Although Thailand had signed the 1955 Geneva accords regarding the treatment of prisoners, it was in direct violation of about half of them.
After the first week, Michael suggested that I try to bribe the building chief to remove my chains. I guessed that if the chief were offered some of the money in my wallet, he would make it accessible. I went to his office, bowed at the door waied him, and then squatted down in front of his desk. I offered him a thousand baht if he would remove my chains. He told me that because I was still going to trial and had not yet been convicted, he could not remove my chains. His rationale was that I might eventually be convicted. “If you are convicted, you might receive a long sentence,” he said. “Therefore, I am unable to remove the chains.”
I reported this rather bizarre conversation to Michael. “What he was telling you,” Michael explained, “was that you needed to offer him more money. You should go back and offer him five thousand baht.” The stupidity of this sham bothered me, plus the fact that if my chains were removed, I would feel bad if the other prisoners had to continue wearing theirs because they didn’t have the bribe money.
My isolation from the outside world was complete. It was not possible to receive any newspapers, radios were forbidden and there were no telephones. The only visit I received during August was from a man by the name of john Ambrose from the US State Department and Lauri Morton from the Embassy. When the message came for David and I that US officials had come to see us, the other American prisoners assumed it was Marcia Pixley. “Tell Marcia that we want to talk to her,” they shouted as we were going to the visitors’ quarters. Ambrose was sweating profusely. “I just flew in from Washington,” he said. “I’ve come to ask you a few questions.” He then handed two sheets of paper to the guard to give us. I picked up one paper and read it. It was a copy of my Miranda rights. “I’m an investigator from the State Department,” he said. I regretted that I made the mistake of signing the Privacy Waiver Act at Din Daeng Station and that I had told Marcia Pixley where to find my passport. Both of those things had been used against me by US government officials. I was not about to make the same mistake again. It took me a long time to understand that the US government was indeed my enemy, but their downright hostility, lies and deceitful actions made that case very clear. “I won’t sign this,” I said flatly. I wanted to have an American lawyer present before I would sign away my Miranda rights. “Well at least sign saying that you refuse to acknowledge this,” he insisted. I looked at David. He shook his head. So, I passed the unsigned papers back through the bars. Ambrose became visibly irritated. “If you don’t sign this, I can’t ask you questions!” “Exactly,” I thought, as I got up to leave.
That night, I was again restless and couldn’t sleep. I was wondering why the State Department and FBI were involved in my case. Irrational thoughts crept into my mind about the possibility that they were working against me because of my past political activism in the states. I Knew that was why Eisenman had harassed me in San Francisco and I wondered if the Republican officials in Washington believed that I was less entitled to the right to protest my government actions and policies because I was gay. I kept probing for a clue, tortured by my inability to find an answer.
*****
The next court session was scheduled for August 15th . As always, I went with high hopes. This time, I hoped to see a friend or two, or perhaps a reporter to tell me that he or she had discovered the story to be untrue. I was called from the cell, taken to the courthouse, made to squat in front of the deputy’s desk for a half hour, and then taken upstairs to one of the smaller courtrooms. Again, the judge and prosecutor were there, but Sombattsiri was not. It was our turn to present our case, as the prosecution had rested. At 10:00, the judge begrudgingly instructed the guard to take me back down to the holding cell. About an hour later, Kachon appeared at the window across the hall. “Sombat cannot come,” he yelled. “Because he got drunk. He very drunk. I try but no good.” Then Kachon disappeared. A few minutes after Kachon had left, a guard called me out of the holding cell and took me back upstairs. Kachon was in the courtroom telling the judge that Sombat was sick and requested a postponement. The judge agreed and set the following session for five weeks hence, telling Kachon and the prosecutor that we could begin our defense then. I wanted to wring Sombattsiri’s neck. He had just cost me five more weeks in prison because he got drunk. After talking with Kachon, I angrily dragged my chains downstairs to await the return to Khlong Prem.
In the days following my court session, I wrote letters to everyone whose address I knew, asking them to exert pressure on Sombattsiri. I just wanted to finish the trial and move on to fight the case in the states. Whatever it was about, I knew I was not guilty there as well. I also wrote a detailed list of instructions to Sombat, giving him the names of individuals who I thought would testify on my behalf. I instructed him to subpoena the editor of Matichon, so that we might find out who had created the story that began it all. Because all outgoing mail was screened by prison officials, I would hold on to the seventeen pages of notes until Kachon came to visit.
When the other prisoners learned that my lawyer had not shown up in court, they asked who represented me. “Sombattsiri Nabadalung,” I replied, and they all burst out laughing. “Who turned you on to Sombattsiri?” one asked. “An Australian at Mahachai named Peter Bailey.” That made them all laugh harder. Another American prisoner said, “Bailey gets a commission from Sombattsiri for everyone he ropes into hiring that crook.” Everyone, it seemed, had a horror story about my attorney. One Vietnamese prisoner had given Sombat his family’s life savings to bail him out. Sombattsiri never made the application and never returned the money. An English prisoner, who was slowly dying of an exotic disease said, “I used Sombattsiri to defend me. I lost the case and because of my health, I asked him not to appeal so that I would be eligible to apply for a King’s pardon and return to England for medical treatment. He filed an appeal, anyway, destroying my chance to get proper treatment. The man is a bastard. Don’t trust him to do anything you want.” He spoke slowly and painfully. His skin had partially disintegrated over parts of his body.
One of the buildings at Khlong Prem was used as a school where I was able to take a Thai language class. There were no other foreigners in the school, but because I had some knowledge of both spoken and written Thai, the commander of the school accepted me. Within a few days, I was not only studying Thai but also teaching English to a group of Thai prisoners. In September, when the school term ended, I asked the commander if I could make it official. He agreed and assigned me a classroom. The announcement was made to the Thai population in our section that anyone who wanted could study English during the lunch break. The commander even offered to extend credits towards graduation for anyone completing the six-week course. Thirty-six men came to the class on my first teaching day. I soon learned that they were at different levels of ability, and I couldn’t simultaneously teach them all. Eventually the beginners dropped out and the class dwindled to twenty of the more advanced students.
Teaching school became the high point of my stay in Khlong Prem. It gave me a purpose, as well as the fringe benefit of earning respect. Thais are taught from early childhood to respect teachers, who are considered to be in a higher social status than people in most other professions. I not only earned respect from the Thai prisoners, but to some degree, from the guards as well.
On the first day of September, I was called outside for a visit with Chat and Kachon. I had not had a visit from a friend since my transfer to Khlong Prem, so I was extremely excited. The visitors’ area at Khlong Prem was worse than at Bangkok Special Prison. Instead of being separated by three feet, the distance between the screens was at least ten feet. Again, everyone had to shout to be heard above the other conversations.
Chat told me that he and Nu were back in school, which made me feel very good. Then Kachon said that he hadn’t visited sooner because he had been arrested and held by the Din Daeng Police for impersonating a lawyer. David asked Sombat to retrieve his personal letters, photos and financial records from the police station. Sombat would not go, but he wrote a letter on his personal stationery authorizing Kachon to get them and identifying Kachon as a member of his law firm. The police knew better, arrested Kachon and held him in the jail for seven days. “Why didn’t Sombat get you out?” I asked. “He would not help. He did not want to be involved because he write letter that I working for him.” Before Kachon left, I gave him the lengthy list of instructions for Sombattsiri.
Soon after their visit, Marcia Pixley came to the prison and called to see all the Americans. There were nine of us. “I need some money,” I said. “What about my EMDA loans?” The United States government has an interest free loan program for citizens held in foreign prisons. David and I had both applied for funds in July, before we left Mahachai. “I’ve lost your applications,” Marcia said. “You’ll have to fill out the forms again.” “We have no money,” I whined, “We can’t buy food. We’re starving.” “I have a few baht of my own money. I’ll leave it in your account, and then bring the rest as soon as the application is processed.” I smiled in appreciation. This was certainly a kind gesture on her part. “Would you also ask the commander to remove our chains?” I pleaded. “I’ll try,” she said sympathetically.
I was beginning to sleep better, although I had some very telling dreams. In one dream, I was dressed in the hand-tailored double-breasted wool suit I had purchased in Italy, and was taking clients on a site inspection of the Shangri-La. As we entered the hotel’s elevator, I was trying to explain to them why I had chains around my ankles. Another dream was really a recurring nightmare from childhood during which I would be chased by a monster without a face. But in those dreams, I had always managed to escape from the monster. When the monster appeared to me in this dream, I could not escape. While struggling to get away from the horrible creature, I turned to look into the face of John Cummings. I awoke drenched in sweat. According to Freud, the dream represents a common childhood fear. Children often have secrets to hide from either their family or the rest of society, or both. Freud said the monster represents that entity from which the child needs to keep his secret. Children who recognize that they are gay at an early age, often experience this type of anxiety-producing nightmare.
Kachon and Chat returned on September 7th . This time, they brought Nu, Kenji and Mark Morgan. I didn’t really want Chat and Nu to skip school to see me, but it boosted my morale to see them. “Did you give the papers to Sombattsiri?” I asked Kachon. “Oh yes,” he assured me. “Don’ worry!” I berated Mark for taking everything from my office. “But you said I could,” he claimed. “No, I didn’t!” He turned to Kenji and started to argue with him. “Damn it!” I cried. “I need your help! Please try to get along. It’s discouraging to see you two arguing.” I then asked them to work together to get Sombat to do what I had paid him to do.
More than a month had gone by since my arrival, yet the building chief still had not done anything about the chains. Those of us who had come together from Bangkok Special Prison went to him and demanded their removal. He told us to write a formal request to the prison commander. We wrote the request, had it translated into Thai and waited. Every day that went by shackled to those despicable things seemed like an eternity. Finally, forty days after we had arrived, we received notice that our chains would be removed. One man, charged with murder, had to remain in them another month as additional punishment. When I sat on the ground in front of the vise and a prison trustee pulled the wooden handle to pry apart the iron bracelet, I felt like a free man. I stood up and started to walk. I felt like I was floating on air. It was exhilarating!
The day before I was scheduled to return to the courtroom, an Irishman named Dan, a Brit named Simon and all the other Americans in the “Garden” sat me down for a “heart-to-heart” talk. Each one of them had a word of advice for me. “Plead guilty!” they all said. Then, one by one: “Tell the court you’ll change your plea. It may not be too late.” “Nobody ever wins a case in Thailand.” “All the cards are stacked against you.” If you plead guilty, your sentence will be half what it will be after they find you guilty.” “Most Thais plead guilty because they know they can’t win, whether they’re guilty or not.”
*******
My letters and entreaties finally paid off. Sombattsiri appeared in court, accompanied by Kachon, Kenji, Chat and Nu. As usual, he was in a hurry and had no time to talk to me. In my letter to him, I had asked him to call the Matichon reporter to explain the origin of the article; then Sumate Sudasna Ayudhaya to testify about the type of business I had run; then Mark Morgan to testify that I had never worked or volunteered at his children’s shelter; then Chat’s sister and Nu’s mother to testify about my relationship with the two boys; and finally, Kenji and Kachon. “Did you read the letter?” I asked. “I want you to call the others before Kenji and Kachon.” “What letter?” Sombat looked perplexed. I turned to Kachon. “Didn’t you give him my letter?” “The letter” Kachon said in English, so I was aware he had not let me down. “I gave it to you two weeks ago. You put it on desk, Remember?” “Oh yes,” Sombat replied, avoiding eye contact with me. It was obvious he hadn’t even looked at it. “I wanted you to bring the witnesses to court to testify!” I said angrily. He looked at me as if he didn’t understand. His eyes were vacant.
Just then, Chat came and sat next to me on the bench. Nu followed. I hugged them both and they returned the embrace. I hoped that this whole thing wouldn’t traumatize them. I desperately wanted them to know that I didn’t blame them for anything that had happened, that I understood. They had been victimized, just as I had been victimized.
Sombat was talking to the judge. Then he turned to me and said, “You testify now.” “What?” I sputtered. “You haven’t even discussed my testimony with me.” He just shrugged and gestured for me to take the stand. I stood up. Chat and Nu returned to the bench at the rear. Sombattsiri asked Kenji to act as interpreter. I pledged to testify truthfully and faced the prosecutor. “Did you have sex with Nu?” he asked, pointing directly at the 15-year-old boy. Nu stood up and left the courtroom. I hesitated, thinking about what all the other prisoners had said:” Change your plea,” “Nobody wins a case in Thailand” “Your sentence will be halved if you plead guilty.” “Nobody wins a case in Thailand…” What would the boys think if I copped out on them after their courageous testimony? “NO!” I said firmly. The prosecutor looked me in the eye. “Did you have sex with Chat?” “No!” I replied even more forcefully and stared resolutely at the judge.
The prosecutor looked at Chat. Then he pulled out a copy of my warrant of arrest from California. He had received it from the embassy because I had foolishly signed the waiver of the Privacy Act. He read the charge on the warrant and followed with a description of the charge written on United States Embassy stationery. I glanced at the signature on the bottom of the page. It was from consular officer Stephen Pattison. The Embassy had refused for six months to tell me anything about my charge in America, but they had given a copy of the warrant and a description of the charge to the prosecutor. The letter was dated June 22nd , the day the boys had testified that they had been tortured. Who does the United States government represent? I wondered bitterly. “Get me a copy of this,” I instructed Sombat. If I couldn’t get information about the charges against me in America from my government, I would get it from the Thais.
Next, the prosecutor presented a copy of the letter from David Copas, dated March 6, 1989, which stated that “US customs believes that this man owns a travel service which is alleged to arrange child sex tours in Thailand.” The judge looked at me and asked when I had changed my plea to not guilty. I didn’t understand the question, so Kenji repeated it. “I never changed my plea. I always pleaded not guilty.” It wasn’t until I received a full translation of the police testimony a year later that I understood why the judge had asked the question. I hadn’t realized at the time that Chanasithi testified that I had made a “partial confession” at the police station on the day of my arrest. That evil cop had given perjured testimony three times when he was in court. Not only did he falsely tell the court that he had found the boys in my apartment and lied about taking them to Pakred Children’s Prison, but he lied and told the judge that I had ‘confessed’ to being guilty.
When I sat down, I turned to Sombat. “If you’re not going to use the two hundred thousand baht to apply for my bail, then give it back. And how about the money you owe me for the computer that you took.” “I’ll pay you,” Sombat said. “When?” I asked. “In a week” Then he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a note pad. “If you want the money, you must write me a note asking for it.” I wrote that I wanted the money he owed me and indicated that he had promised to pay me within the week. I dated the note and signed it. Sombat looked at the piece of paper, tore it up and told me to re-write it, deleting the date. I rewrote the same note and dated it. He tore it up again and told me that if I didn’t write the note the way that he wanted it, I would never receive my money. The man was worse than a crook. He was a liar, a thief, and a manipulator with the morals of a slug. It was futile to argue with him. I wrote yet another note and signed it, undated.
The judge set my next court appearance for a month later and asked me to sign a copy of my testimony. Chat came over and hugged me when I got up to leave. “Khap khun khrap. Thank you,” I murmured.
Five days after my courtroom testimony, Marcia Pixley came to visit. “Why did Stephen Pattison write a letter to the prosecutor?” I asked bitterly. “He refused to explain the details of my charges to me, but he had no problem explaining them to my prosecutor. I still haven’t received a copy of the California warrant. Why is the United States Embassy so determined to have me convicted in Thailand?” “The Embassy is here to help you,” she said, without a hint that she understood the irony in her response. It was laughable, but I was in no mood to laugh. “There was another letter from the Embassy that the prosecutor presented; written by a man named David Copas, suggesting that I ran a sex tour business, and that US official were very interested in my arrest by the Thai police.” Why was that?” “I haven’t seen that letter. I don’t’ know anything about that. I’ll go back to the Embassy and see if I can find the letter you’re talking about.”
On October 3rd , Marcia returned. She had found the letter from David Copas. “We thought you were in prison because of the Thai charges,” she said. “I’m in prison because the American government asked the Thais to arrest me again after I had bailed out,” I said. Ed Wehrli denied any US government involvement after David Copas wrote the letter. Why had he lied?” “David Copas was working in a different department,” she said without blinking. “Our office didn’t know anything about that request.” “Wehrli’s letter said that no US government official had asked the Thai police to hold me. It didn’t say ‘nobody in our department had asked the police to hold me.” Marcia didn’t know what to say. And that’s where it stood. The Embassy had sided with the prosecutor. They certainly weren’t “here to help” me, as Marcia had insisted.
“I have a letter for you,” she said, changing the subject. I followed her to the end of the corridor so she could pass it through. The letter stated that the passport hearing I had requested would be held inside Khlong Prem Central Prison on October 12, 1989. I still had the faint hope that I could get my passport returned and make bail. I believed that as long as I was at the mercy of the US government and Sombattsiri, I would lose, but if I could get out and find a good lawyer to work with me, I would win. The letter stated that I had the right to have an attorney present my case.
My mother had just hired a Philadelphia law firm called the International Legal Defense Council to act as liaison. I wrote and asked her to tell the Philadelphia lawyers to contact Sombattsiri and advise him about how to proceed with the hearing. I also asked Marcia to remind Sombat about the hearing and to write to Kenji and Kachon asking them to make sure that he would represent me. By the tenth, I had not heard from anyone except Marcia. She said that Sombat had promised he would be there. I didn’t trust him. I believed that even if he attended, he wouldn’t be ready, so I sat down to prepare my own case.
On October 12th , I impatiently waited for the hearing to begin. I felt that I had a good case, whether or not I was being represented by a lawyer. It was pouring rain as I walked out the section gate, through the courtyard to the double gates, through the double gates into the next courtyard, and into the commander’s office. I came in sopping wet but in high spirits. Two Americans were waiting; Consul Stephen Pattison and Eigel Hansen, the legal advisor. Pattison immediately apologized for not having a stenographer. “We searched all over the Embassy but couldn’t find one that was available, “he said. “So, we brought a tape recorder to record the testimony. Should we wait for your lawyer?” “No, go ahead. I don’t think he’ll be here.” Pattison turned on the tape recorder, introduced those present, gave a brief description of the nature of the hearing, and then asked me if I had a statement to make. “Yes,” I said. “Please proceed.”
I read from my notes, offering a brief history of those actions which the United States government had taken against me. Then I said that the letter from Consul General David Lyon which informed me of the revocation of my passport had stated the basis of that revocation was the California warrant of arrest. Yet the Code of Federal Regulations specifically stated that a passport could be revoked only for a federal warrant of arrest. “Since a federal warrant had not been in existence when the revocation order was issued on June 22, 1989, I contended that the revocation was illegal.”
When I was finished, Eigel Hansen pulled out a copy of a federal arrest warrant dated June 22nd and handed it to me. It stated that I had “fled to avoid prosecution” from the California warrant which had been issued on March 14th , two weeks after my arrest in Thailand. I was flabbergasted. I had never seen a copy of the federal warrant and I had been unaware that it existed. Lowell Strong, the FBI agent who had seen me in July had told me that no federal warrant had been issued. Yet, this was dated June 22nd . Either Strong had lied, or the government had backdated it. In addition, the letter from David Lyon revoking my passport had mentioned only the state warrant. I was incensed. There were no charges against me in California until the warrant was issued. “How could anyone possibly consider that I fled to avoid prosecution in California in March when I was in a Thai jail at the time the warrant was issued?”
“The foundation for the warrant is not an issue,” Pattison interrupted. “I can’t allow you to go too much into that beyond what you’ve already said.” “He can’t allow me to go into the issue?” The United States government had screwed me again. They had issued a bogus warrant based on an obviously false allegation for the sole purpose of cancelling my passport and they weren’t allowing me to even question the basis of that warrant. I was truly living in a Kafkaesque nightmare. The United States government had arranged for my incarceration without explaining why. American officials had ignored my requests to describe the charge against me in America, yet they were using that charge as an excuse to keep me incarcerated. Because they had orchestrated my imprisonment, they were a party to the cruel and unusual punishment I was experiencing.
A week after my passport hearing, I was scheduled for court again. I did something that I should have done months before. I drafted a letter to the judge asking for postponement while I looked for a new lawyer. The letter described how I had been lied to and cheated by Sombattsiri.
The session was scheduled for 09:00 on October 19th . When I arrived in the courtroom, Nu and Chat were waiting, but Sombat wasn’t. The two boys came over and hugged me. “Sombat yu nai?” I asked them. “Where is Sombat?” “Mai ru,” they responded. “We don’t know.” I handed the letter to the judge. He read it and asked what he was supposed to do with it. “Put it in the court file,” I suggested. He shook his head and started to hand it back to me, then changed his mind and handed it to the prosecutor. I was furious at his indiscretion, but I didn’t say anything. He was the last person I could afford to alienate.
The prosecutor read my letter and started laughing, and then he took it outside and showed it to some of the other lawyers in the hallway. They all started laughing. The prosecutor returned a couple of minutes later and handed my letter to the judge, who started to give it back to me. Then he changed his mind and put it into the file as I had suggested.
Kachon handed me copies of faxes from the International Legal Defense Council, dated the first week of October. “I see the fax paper on Sombat’s desk. I see your name, that why I take it.” They were copies of the American arrest warrants and instructions to Sombattsiri about how to proceed with my passport hearing. Sombat had received everything the week before the hearing, but didn’t even bother to read it.
The judge set the next session for eight days later. He said that I had to tell Sombattsiri in person that he had been fired before I could bring in a new lawyer. When I started to leave the courtroom, the guard grabbed the papers in my hand and shook his head. “Cannot!” he said.
On October 27th , I returned to court. Kachon and Kenji had gone to Sombat’s house to make sure that he would come. They hadn’t told him that I was going to fire him. Instead, they told him that Chat’s sister and Nu’s mother were going to testify. Amazingly, Sombat arrived in court ahead of me. He was looking for the two women so he could call them to the stand.
“I thought you were getting a new lawyer,” the judge said. I was confused. It was the judge who had told me to bring Sombattsiri to fire him in person, before I could hire a new lawyer. I turned to Sombat and demanded that he repay the money he owed me for my bail and the computer. Sombat ignored me, turned to the judge and then spoke to him in very proper “high Thai”. I couldn’t follow the conversation, so I repeated my demand. Suddenly Sombat whirled around and said: “I’m not going to give you anything!” With that, he picked up his briefcase and left the courtroom.
I was afraid that I would never see one baht of the 450,000 that he had received from me and my mother. What he had done for me would have cost no more than 50,000 to 100,000 baht from an honest lawyer. I turned to the judge and asked what recourse I had. He just shrugged. I didn’t know if he understood me or not, “but at least I’ve gotten rid of the bastard,” I thought. "Now maybe I can get witnesses to come to court and finish my case.”
Kachon contacted a lawyer friend who was prepared to take the case. I sat in the courtroom for a few minutes after Sombattsiri had stormed out and gave Kachon a list of instructions to give to the newest lawyer. I again requested that he call all of the witnesses whom I had asked Sombattsiri to call. The judge set my next appearance for November 14th , so my friends and the new lawyer had more than two weeks to get in touch with everybody on my list.
Marcia Pixley arrived for a visit soon after my court session. I asked if the Embassy would be disposed to help retrieve my money from Sombattsiri. “I’ll get David Lyon to write to him,” she said. “That won’t do any good. He’ll ignore your letter like he ignored your request to go to the hearing. Can’t you get a Thai government official to take some action?” “I don’t think we can do that,” she said. I wanted to say that the Embassy can get Thai officials to do what they want to hurt me, but not to help me. But I didn’t say anything, knowing it would only anger her. Instead, I returned to my section and wrote a sixteen-page letter to the Philadelphia lawyers, asking that they take action to get my passport returned and detailing all of the things that the US government had done to me.
On November 7th , the nine Americans in the prison were called to the vice commander’s office to meet with a top official from the US Department of Justice. He had just come to Thailand to ratify a prisoner exchange program negotiated between the two countries. Stephen Pattison and Marcia Pixley accompanied the official. When Pattison had the opportunity, he handed me a copy of the warrant that had been issued in California on March 14th , seven months earlier. “This is the first time I have been officially informed of this charge, you know,” I said. “Yes, I know,” he replied, without a trace of guilt. “Have you sent a transcript of the passport hearing to the law firm in Philadelphia?” “No,” he answered. “I lost the address you gave me at the hearing. I gnarled my teeth. How many times had embassy officials conveniently ‘lost’ something helpful to me or pertinent to my defense?
*******
When I returned to Khlong Prem Prison, a Flemish man was attacked in the garden by a gang of Chinese following an argument over drugs. The Chinese often moved in packs and tried to run the garden by intimidation. Several Europeans, fed up with their constant bullying, got together and agreed that if any of them were attacked by the Chinese again, they would respond en masse.
The next day, some prisoners met with the building chief to discuss the volatile situation and to find ways to reduce the tension. While they were in their meeting, a Frenchman walking through the garden was set upon by some ethnic Chinese who leapt from a hut and charged at him. I was no more than ten feet away when a machete sliced through the man’s arm. The Frenchman screamed in agony. Within seconds, Europeans, Australians and Americans rushed into battle against the Chinese and a full-scale riot ensued. Men pulled apart huts to arm themselves with clubs, seized knives from the kitchen area and attacked one another. The westerners, many of whom spent much of their time in prison lifting weights, soon overpowered the diminutive Chinese. The westerners chased the Chinese gang, kicked down their huts and threw their furniture into the ponds. Left in their wake were three groaning, writhing Asian bodies.
As a lifelong pacifist and a wimp, I had slipped away from the melee to the garden entrance. The few guards in the vicinity rushed to get help. Within minutes, dozens of guards, accompanied by the building chief and the prison commander, swarmed into the garden. In an act that was reminiscent of the man in Beijing who stood in front of the tanks headed for Tiananmen Square, a rather tiny European inmate stood in their path and tried to stop them. “This is none of your business,” he said to the startled guards, who actually hesitated and stopped for a second. It was such a ludicrous and unreal picture that I started laughing. The building chief broke the logjam by pushing past the little man and leading his guards inside to stop the riot.
Five prisoners, including the Frenchman, were rushed to the hospital with serious injuries. Seventeen westerners were locked into their cells with their legs in chains for months, while the Chinese gang was transferred to the highest security building in the prison where violent inmates were kept.
*****
Michael taught English to the commander of the prison hospital each day and asked if I would be interested in tutoring some doctors. I eagerly accepted, so after teaching my usual class at the school, I made my way to the hospital to teach. When I wasn’t teaching, I was studying Thai or German. Michael taught a German language class inside the garden. By mid-November, he had about ten regulars, including myself. Life in prison was becoming more tolerable.
On November 14th , I returned to court. Kachon and his lawyer friend had contacted all of the witnesses on my list. I saw my old friend Khun Sumate and pulled up my chains to wai him in gratitude. He shook his head to indicate that a wai was not necessary. After eight months of being looked down upon, his attitude brought tears to my eyes. It was almost as if I had forgotten how it was to be treated as an equal by a member of Thai society. Chat, Rekha, Nu, Nu’s mother and Kenji were also there.
“Where is Mark?” I asked Kenji. He pointed to a young Thai college student sitting in the hallway. I recognized him because he was always at Mark’s home. He had taught street kids how to read as a class project, and then when Mark opened the shelter, he volunteered to teach the kids there. Mark had sent him to testify that I never worked in the shelter and to refute the allegation that the shelter was a front for child prostitution. I smiled at him and nodded, but I thought Mark should have come himself. He had done everything he could publicly to keep himself and his home separated from David and me since the press conference.
“Where is the Matichon reporter?” I asked Kachon. “She says she doesn’t have to come,” Kachon responded. “Well, why didn’t you subpoena her?” “The lawyer tells me the judge says she come in the court or not is not important.” I replied that the prosecution had used the Matichon article as evidence against me, so I thought it was important.
Sumate testified first. He told the court what type of business I had run. The judge asked if he knew anything about my purported sexual activities and he said he did not. When he completed his testimony, he signed the transcript and then left the courtroom.
Next, Chat’s sister Rekha and Nu’s mother testified that I had been like a father to the two boys. They said they were not aware of anything negative in our relationship, and, through the years, the boys had only said good things about me.
Kachon then testified that he had been working with me in the office at the time of my arrest, that he had worked with me for nearly two years, and that I operated a legitimate incentive tour business. He reiterated that the police had picked up the boys at their respective schools the day I was arrested and that they had not been in my apartment, as the Din Daeng police had asserted.
After his testimony, I asked when the volunteer from Mark’s home would testify. Kachon told me that the judge didn’t want to hear his testimony, as it wasn’t relevant. The judge then told the lawyer that he had enough evidence, and he didn’t need any more testimonies.
My lawyer and all the witnesses then went into the hallway to talk to the prosecutor. He told them I had won the case, and he saw no reason to appeal the verdict. The judge said he would announce his decision three days later on the 17th , so when Kachon returned to the courtroom, I asked him to call all the newspapers and bring the reporters to the courtroom to hear the verdict.
Downstairs, as I again squatted on the filthy floor, I looked out the window through the bars and saw Nu. Tears were streaming down his face. I smiled and gave him the thumbs up sign. He was unable to return my smile. He turned and walked away from the window. I did not see him again until I visited Thailand in 2004.
*******
On November 17th , I was called into court to hear the verdict. As I was being led into the courtroom by the guard, I saw Kachon. “Where are the newspaper reporters?” I asked anxiously. “Outside,” he said, gesturing towards the hallway. I hadn’t seen anyone, so I asked him to please find them. He came back in alone. “Not here,” he said, “I don’ know where they go.”
Kenji and Chat came over to wish me luck. “Where is Nu?” I asked. “In school,” Kenji replied. “He moved out.” “Moved Out!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean moved out?” “He went back to Mark’s shelter,” Kenji said, adding that Nu had not been getting along with Chat. I found the news very disturbing. They had always been very close and had gotten along well in the past. “Damn it!” I thought. “Why are innocents always the casualties of other people’s wars?”
The judge entered the courtroom and prepared to read the verdict to an audience of five: Kachon, Kenji, Chat, the lawyer and me. The prosecutor wasn’t even there. The judge instructed me to rise and stand at the podium in the center of the room. He began reading the verdict in Thai. I couldn’t understand a word. I glanced helplessly at Kachon, who was smiling. “You win,” he said. “Judge say you not guilty.” I turned around, hugged Kenji and Chat and my legs gave out. I held onto the two of them and sobbed with relief. Kenji grabbed me to hold me up. Chat’s face was flushed with embarrassment, but he kept his composure.
After the verdict was read, I was taken downstairs. Kenji and Kachon appeared at the barred windows of the holding cell. “Somebody took all of the reporters downstairs to the coffee shop while the verdict was being read,” kenji said. “Who?” I yelled. “Maybe the prosecutor, or someone else who didn’t want them in the courtroom,” he said. Someone had stolen my moment of vindication with the media. Kenji thought it was the prosecutor, but I was almost certain that it was the U.S. Embassy staff.
“Judge says that you go out tonight,” Kachon interjected. “He says if you guilty your sentence is six months. You in jail more six months already, so judge say you go out tonight, no matter. I go to Khlong Prem. Five o’clock I meet you.”
The six hours I waited in the holding cell seemed like six days. I wanted to report the verdict to Michael, to Doctor Dick, to David Groat and to all the cynical European and American compatriots who told me that nobody ever wins a case in Thailand. While I was waiting, I saw one of the prisoners I knew from Bangkok Special Prison in the adjacent holding cell. “Tell Peter I won,” I yelled to him. “Tell everybody I won!” He nodded vigorously.
I boarded the bus for the return transfer in high spirits. Two men from Bangkwan Prison boarded just after I did. They were wearing two sets of chains. One was welded around their ankles. As the bus started up, one of the men started crying. His companion told me that their appeal to the Supreme Court had been rejected. The sentence was death. They had been found guilty of selling a large quantity of heroin. Within a few days, the two would face a firing squad. I looked into the eyes of the condemned man, and he tried to smile at me through his tears. Their pain was so apparent that everyone on the bus was affected. My victory was insignificant compared to their lives. These men were about to be executed by a government, something that I believed to be extremely immoral, for something that I believed should not even be illegal!
When I arrived back at Khlong Prem, it was 17:30. I looked for Kachon but he was not there. After my chains were pried loose, I rushed into my building and went from cell to cell telling everyone the good news. “You’re the first foreigner to win a case in the four years I’ve been here,” Michael said. I could see in his face that he had mixed emotions. He didn’t know whether to be happy for me or sad because he was losing a friend.
But the prison had not received orders to release me, so I was locked in my cell again. I cleaned myself with a wet towel and put on the same clothes I had worn the day I was re-arrested in May. Then I sat on my rolled-up mattress and waited. After an hour, I unrolled my mattress to lie down. The two other men in my cell; a Burmese man convicted of a contract killing and an Australian who had been convicted of heroin possession, began joking about my ‘release’. Finally, at ten o’clock I fell asleep.
*******
I woke up the next morning and went outside to bathe, just as I had done every morning. “We thought you were getting out,” my friends kidded. “I thought so too,” I said softly. Just as I sat down with Michael in his hut for a cup of coffee, two trustees walked up behind me and told me to gather my belongings. “You go home,” they said excitedly. “Go! Go!” They yelled as I bid Michael farewell. “Hurry up!”
The trustees followed me back to the cell. While I was trying to put on my pants, they kept yelling at me to hurry. I gave away my things and rushed out the gate to the administration building. Another trustee met me there and escorted me through the prison to a building in front of the entry to the “foreign section”. “Wait here,” he ordered, leaving me standing alone. I put my bag of clothes down and waited.
Hours later, I was still standing there waiting. At 11:00 a foreign Catholic priest in a white robe walked past me towards the “foreign section.” I went over and introduced myself to him. I was anxious to learn if anything had appeared in the newspapers about my acquittal.
“Yes,” he replied. “There was an article in the Bangkok Post this morning. It mentioned that you had won your case in Thailand, but that you would be extradited to the United States to face similar charges there.” My heart sank like a stone. Whoever had taken the reporters from the courtroom had evidently made sure that any news of my victory would be tempered by reports that I was being accused of similar acts elsewhere.
Mid-afternoon, I was joined by a Filipino man who was also being released. Finally, a deputy arrived and took us through a huge gate, then through a large courtyard to a guard’s station near the main entrance. As the guard filled out the release papers, I asked for my wallet, which presumably still contained more than a thousand dollars. “Mai dai” “cannot,” the guard said. “What?” I cried, “You cannot give me my wallet?” “Mai dai,” he repeated. “Today is Saturday. Your wallet is locked up. We do not have the key.”
The Filipino man was already following the guards through the long dark corridor to the front gate, so rather than argue with him, I hurried after them. When the gate was finally thrown open, sunlight flooded my face as if for the first time. A disheveled-looking Kachon was standing there with his hair on end and his clothes wrinkled. “I wait for you all night,” he said, smiling. I was overcome with gratitude. I did not know many people who would have done that, and I was deeply touched. But I was also unable to say anything more than “Thank you!”
I then launched into a tirade about not being able to get my wallet. Kachon just stood there grinning. When I stopped talking, he went over to the officers and then reported back to me. “Police say you must come back Monday.” “How can I come back on Monday?” I asked him. “I’m either going to be in jail here or on my way back to the United States to face charges there.”
The Filipino man and I were ordered into the back of a police pickup. Kachon jumped in with us. One of the officers closed the gate, then leapt into the cab with a second officer and drove on. About a half mile down the road, the truck pulled into a parking lot in front of Bangkhen Police Station, and I was escorted inside and up to the second floor.
A few minutes later Kenji appeared. “Just sit down,” he said to me. “We are trying to work something out with the police.” Kachon came up the stairs jabbering to an officer. I relished the feeling of simply sitting outside of a cell and didn’t say another word until Kachon had finished his talk and sat down beside me. “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me!” I said. My voice broke suddenly, and I could feel my emotions in my throat again. “When this is finally all over, I’ll pay you guys back, believe me.”
Two officers beckoned us to follow them. “We are trying to get you released,” Kenji said as we stood up. “Kachon has talked them into taking you to Din Daeng Station.” The policemen led us out of the station and down the street to a corner, where they hailed a taxi. The five of us rode from Bangkhen to Din Daeng, which took about a half hour. “This is a real treat!” I gushed at Kenji. I hadn’t experienced airconditioning in nine months, and it felt good!
At Din Daeng, Kachon tried to convince the officers to release me until Monday. He reminded them I hadn’t gone anywhere when I was out on bail. One officer was about to let me go, but another objected. “We should get approval from the Colonel,” he insisted. “Who do they need permission from?” I asked Kachon. He pointed to a picture of Khongdej Choosri and I groaned. I knew that if my release was up to him, I didn’t stand a chance.
I was locked in the same cell that I had occupied twice before. Kachon went back to Victory Monument to get Chat. They returned together an hour later along with Chat’s best friend from the soi. They bought fried rice, and we all had dinner together, albeit with bars between us. When it got dark, I told them to leave. “They’re not going to let me out.” I said with resignation. They all walked back to Victory Monument, and I settled down on the hard wood floor to sleep.
A couple hours later, Mark Morgan came in, dropped down to the floor and woke me up. “I’m getting married tomorrow,” he said. “What? To whom?” “To Sujitra,” he said, referring to the young Thai woman who had been his housemother at the shelter for the past year-and-a-half. “My parents have come for the wedding.”
He then told me that Howard Ruff, the blustery businessman from Utah whom Rick Stokes had warned me about in his letter, was waging a vigorous campaign to discredit the home and had made an inflammatory videotape which was airing on American television stations. Ruff had initially become involved with Mark’s shelter and started raising money for it in 1988 when he read the favorable Bangkok Post article about the home. He said that he was proud that a fellow Mormon was doing such good work. But when the stories appeared in the news after the press conference in March with allegations that the home was involved in a child sex ring, Ruff figured he had been taken for a ride.
I thought about that awful press conference and was reminded that if Mark had done what I asked him to do and help me to set up our own press conference the day afterwards, he might not have this man trying to destroy him now. He had dug his own grave by not helping me to correct the lies and misinformation immediately. But just revisiting the trauma of that press conference made me sick to my stomach.
Mark continued, “Howard Ruff has been vicious. He just held a celebrity roast in my honor. He interviewed my ex-wife who claimed that I had deserted our children in Utah, plus John Cummings who stated that you ran a sex tour business and that my home was a front for child prostitution. The show aired on ABC.
So, it was Cummings after all! I had clung to the belief that the whole mess had been concocted in Thailand. Anything else seemed too farfetched, too outlandish, and too unbelievable! I realized Cummings was crazy. I knew he was sick, but I had not believed that he could be so full-blown psychotic as to ruin my life, Mark Morgan’s life and the lives of Chat, Nu and the thirty or so children in Mark’s home with fabrications created from his sweeping guilt and paranoia. Just as Cummings had conned me over the years, he had conned the authorities into believing he had reliable information.
Now I understood why the Child Welfare police had asked only about Chat. He was the only one living with me when Cummings stayed in my apartment. Cummings had never met Nu and didn’t know him. Cummings also knew very little about Mark and his shelter, which is why the original press release called the home “Mark Morgan Incorporated” and not the Bangkok Children’s Shelter. Cummings didn’t even know the name of the place, but he was using it in his plea bargain to reduce his eventual sentence by tying it in with his accusation about my business. Why didn’t the authorities bother to investigate such deadly serious allegations from such a questionable source?
I didn’t realize at that time that Eisenman was helping him to legitimize his stories. I still didn’t understand how Cummings could have done everything in Thailand while imprisoned in America. He couldn’t have planted the Matichon article. He would not have known that Matichon would be receptive to a fake plant and that Matichon was, as Kachon said, very popular with government officials. Cummings would not have been able to get my work permit refused or cut the communication lines from my office. He wasn’t the one asking the doctor at the condominium clinic questions. Then it dawned on me that he must have been communicating with his ‘born again’ Evangelical Christian contact at the U.S. Embassy the entire time that he remained in Thailand and after he returned to the states. Who was the “born-again” Evangelical Christian? I believed that if I could find the answer to that question, then I could find the Embassy co-conspirator working with Cummings to destroy me. Evangelical Christians are a tight community. They stick together and support each other and, like Imtiaz Muqbil, the reporter who wrote the homophobic article in the travel trade press, they are virulently homophobic. To them, it wouldn’t matter if my sex partners were adults or children; they believed homosexuality to be a sin, and that gay people should be punished for their sins. Was it Ed Wehrli, David Copas, Marcia Pixley, Stephen Pattison, Pat Hansford, or were they simply puppets for the puppet master to play with and control? I surmised that the puppet master had been pulling the strings for some time before my arrest, as the attitude from Embassy officials had been hostile and unhelpful from the very beginning. Whoever it was also knew that he or she could plant a fake story in a Thai newspaper without repercussions and he or she also knew what motivated the Thai police to act. The monster that I saw in my dream that night had, indeed, caught me.
After the first wave of bad publicity, a sympathetic friend of Mark’s had donated a parcel of land in Chiang Mai, where he opened a second shelter. A few poor children from the hill tribes came to live there and some of the kids in his Bangkok home asked to go “up country”, so he took them to that home as well. But because of Howard Ruff, both homes were in jeopardy now. “Most of the donations from America have stopped,” Mark said. “We are running both homes mostly on donations from Thais. They don’t believe any of the stories. But Ruff and his people have come over here with that video with my ex-wife and Cummings and they are running around now showing it to Thai officials or whoever they can get to watch it.”
Mark and I talked for another hour. When he got up to leave, he apologized and said, “I’ve got to get ready for the wedding. I’ll come back tomorrow.” The following night, Mark returned, dressed in a suit and tie. “I just came from my wedding at the Dusit Thani,” he said, shoving a box through the bars. “Here’s part of my steak dinner. Sujitra is waiting in the parking lot, so I can’t stay long. She sends her regards.”
“Are you going to visit me in the Immigration Jail?” I asked, assuming that was where I’d be going next. I had been informed that anyone who is in the country illegally, or anyone facing charges in another country that had an extradition treaty with Thailand, would have to go to the immigration jail. “I don’t think so,” he said apologetically. “It’s convenient and easy for me to come here and sit with you, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to go to the immigration jail. You shouldn’t be there long anyway.”
After Mark left, there was so much to think about that I couldn’t sleep. Howard Ruff had seized on John Cummings’ wild allegations and enhanced their credibility by getting them aired on television. I wondered if there was a way to stop moral crusaders like Ruff from doing any more damage. I didn’t realize that the entire night had passed until daylight began to filter in through the hallway. A new week was beginning, the first in a long while outside Khlong Prem and Bangkok Special Prisons. I hoped it would mean a new start. What I didn’t know was that I was a long way from the end and the worst was yet to come.
********
By the time Kachon and his lawyer friend arrived at Din Daeng Station at 08:00, I had begun to fall asleep. Kachon slipped a sheet of paper through the bars with a note written in Thai authorizing him to pick up my wallet. “I go to Lardyao for wallet,” he said. “You sign name here to say it is okay for me.” Kenji arrived as I was signing the paper. Kachon took it and left, while the lawyer stayed behind to talk. Kachon had not said what the legal fees would come to, so I told the lawyer, I would authorize a payment of 10,000 baht from the sale of my office equipment to pay for the final two court sessions. Then I suggested that he meet me at the immigration jail after the transfer from Din Daeng. He nodded, said he had to talk to Kachon, and then departed. Kenji started to leave with him. “Kenji,” I said, “Go with Kachon to pick up my wallet. It has more than a thousand dollars in it.”
A couple hours later, two officers unlocked my cell door, told me to gather my things, handcuffed me and led me to a police pickup. Seated between the two of them in the cab, I left Din Daeng Station and headed for the Immigration Detention Center. I was brought to the fourth floor. It was lunch hour and most of the offices were deserted. There was a single immigration officer seated at his desk. The two officers from Din Daeng handed him my file and sat down while he opened and read it. “Why did you bring him here?” the officer asked the policemen. “These papers say he’s been released.”
It was difficult to follow the conversation, but something was said about the US Embassy, my passport and a case in America. The immigration officer became irritated. He could find nothing in the file about the American Embassy request and he questioned why the officers had brought me to IDC. At that point, one of the policemen suggested sarcastically that they drop me at the Embassy. The immigration officer impatiently shook his head and said he would allow the Din Daeng cops to check me in and then he would decide what to do.
“Do you have a lawyer?” he asked in Thai. “Yes,” I replied in Thai. “He should be here soon.” I decided to make one more attempt to be released. Since he had questioned why I was there, I said that neither my lawyer nor I understood why I was being held after the judge had ordered my release. The immigration officer ignored my remark and told the officers from Din Daeng to take me to the detention section.
They led me downstairs and out the back, across an open courtyard, past a restaurant and through an open gate into a compound surrounded by a ten-foot-high wall topped by barbed wire. Once inside, they removed my handcuffs and turned me over to the Immigration Detention Center officials, who took me to a hallway on the second floor. Paint was flaking from putrid green walls. To the right, partially opened windows looked out over the courtyard. To the left, barred windows allowed a view of a large room literally jammed with men, some of them staring at us with somnolent, uncaring eyes. The air was thick with the smell of perspiration and urine. A large iron door was unlocked and pulled from the latch. Then an iron bar slid out with a metallic screech and the heavy door swung open. I stepped inside and looked around as the door thundered shut behind me.
A cell measuring approximately sixty feet by twenty feet was filled with men and boys of all races and nationalities. Nearly a hundred of them were crammed into that small space. A Pakistani man sitting next to the door smiled and told me to sit down. I returned the smile and took a seat on the floor. Seated next to him was an Indian man.
“Welcome to IDC,” he said. He opened a notebook, started asking questions and jotted down my answers. “What’s your name, your age, and what country are you from? Where did you just come from? Why are you here?” As he was asking the questions, the Pakistani man was looking through my paper bags and removing the contents. I answered his questions and said that I have a case in America, so the US government has cancelled my passport. “Wanted in America,” he wrote in his notebook, and then told me to pay him a hundred baht for ‘room service’. “People without money clean up the dishes and serve the food, so everybody who has money pays 100 baht for the service.” That sounded reasonable. Luckily, Mark Morgan had given me 500 baht the night before at Din Daeng, so I handed the purple note to him. Then he told me that I would have to pay 200 baht more if I wanted a bed. That also sounded reasonable. He returned two red bills as change. “Is this it?” I asked. “Yes, we’ll give you a nice place. Where do you want to sleep?” “Any place is fine,” I replied, starting to lay the blanket down next to a Burmese man in the middle of the room. “Not there,” the Pakistani said, “We will find you a better place.” He picked up my possessions, carried them across the room and unceremoniously dumped them at the feet of an obese Chinese man. “This is my boss,” the Pakistani said. “He’s the room leader.”
“My name is Roza,” the Chinese man said in halting English. “Is everything here?” “What do you mean?” “Is everything here? Is anything missing? Did they take anything?” I don’t think so,” I said hesitantly. I was rather befuddled over the question. Like everyone else, he had watched the Pakistani search my bags. “Where do you want to sleep?” “Any place is fine,” I repeated. “Find him a place,” Roza said to the Pakistani. Then he gestured towards his corner of the room.
“This is the coffee shop.” Some cardboard boxes were stacked next to four large thermos bottles. Inside the boxes were a few plastic cups, some packages of noodles and a dozen cans of tuna. “Coffee shop?” I started laughing, and then looked around at the somber faces glaring back at me. Obviously, no one else recognized the humor.
The Pakistani, who introduced himself as Djaveed, had me set my blanket down on a space about two feet wide between a Chinese man and a walkway. “I’ll be leaving soon,” I thought, “so it doesn’t really matter where I sleep in the interim.”
To my right was a much smaller room packed with about a dozen prisoners. Past that room was the bathroom, composed of several tiny cubicles lining a watermarked cement wall. Two of them contained squat toilets. Nearby, faucets were running into four large, overflowing cement tubs. When I went in to use the toilet, I turned them off and stepped into one of the cubicles. By the time I emerged, someone had turned the faucets on again. I later learned that they were intentionally left running to eliminate some of the diseases that festered from so many people living so closely together.
After getting to know a few of my fellow detainees, I spread out on the blanket. The cement floor was very hard, but I assumed I could deal with it for the few days I would be here. I hoped Kachon and the lawyer would come soon to tell me that they had my wallet.
At 15:30 everyone jumped up and began yelling “cow! cow!” I had dozed off, but the noise jolted me awake. A group of Burmese men and boys quickly lined up in front of the iron door. As soon as it opened, they scurried into the hallway and reappeared within seconds carrying large aluminum trays, filled with rice and two types of soggy vegetables. Each tray was placed on the floor in front of a prisoner, and everyone began to ravenously devour the food. I copied the others and scooped up the rice with my fingers and dipped it into the vegetables. It tasted so bad that I couldn’t eat it, so I only ate the rice.
After the meal, the detainees in the center of the room picked up their belongings and moved to the side, while two Burmese boys came from the bathroom carrying a sopping-wet blanket, with which they wiped down the floor. Then the detainees, who had been forced to move, scrambled back and shoved each other to regain their former spots on the floor. Watching their ignoble struggle for a spot on the floor, I realized the two hundred baht I had paid for a ‘bed’ secured me a ‘space’. The center of the room was for poor detainees who had no money. They had to fight for a place to sit each time the floor was cleaned following a meal.
I tried lying down to get some rest, but the overhead fluorescent lights made sleeping quite difficult. The brightness in the room remained constant. The lights remained on twenty-four hours a day. I felt as if I was in a type of purgatory with eternal daylight.
*****
“Cow! Cow!" I was suddenly awakened by the yells which signaled another meal and another day. I glanced at the clock which read 06:00. Was it AM or PM? I wasn’t sure, but I sat up and pulled the bottom of the blanket towards me so that no-one would trip in the rush to get the food.
After the meal had been served and the floor mopped, Roza decided that I deserved a better spot. He instructed Djaveed to clear an area for me next to a German by the name of Uber. Just then, I heard a scream from the small room that made the hairs on my neck stand up. “The Iranian again,” Uber said. The screaming continued, accompanied by the grating noise of metal banging against the metal bars. “Why is he screaming?” I asked. ” He has been here for three years and four months,” Uber explained. “He can’t go back to Iran because he’s anti-Khomeini and he has no money, so he can’t get out of here. He’s going crazy. He starts screaming when it’s time for visitors.” I shuddered at the thought of having to exist in this awful place for that amount of time.
*****
Visitors to IDC were allowed to come to the barred windows along the wall. One could have a pleasant visit with friends without having to yell across a void.
At 09:30, Kenji and Chat appeared at the barred windows. "What happened to Kachon and the lawyer?” I asked. “Did you go with them to pick up my wallet?” “No, he left before I knew it.” Kenji replied. “He hasn’t come back to the condo. He disappeared. We don’t know where he went.” “The Embassy people may come to take me to America any day. Could you please try to get hold of the lawyer? He planned to visit me, but I haven’t seen him since I left Din Daeng.” Kenji said he would try to find both Kachon and the lawyer, and then left with Chat.
A few minutes later, Khun Sumate and Khun Noo Setabut from Pacific World appeared at the bars. They were both very busy businesspeople, and I was touched that they would take the time to visit. “We read the article in the paper about your acquittal,” Sumate said. “Is there anything we can do? Do you want anything?” Noo asked. I had a simple request. “How about some peanuts and some caramel-covered nuts,” I said. “Enough so that can share with the others.” That afternoon, a huge package arrived by courier. It was filled with candies and nuts; enough for forty or fifty people. Then two days later, another package arrived. The gifts continued arriving for the next couple of weeks.
Three hours after the bell signaled the end of visiting hours, the afternoon meal arrived. I tried once more to eat the vegetables but gave up and bought noodles from the ‘coffee shop.’ On the third day, Roza decided that he wanted me to sleep next to him. He noticed I hadn’t been eating the food and invited me to share meals with him and the four Chinese men who ran the ‘coffee shop’. The food, which Roza paid one of the cleaning women to bring in from outside, was a decided improvement over the free meals.
Although Roza was pleasant and generous to me, his attitude towards most of the others was less so. He owned the ‘coffee shop’, received all the income from sales, and took in all the fees collected from new arrivals. With this, he paid for his own private security force. Except for Djaveed and the Indian who checked me in, it was exclusively Chinese.
A few days after my arrival, a Frenchman arrived. He had been arrested in Southern Thailand for possession of marijuana, had served his sentence in the prison at Sonkhla and was at IDC to await deportation to France. During the twenty-hour drive from the southern province, he had too many beers and arrived very inebriated. One of Roza’s men told him to take a shower and pushed him towards the bathroom. He reacted by turning around to face the man. Instantly, ten men leapt up and began beating him mercilessly. I couldn’t bear to see him being beaten, so I stood between him and his attackers. “Stop it!” I cried. “Stop it!” To my astonishment, Roza’s security force backed away. I turned to the Frenchman. Blood was spurting from a large cut above his eye. His face was full of massive welts and bruises and his T-shirt was torn, exposing cuts and bruises on his chest. He was dazed and seemed to be in shock.
Roza was out of the room at the time of the attack. He had gone downstairs to do some work in the police office. When he returned, his ‘security detail’ told him what I had done. “You mind your own business!” he warned me. “When someone is being hurt, it is my business,” I replied vehemently. “You don’t understand,” he said with disgust and shook his head, as if he were reprimanding a child. He was right. I didn’t understand why they were so cruel.
A couple of days later, another new arrival, a man from Sri Lanka, was attacked. This time, when I attempted to intervene, two of the larger Chinese men shoved me violently across the room. I hit the wall and fell to the floor. I looked up to see one of the guards watching the attack from the hallway with a smile on his face. I realized that Roza acted with acquiescence, if not the encouragement of the immigration police. The attacks were intended to intimidate so that the detainees would be obsequious. My successful defense of the Frenchman had sent a mixed message to the other detainees.
I had expected a visit from Marcia immediately after my release from Khlong Prem to inform me about the arrangements for my return to face charges in the states. Everyone else who came through IDC received visits from their embassies within a few days. But two weeks had passed, and I hadn’t heard a word. Then, on December 9th , Marcia came to tell me that the prosecutor had filed an appeal of my acquittal, and I would have to remain in Thailand until the appeal was heard.
After my acquittal, he told me he would not file an appeal. Evidently, someone from the US Embassy had convinced him to change his mind. The US Government had screwed me again!
“That can take years!” I exclaimed. “Do you mean that I must stay in this place for years? There’s not even room to exercise in here.”
“Do you want to go back to Khlong Prem Prison?” she asked. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, other than out of jail. “Why hasn’t the State Department reached a decision on my passport hearing so that I can wait for my appeal on the outside?” I’ll send an inquiry to Washington,” she said. “If we hear anything, I’ll let you know.”
Instead of being brought back to face charges in the United States, which I was anxious to do because I knew I would win, I had been made to wait two weeks while someone convinced the prosecutor to change his mind. Something smelled of a conspiracy against me. While I had no concrete proof, I knew the U.S. Embassy officials had to be behind the prosecutor’s change of heart. Someone at the Embassy wanted to do whatever it took to keep me behind bars in Thailand. This much was certain: They knew they had no real case against me in the US and they were willing to let me waste away in a Thai prison while they tried to hunt something up. The judge said that, even if I had been found guilty of the charge, I had already spent more time in prison than the maximum sentence. The prosecutor knew that, so he had nothing to gain by appealing the verdict. He would not have done it on his own.
When Marcia walked away, the joy I had felt from the acquittal was gone. It was replaced by anger at my government for their duplicity.
Kenji came to visit right after Marcia left. He thoughtfully brought some of my clothes, thinking I would need them for my trip. “I’m not going anywhere;” I said dejectedly, “The US is forcing me to stay in this hellhole.”
Kachon came rushing into the hallway just after Kenji walked down the stairs. “Where have you been?” I asked. Where is my wallet from Khlong Prem?” He was gasping for breath, and he shook his head. “I don’t know you still in Thailand. Khun Sumate said to give you this.” He handed me a fax which had been sent to me through Sumate. It was from Bert Van Walbeek, the former president of S.I.T.E. Thailand, congratulating me on my acquittal. Kachon had gone to Sumate’s office to ask for a job and Sumate told him I was looking for him.
“Sombat tried to kill me!” he cried, “He sent some men to take me up country by car. That why I not come. I find the wallet at Khlong Prem, but no money.” I didn’t know whether to blame him for the missing $1,000 and I didn’t know if I should believe his bizarre tale about being abducted by Sombat’s goons. “Give me the wallet, at least,” I said. He ran downstairs, then returned moments later and handed it to me. His story sounded too incredible to believe, but with all that had happened in the previous nine months, anything seemed plausible. The prison officials could have taken my money. Someone could have tried to kill Kachon, but I didn’t really believe it. He had come to visit only after Sumate had told him that I was still here and was looking for him. He thought that I had left the country already. All my money was gone, and I didn’t even have enough money to buy a cup of coffee. But what hurt even more was that Kachon was one of the people I trusted most.
On her next visit, I asked Marcia Pixley to check with the office at Khlong Prem. She later told me that prison records showed that the money had been returned with the wallet.
Kenji visited once more in December to tell me the police had been in my apartment twice to see if they could find something they could use against me. “They were very angry that you won. They kept asking me questions about people in America that I didn’t know. They wanted the computer from the office, so I told them to go get it from Sombat. They said they were going to get David and Mark now.” “Mark? Why Mark?” I asked “Mark better watch out,” Kenji said. It was a prophetic warning.
The longer I was in IDC, the more I hated Roza’s Chinese thugs and their partners-in-cruelty, the immigration police. Both groups seemed to get sadistic pleasure out of lording over new arrivals, particularly poor Burmese students who had poured into Thailand to escape the brutal Burmese military regime. Sadistic beatings were almost daily occurrences, and they made the atmosphere even more oppressive. I had not received a single card or letter in the mail since my acquittal and I began to worry about it. I had been in IDC for nearly a month and had written dozens of letters to family and friends. Nothing had come back from the outside. I wondered if the letters I had given to the Thai UN official had even been sent.
On December 15th , the organization of Evangelical Christian women presented a Christmas show. I asked one of the ladies to post some letters for me when, suddenly, another woman snatched them from her hand and threw them back at me. “They don’t want us to take any mail from him,” she barked at the other lady. Dejectedly, I returned to my space on the floor and sat down. “Who didn’t want them to take my letters?” I wondered who they were. She must have been referring to the US Consulate staff. Who else would it be? The combination of their rejection and the reminder that I would spend Christmas in this evil place without a word from home was too much for my fragile emotional state. I started to cry. Then one of the Chinese men with whom I usually ate dinner said sympathetically, “It’s okay. I’ve been in here for almost a year.” But he didn’t understand. Thailand, the country that I thought was the best place on earth to live had become a living hell. I just lay down, buried my head in my pillow and cried myself to sleep.
Six days later, Sombattsiri appeared at the bars accompanied by two immigration officers. He looked ghostly pale and bedraggled. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and his clothes were wrinkled. “I tried to give this check for $8,000 to the US Embassy and they wouldn’t accept it,” he said, pulling a cashier’s check from his pocket. “They said they needed authorization from your mother.” “It’s all right,” I scowled at the man who had given me so much misery. “I’ll take it.” Sombattsiri looked perplexed. “I can’t give it to you,” he said, glancing at the officers hoping they wouldn’t allow me to take the check. He had seldom dealt with anyone in IDC and he didn’t understand that the rules weren’t the same as in the prisons. When they didn’t intercede, he said, “I need authorization from your mother, but I have the 14,000 baht that I owe you for the computer. I can’t give it to you here.” “Yes, you can. You can give it to me.” He glanced at the officers again. They nodded their heads and told him it was alright. He looked confused and upset. I’m sure that had he known I could accept the money, he would not have offered it. Even though it was far short of what he had stolen from me, I was broke and needed anything I could get.
“I need a receipt,” he said, somewhat flustered. He handed me a piece of paper and a pen. Then he fumbled in his pocket and out came a wad of purple bills. He had been trapped. I did not know why he felt obliged to come to IDC, but I’m sure he didn’t expect to have to part with any of the cash in his pocket. “Don’t think I’m a bad person,” he pleaded. “Your mother is a good person, and she loves you.” “She is,” I agreed. I was intrigued by this exchange. What had happened to this man to force him to go to my cell? Had he heard that I had written to the Lawyer’s Council of Thailand? Had an unknown emissary physically threatened him? Had he read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol?
When he left, I was bewildered. I was holding 14,000 baht in my hands and Sombattsiri had actually uttered something of an apology to me. The money represented a small fortune. At most, I spent 50 to 100 baht a day for coffee and noodles. This money would last me for months. I immediately gave 2,500 baht to a friend from Bangladesh who would use it to get home. I then sat down to write to David and the others at Khlong Prem to tell them of Sombattsiri’s strange change of heart. A man from Sri Lanka who had seen Sombat give me the money, asked if I’d buy his suitcase for 500 baht so that he could pay the police to take him to the airport for a flight back home. Even though the man was a stranger, I felt that if I could help free him from this horrible place for a lousy 500 baht, I would do it. I gave it to him and then put the rest of my money in the suitcase and hung it over my head.
Christmas day was very depressing. The Chinese men who ran the coffee shop for Roza were jealous that he allowed me to eat with them without doing any work. So, they had dinner while I was in the shower. As a result, I went to sleep hungry on Christmas night.
Roza appointed Isa, a man from Oman, to be his ‘chief of security’. Isa’s qualification for the job was his bulk. His lack of intellect and education was obvious. He walked around the room with a large stick, intimidating everyone. Because his gate resembled that of an ape, the detainees nicknamed him “The Monkey”.
Two days after Christmas, two Burmese men became embroiled in a skirmish over food. The Chinese gang attacked and beat the two of them into submission. Then Isa lined up all the Burmese, grabbed the first man in line and lifted him off the ground. “You Vietnam?” he shouted into his face. The Burmese man was bewildered. He didn’t understand. “I don’t like Vietnam,” Isa growled, dropping him onto the floor and then slamming a fist into the man’s head. The man staggered, but Isa kept after him. “You like to fight?” Isa yelled. He punched the man repeatedly until he was dazed and bloodied. Then he moved to the next one in line. The diminutive Burmese boy was more than a foot shorter and more than a hundred pounds lighter than Isa. He tried to deflect the blows, but Isa put him in a headlock and beat him senseless. He dropped his bloodied victim on the floor and then moved on to beat all of the other terrified Burmese. We were helpless to stop it. The sight of such insane brutality sickened everyone, but we knew that if we tried anything, the Chinese gang would attack. Since Roza had appointed Isa his ‘security chief’ and since Roza was doing the bidding of the immigration police, it was futile to complain.
New Year’s Eve was celebrated by those who could afford it. Anyone with 300 baht gave it to Roza who purchased enough Mekong Whiskey and coca cola to get them all drunk. All the heroin addicts gathered in the small room to snort heroin. Isa drank whiskey and coke, snorted heroin and then passed out.
On January 2nd , an immigration officer came to the bars and called my name. The door was unlocked, and I was instructed to put on a pair of thongs and follow him. It was the first time I had been out of that room in forty days. It was exhilarating just to be able to walk out the door and through the courtyard. The officer said that someone had come to see me and that he was waiting in the colonel’s office on the fourth floor of the immigration building. I relished the exercise and persuaded the officer to walk up the stairs, rather than take the elevator.
When we entered the office, a young, rather thin American couple stood up and introduced themselves. “Steve, I’m Bob Pisani and this is my wife.” Two or three months earlier, my mother had written to tell me that an attorney from the law firm in Philadelphia might come to visit. Nevertheless, I was shocked to see him.
He and I sat down on a bench in the outer office, while his wife chatted with the colonel in charge of IDC. “I’ve been trying to contact Sombattsiri,” he began. “But I can’t reach him. He won’t return my calls.” I didn’t want to talk to him about Sombattsiri. I wanted to know what his firm had done about getting my passport returned so that I could get out of IDC. “Didn’t you receive the letter I wrote you in October?” I asked. He looked puzzled. “What letter?” My heart sank. My hope of getting out of IDC depended on his law firm receiving the information and acting on it. “The letter I wrote describing and chronicling the abuses of US authorities. I had assumed that you had already filed a lawsuit.” “We’ve been hired only to get your passport returned. I suggest that you have your family get another lawyer for the lawsuit.” Then he went on to tell me that he did not think he could get my passport returned.
I returned to the room and thought about writing to my mother, but I was too depressed. I lived every day in the hope that someday I would be able to confront those who were responsible for all the false stories and for my continued incarceration. I thought that my October letter would have precipitated some action.
*****
Roza frequently worked outside the room with the police and the immigration officers. One day, he came up to the bars after talking with the police and asked me, “Are you Mark Morgan?” He knew my name, so I thought he was confused and meant that Mark had come to visit. “No, Roza, Mark Morgan is a friend. Is he here to visit?” He shook his head. “I’m looking for an American named Mark Morgan. You’re the only American in IDC now. Somebody says there’s a Mark Morgan here.” “Morgan isn’t a prisoner.” Roza shook his head again and said, “You don’t know the story.” Then he turned and walked away.
That afternoon there was a commotion in the hallway. I stood up to see a group of police officers leading Mark Morgan up the stairs to the floor above. He was handcuffed. “Mark!” I yelled. “What are you doing here?” He glanced back, but the police shoved him forward and wouldn’t let him speak. Roza followed the entourage. “Where are they taking him?” I asked Roza. “Room four,” Roza responded. “Why Room Four?” I asked. “How can I get up to see him?” “It will cost you,” Roza said. “How much?” “At least 200 baht. I’ll ask the police.” He turned and went back downstairs.
A few minutes later, Roza returned with one of the officers. “You can’t go to Room Four, no matter how much money you pay,” the officer said. “How about brining my friend down here?” “Cannot. U.S. Embassy told us not to let the two of you talk to each other.” When the officer left, Roza called me back to the bars. “You can’t have any visitors. The police told me not to allow anybody to visit either you or your friend. Instructions from the Embassy.” The Embassy was treating me like some kind of international terrorist. Even those who commit the worst crimes imaginable are allowed to have visitors. But I have committed no crimes and I’m not even in prison, but the Embassy is not allowing me to have visitors.
The next day during visiting hours I asked one of the United Nations workers why I was being singled out for this kind of persecution. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “Not even murderers have their visits cut off.”
The week after Mark Morgan’s arrival in IDC, the center was humming with activity. He was taken out of the cell daily for interrogations and press conferences. The American CBS television network even sent a crew to Thailand to interview him. At least he was being given a forum. I had been locked up for almost a year and not one journalist or reporter ever asked to speak to me. Although he was allowed to give his side, the stories in the newspapers and on television were almost as distorted and sensational as those that appeared after I was first arrested. Not only were John Cummings’ lies repeated over and over, but he was mentioned by name with increasing frequency.
The Bangkok Post tried to write a factual report, rather than just repeating Cummings’ fabrications. It said that Howard Ruff had been carrying on a campaign to try to close Mark’s children’s shelter after Cummings’ stories about my business and Mark’s children’s shelters first appeared in the newspapers and on television. It went on to say that the police had investigated Mark’s homes but had not found any improper activities being conducted by Mark, his employees, or his volunteers. That didn’t matter to Howard Ruff, the Post article said. Frustrated in his attempts to get Thai authorities to close Mark’s homes, Ruff asked his friend Senator Jesse Helms to do something. At Ruff’s bidding, Helms told the Thai Ambassador to the United States to order the police in Thailand to close the shelters. The Bangkok Post story went on to say that Mark was then arrested for operating children’s homes without the proper government permit. Both shelters were closed, the children were taken to welfare centers, and Mark was brought to IDC to be expelled from the country. At Ruff’s request, the police were now investigating Mark for child molestation.
One day, when Mark was going downstairs to meet with police investigators, he called me to come to the bars. “I can only talk for a minute,” he said. “The police want me downstairs.” “What’s happening?” I asked excitedly. “The police have been interrogating the kids.” “Are they using electric torture like they did with Chat and Nu?” “No,” Mark said. “After the newspapers picked up what Chat and Nu said in court, Din Daeng got in trouble, I don’t think they’ll try that again. Anyway, the police couldn’t get any of the kids to say what they wanted.” I felt sorry for Mark. I knew with all the publicity that had been generated and after I had been found not guilty, the police were obligated to find him guilty of something more than operating his homes without the proper permits. I knew that, if they couldn’t find anything, they would fabricate something.
When Mark was brought back later, he was too depressed to talk. For the next few days, I sent numerous messages through Roza, but the only response I received was that he was too distraught to write anything. Finally, after about a week, I received an explanation. “Howard Ruff is the winner of at least this round,” It began. Ruff had presented a copy of his videotape featuring John Cummings to Thai police and they bought Cummings’ fabrications about Mark and me, lock, stock and barrel. He ended the letter by saying that some of the kids went back to their home provinces and that Nu went to live with Wasana and her son. She was the woman who had been the cook at the shelter. The other thirty kids who had been living at the two shelters would now be forced to leave school and either return to the streets or end up in a welfare center. Howard Ruff went on to claim that he had obtained proof from police in California that Mark and I had been offering kids to pedophiles. He had spoken with Police Officer Tom Eisenman in San Francisco. Eisenman had embellished what Cummings told him about having “proof” that Mark and I were offering kids to pedophiles. Of course, no such ‘proof’ existed, but that didn’t deter Ruff, who travelled around the United States bragging about the success of his efforts to close down the “Thai sex ring”. A few newspapers, radio stations and magazines echoed everything he told them, praising him as if he should be accorded knighthood. Howard Ruff was so enthralled with his newfound fame and glory that he saw an opportunity to make money. He announced that he had set up a new shelter to replace Mark Morgan’s. He hired someone to run it and began to make pitches for donations as he travelled around the country. His home, which he called the “Ruff House”, operated for a few months in Bangkok. After it closed, Howard Ruff continued to raise funds for it.
In April 1991, CBS television in Los Angeles ran Cummings’ entire story of the “child prostitution ring” the week of the ratings sweeps, knowing that type of sensational story was good for their ratings. Ruff was interviewed and the announcer asked that donations be sent to support the “Ruff House” children’s’ shelter, which no longer existed.
*******
Although this story concerned events that preceded Donald Trump’s presidency by twenty-five years, the elements of the story were very much a part of his ascendancy
Throughout the month of January, no one was permitted to visit me in IDC. I had trouble getting mail delivered and hadn’t received any correspondence since November. It was obvious the US government was making a concerted effort to isolate me from the rest of the world. My frustration, anger and depression were beyond description. The one thing that provided a link to the outside world and possibly my sanity was being able to read newspapers. But stories about the “foreign sex gang” continued to pop up in them, scoring my exasperation. I wrote to the Bangkok Post begging them to send an investigative reporter to talk to me. Since Kenji and Chat were not allowed to visit, I pleaded with the Evangelical Christians who had presented the Christmas show to deliver it. Because they had been told by the Embassy not to take any mail from me, most of them refused. However, one charitable lady said that she would. The more time that passed in IDC, the more I understood the real meaning of freedom. Prior to my arrest, I was blessed with everything anyone could possibly want: My own business, a steady income, intellectual challenges, and a sense of family. I rarely gave a second thought to those things. But if this humiliation and persecution had taught me anything at all, it was that I could survive with but two essentials: The support of family and friends and a sense of purpose. They could cut off my mail and visits, but they could not diminish my desire to have the truth known. On January 22nd , a small Jordanian man with graying hair arrived clutching his chest. As soon as the guards closed the door, the man screamed and fell to the floor. Roza’s assistant, a Chinese man named Louie, who was checking in the new arrivals at the time, felt his pulse. There was none. He put his ear to the man’s chest and listened for a heartbeat. He heard nothing. He then put his hand over the man’s chest and whacked it with his other hand. Suddenly the man wheezed and started to breathe again, but remained in a stupor, mumbling about being hit. I frantically banged on the bars, shouting to the guards for help. Meanwhile, Djaveed was going through the man’s wallet. “He doesn’t have any money,” he complained. Luckily, I thought, at least he can’t be robbed while he’s having a heart attack. At last, one of the officers appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Pen arai?” He yelled. “What’s the matter?” It was obvious that he had too much to drink, as he began staggering up the stairs. “That man is having a heart attack,” I cried. “He needs to go to the hospital.” The officer looked irritated. “He’s not in my section,” he snarled. Then after thinking for a moment, he asked, “Does he have any money?” “His wallet is empty,” Djaveed griped. “I can’t take him to the hospital without any money.” Then the immigration officer said, “It doesn’t matter if he dies anyway. He’s a prisoner.” I looked at Louie and said, “I’ll pay for his transfer to the hospital. That man can’t stay here.” Louie turned and spoke in Chinese to the rest of Roza’s crew. Within seconds, a 500-baht bill appeared and was passed through the bars to the officer. He took the money, and then unlocked the door so that we could carry the Jordanian out to the gate. Louie’s sudden largesse amazed me. As a drug addict, he was rarely motivated to care for another human being. Because I was not allowed to receive either mail or visitors, I asked Roza if it would be possible for me to call my family in the states. “It will cost a thousand baht,” he said “to pay an officer to take you to the international phone booth at the post office. If you want to make a local call, you can call from the phone in the office. That will only cost two hundred baht.” Before I was able to find an officer who would take me to the post office, which was adjacent to IDC, I was summoned to the office of Colonel Sathaporn, the commander. “Sit down,” he said, as I was led into his private office. “Would you like some tea?” I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. It only added to the bizarre nature of everything I had thus far experienced. I waied him, sat down on a chair in front of his desk and accepted his invitation. “Your lawyer is causing problems,” the colonel began. “I wouldn’t let him visit a female detainee in Room Five one day after visiting hours were over, so he sent a letter to the general complaining about me. I have to write a letter explaining my decision. Can you tell me anything about Sombattsiri that might help? Have you had any problems with him?” Was this karmic law at work? I was only too delighted to tell the colonel all about Sombattsiri, about how he had taken my money, my computer and my mother’s money, then repeatedly refused to visit me in prison to discuss my case, or failed to show up in court, or missed my passport hearing. I suggested the colonel contact other prisoners in Khlong Prem who had also been swindled by Sombattsiri. “Will you write that down and sign it?” he asked, handing me a sheet of paper and a pen. When I was finished, I asked if he would allow me to call my family in the United States. He agreed and gave orders to an officer to take me to a telephone at the post office. When my mother picked up the receiver, all the emotion I felt at the sound of her voice caused my throat to tighten and constrict. I couldn’t say anything for several moments. When I was finally able to compose myself, I told her that I was as well as could be expected under the circumstances. I explained that my mail and my visits had been cut off by the Embassy, but that I would try to find a way to smuggle letters out to her. It was too difficult for me to continue, so I sent her my love and hung up. Despite the US Embassy’s attempt to cut me off from the world, I had made a phone call, and I did it without paying a bribe to an immigration officer. It was only a pyrrhic victory, but it was a victory, nonetheless. Marcia Pixley visited in late January to tell me that the Embassy had been trying to get me transferred back to Khlong Prem. She said that Consul General Ed Lyon wrote to the Thai authorities. On January 30th , Dr. Komain Phatarabhirom, the Prosecutor General responded: “I would like to inform you that at present Mr. Stephen Douglas Raymond is not being detained under the warrant of detention of the court of appeal.” In other words, I was not being held by Thailand. Therefore, I could not be returned to prison because I was not a prisoner. The only reason that I was being held in IDC was that the United States Government officials would not allow me to wait for the appeal process on the outside. I could, in fact, leave IDC the moment that the Embassy officials would allow me to wait on the outside or issue a travel document so that I could return to the states to face charges. ***** Roza’s ‘security detail’ was becoming increasingly brutal. They were now requiring all detainees to declare their total monetary assets. Anyone attempting to hide money was severely beaten and their funds were appropriated. Stefan and Philippe, a couple of French Algerians, invited a German man who was scheduled to depart for home the following day to join them in the small room for a drinking party. Alcoholic drinks were technically illegal inside IDC, so the cost of a bottle of Mekong Whiskey was six times what it would cost on the outside. Police bought the bottles for 40 baht and sold them to Roza for 150 baht, who then sold them to the other detainees for 300 baht. Knowing that I had the money to buy a bottle, Stefan and Philippe asked me to join the three of them. Soon after midnight, I gave them 300 baht and then retired to my blanket in the large room. As soon as I left, Stefan and Philippe demanded that the German also pay for the whiskey. When he refused, the two French Algerians viciously attacked him. He stumbled out of the small room toward Roza’s blanket, his clothes in tatters, splattered with blood; and his money gone. We all sat up and watched as Roza called Stefan and Philippe out of the small room to explain. Stefan looked defiantly at Roza and said that he didn’t have to report to anyone. “I’m not afraid of you!” he said. Stefan and Philippe had made friends with Isa, Roza’s ‘Enforcer’. Now the three of them posed a threat to Roza’s position as room chief. He was afraid to order his Chinese gang to attack them, fearing they would lose to the three larger and stronger westerners. The German man left the following morning, limping out the door, his face swollen and blue. Roza gave him 500 baht and warned him not to file a complaint. Although he had lost ten times that much, the German knew that reporting the theft would be like spitting in the wind. Instead of ordering Stefan and Philippe to return the money, Roza appointed them ‘security chief’ and ‘assistant room chief’. Isa was demoted to be Stefan’s assistant, and Louie was cut out completely. Not only was the room supervised by the most corrupt, but it was also being run by the most vicious. Now even using the toilet improperly would result in a beating. You could feel the fear and tension in the air. The following day, three men were sitting in front of my blanket playing dominoes. Without provocation, Isa walked up and ordered them to return to their blankets. I looked at him and said that if I wanted visitors to sit in front of my blanket that was my privilege. He was suddenly taken aback. He was not used to anyone contradicting him. The surprise wore off and he came at me. The three men scrambled to their feet and hustled away, so Isa stopped. His orders had been obeyed. I was furious that this dim-witted thug was able to intimidate all of us. I was determined to send him a message, and thus received permission to move my things into the small room where Isa stayed. I hung my locked suitcase above the ground with ropes secured to the bars of one of the high windows. The following day, I noticed that the suitcase was facing the opposite direction and guessed that it had been moved while I was asleep. I asked Stefan to help me reach it and take it down to check the contents. “I’m busy right now,” he said. “I’ll help you later.” I asked him twice more that day and each time he had an excuse for not being able to help me. Later, Philippe asked if I would contribute toward the purchase of another bottle of Mekong. “I’ll have to get the money from my suitcase,” I replied. “I’ll ask someone else for the money,” Philippe said and quickly walked away. At that moment, it struck me that my cash was gone, and Stefan and Philippe knew it. A couple of Burmese boys allowed me to stand on their shoulders and retrieve the suitcase to find what I had expected. The money was missing, along with a 100-year-old Mexican coin that I had hoped to sell to a collector. I told Roza about the theft. He asked me to describe the coin, and then ordered ten of his Chinese gang members into the small room to search for it. Everyone was moved out of the room as they tore everything apart, except the things belonging to Stefan. The shakedown only succeeded in angering my cellmates who were forced to rearrange all of their possessions, while the real culprit went unimpeded. When this charade was over, Roza just shrugged and said that he had done all he could do. Dejected, I returned to my blanket, while the others around me were putting their things back in order. I lay down on my blanket and closed my eyes. “Who are you accusing of being a thief?” a voice thundered. I opened my eyes to see Isa standing over me brandishing a knife. “You’re accusing me!” “I’m not accusing anyone,” I said quietly and shut my eyes again. Isa lunged at me with the knife in his hand. I quickly jerked away. Stefan and John, a man from South Africa, grabbed Isa from behind and wrestled him under control. Edmund, a man from Singapore, said; “You’d better leave. Move back to the main room.” Suddenly Isa broke from Stefan’s grip and came at me again with the knife. He slashed at me, the blade cut into my shirt, and I could feel the cold steel on my skin, just as John grabbed his arm and pulled it away. “I’m going to kill you!” Isa roared. “I don’t care what happens to me.” I picked up my blanket and retreated to the larger room as Stefan and John held him back. I could hear Isa repeat repeatedly, “I don’t care. I’ll kill him.” I knew he meant it and I believed he was just looking for the right opportunity. All my previous bravura had evaporated. I wanted desperately to tell someone that I was at the mercy of maniacs and thugs in this place. But who could I contact that would listen and be able to do something about it? Only the United States government had the power to get me out of IDC and their representatives had no inclination to do anything at all to help me. On the contrary, they wanted me to stay in this god-forsaken place for as long as possible. The next day while I was visiting with three other men, Philippe walked up to us, pointed his stick at me and said, “Shut up and go back to your area. You don’t have anybody to help you. If you say anything about the robbery, I’ll set you up with the police and you’ll go back to prison.” He meant that he would plant heroin on me, then pay the police to search my things and find it. I knew he was quite capable of doing it. “Your Embassy doesn’t care about you “, he snarled. “Nobody will help you.” I knew he was right. Without a word, I stood up, walked to my blanket, sat down and did not leave it, except to go to the bathroom, until weeks after the incident. That weekend, Mark Morgan left IDC to go to court in Chiang Mai where he had his second shelter. After all the hoopla and the Ruff and Cummings videotape show, the Bangkok police were unable to put together a case for anything other than operating the Bangkok Children’s Shelter without the proper permit. In the Bangkok courtroom, the judge fined Mark 500 baht for the violation, then took the time to commend him for the work that he and Sujitra were doing. Mark assumed he would face a similar conclusion in Chiang Mai. He was wrong. Upset with the outcome in Bangkok, Ruff sent a copy of the infamous John Cummings video to the judge in Chiang Mai. Also, the Deputy General of the Royal Thai Police Department, having lost face because of the verdict in my case and the verdict in Mark’s Bangkok case, pressured the judge and prosecutor in Chiang Mai to come up with something. In America, this behavior would have been the basis of a scandal, but in Thailand, it was the order of the day. When Mark left IDC, the Embassy lifted my ban on visitors. Kenji and Chat came to see me on the Monday following Isa’s attack.” We tried to visit twice before,” Kenji said. “But they wouldn’t let us in.” Their presence was comforting, but it unleashed all my pent-up fears. “I’m in danger in this place. Please call Marcia Pixley and tell her to come and visit immediately. I need to get out of here. Please go to everyone I know in the travel industry and ask them to help me get out. Ask Sumate if he can do anything.” Kenji said he would call the Embassy but was non-committal about my other requests. He felt I was being irrational, and he knew my friends couldn’t help me. “I’ll be back in a couple of days,” Kenji promised, as he and Chat walked down the stairs. I didn’t see either of them again until I went back to Thailand in 2004. The next day, Marcia had me brought downstairs to talk in a more private setting. “Get me out of here,” I said urgently. “I’ve been attacked with a knife and threatened with my life.” “David Lyon is out of town for two weeks,” she replied. “But I’ll talk to Colonel Sathaporn’s assistant.” “How about giving me my passport back” She didn’t respond. When she got up to leave, I realized that I really was all alone. I went back to my cell and wrote a letter to the US Attorney General asking that the DOJ investigate the actions of the US Embassy personnel. On March 3 rd , 60 Sri Lankans arrived in the middle of the night. The room, which had been overcrowded before, suddenly became unbearably so. We now had a population of 160 men and boys crammed together. It was impossible to lie down and stretch out. The only way that we could sleep was to lay in a fetal position with our knees bent. Otherwise, our feet would tangle up with someone else’s. Stefan had been drinking the night the Sri Lankans arrived. He searched them, slapped them around, pulled their pants down to look for hidden cash, and treated them with contempt. They were terrified of this vicious hulking bully, and it made me sick to watch him rob them of their money and their dignity. Roza watched Stefan’s careless brutality and, from that night on, the dynamic between them slowly and subtly changed. Two days after the Sri Lankans arrived, Marcia brought a copy of the prosecutor’s appeal. It was ten typewritten pages long and written in Thai.” Can you have this translated?” I asked. “The Embassy staff won’t do it,” she said. “I’ll have to send it out and have it done. It will cost about a hundred baht a page.” I groaned. After my money was stolen, I received another EMDA loan from the government, but I didn’t have enough left to pay for the translation. “You won’t be able to get more money until April 15th,” she said. “I suggest you wait until then to get the translation done.” Since my phone conversation with my mother, my family had been sending correspondence through the Embassy. A Thai employee came one afternoon following Marcia’s visit to deliver letters from my family and the International Legal Defense Council. “Vichai,” I said. “I really want to know what this appeal says. Could you take a couple of minutes to read it to me?” “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve been instructed not to help you.” After Vichai’s rejection, I resolved to try and translate it myself with the help of my Thai-English dictionary. But Thai is a difficult language. It’s a derivative of Sanskrit and there are no spaces between words. Even after the translation is finished, the meaning isn’t always clear. I was teaching English to a family of Vietnamese refugees and one of them had been living in a Thai refugee camp. He could read and write Thai fairly well, so he offered to help me. Each day, we spent a couple of hours translating a sentence at a time. By April, I had a fair understanding of the entire appeal. The prosecutor had found no new evidence against me but based his appeal entirely on Howard Ruff’s videotape featuring John Cummings’ allegations. He stated that the United States Embassy had proof I operated a sex tour business and quoted John Cummings as saying that I was a danger to society and that I intended to pick up street children to use as prostitutes for pedophiles visiting the country. Cummings was viewed as an expert because he was a pedophile himself and had been convicted of multiple counts of child molestation and having sex with minors. Everything immediately made sense. I now understood the “why” and the “how”. Everything started in the deranged mind of John Cummings, a man consumed by guilt and hatred, and desperate to save his own skin by copping a plea bargain. The venom flowed into the several police departments like a brook flowing into a large stream. It found an open channel with inspector Tom Eisenman. Eisenman was convinced he needed only a little time to find evidence corroborating all that Cummings had said, starting with the allegation that I had “fled to Thailand”. He ignored all evidence contradicting the allegation, including the fact that I had registered myself and my company with the US Embassy in Bangkok, had filed federal income tax in America, and had recently returned to California for a stockholder’s meeting at my San Francisco office.