American Teacher got job in Khon Kaen school despite facing charges of raping a five year old in the US
Thaivisa has learnt that the Thai woman reported missing after taking a convicted US rapist for a teaching job in Rayong could be protecting him and helping him escape from justice.
On Saturday the family of 29 year old Nittaya Polsripim – or Neung, an agent who finds jobs for foreigners – had gone on Facebook to appeal for help in finding her after she had disappeared for two weeks.
She was discovered to be with an American man on a fake passport who it is understood has served time for rape. The family feared that that she was unaware that her companion was a rapist with a string of criminal offences in Alabama. The couple have been in a relationship for nearly a year.
Now it has emerged that despite the fact that he was bailed in the US on charges of raping a 5 year old he managed to get to Thailand and teach children at a school in Khon Kaen.
He entered Thailand on a passport in the name of a friend after conniving with that person and their relatives to escape justice in the US.
The twist in the story comes after the missing woman’s estranged husband Darron, from South Africa, spoke exclusively to Thaivisa.
Darron said that he had split up with Neung in April of 2015 but shortly after a female roommate of his ex had contacted him to say that she had started a relationship with a “weird guy”.
That guy turned out to be a man called Tyler Smith according to his passport. But the roommate was suspicious that her friend’s new lover was not the same man as mentioned in the passport and she sent Darron a picture from the document and a picture of the boyfreind.
“It was clearly not the same person,” said Darron speaking from Koh Samui where he is living with the couple’s six year old son. He did some detective work and discovered that the man his ex was dating was in fact a friend of Tyler Smith called Jackson (or Jack) Hall.
Darron said that he understood from his enquiries and information from the US Embassy that Jack Hall was a convicted rapist and child abuser. After serving time he was arrested again in Alabama in 2015 on charges of rape and sodomy of a five year old child and was bailed in the sum of 50,000 US dollars, said Darron.
These latter details were confirmed in US news reports at the time available online.
Hall then took on the identity of his friend Tyler and secured a passport in Tyler’s name before fleeing to Thailand where he met Neung. Neung’s sister Jamjit – or Maew -, 37, speaking to Thaivisa from Orebro in Sweden, said the couple met in Bangkok.
She said that Neung and herself used to jointly run a business as agents finding jobs for foreigners who wanted to teach in Thailand. Neung now worked on this alone after she went to live in Sweden. She said they sometimes checked credentials and sometimes didn’t.
Neung’s ex was in contact with the family of the man whose identity Hall had assumed and though he contacted Neung’s family last year to warn them about who their daughter was mixed up with he believed they thought he was just meddling and trying to make trouble.
So they rejected what he had discovered.
Now with the Facebook post the family are very worried that harm may come to Neung whose mother lives in Thonburi and whose father, 59, is a monk in Mahasarakham in the north east.
But Darron said last night that he does not believe that Neung is in danger: “If you ask me she is protecting him and helping him avoid the attentions of the Thai police.”
He accepted that the case was more “Bonnie and Clyde” than a Thai woman at risk from a rapist.
He said that he had been in touch continually with the Chonburi police who he said were searching for the couple. He named a Thai policeman as Officer Rahleuk who was in charge of the case.
He said that the police had been helpful and were hoping that the couple would settle down somewhere and reveal themselves. At the moment there are no phone or bank records to indicate where they might be though it was said on Facebook that Neung had taken Hall to start a job as a teacher in Rayong.
Neung’s sister Maew said she believed that school was Wat Mapka school.
Darron added: “I honestly don’t believe she is in danger and I think she is helping him to evade capture because she knows that the police are on to him for using a fake passport and overstay.
“But it is disconcerting that all contact with the family has stopped in the last two weeks,” he continued. “They were not concerned before but they certainly are now.”
He described his ex, the couple are still actually married but separated after an eight year liaison, as an intelligent woman. She has a university degree from Suan Sunandha Rajabhat.
He confirmed that Neung would only check the credentials of teachers applying for work through her and her sister’s agency around “50% of the time and only then if they were suspicious”.
He confirmed that he believed Hall had taught at a school in Khon Kaen despite fleeing charges of the rape and sodomy of a five year old in the US.
He added that Neung and Hall had travelled from Thailand to Laos then Cambodia sometime after he broke up with his wife.
“At this time I still had no suspicions about him and believed he was called Tyler. Neung asked me for money when she called me from Cambodia. I ended up speaking to her boyfriend for the first and only time over the phone to tell him he should give her the money she needed. I refused to give them money”, he said.
He said that he had lived in South Africa with Neung for three years but after they had a son they came back to Thailand. Neung has another child with a different man. That child is looked after by her mother in Bangkok.
Source: Thai visa
