Needless to say, the brutal rape and murder of Nong Kaem has dealt a heavy blow to a state-run organisation that has already been plagued with bad debts and scandals.
Once the case made headlines, social pressure emerged for State Railway of Thailand (SRT) governor Prapat Chongsanguan to quit to take responsibility.
However, while admitting that this was the most serious crisis in the SRT's 117-year history, Mr Prapat said he doubted if his resignation would be the ideal solution to the problem. He would not quit but would stay on to resolve the problem and restore public confidence in the SRT’s services. One measure to improve safety for female and child passengers, he said, is to introduce CCTV cameras and women-only carriages. Nothing but knee-jerk reactions after the damage was already done.
I don’t agree with Mr Prapat and let me explain why. His first reaction to the crime (that the suspect was an outsourced worker and not a full-time SRT officer) cast a bad light on him and the organisation. Though the governor eventually came out to correct the information, blaming it on a misunderstanding, it was too late. Besides, given that the accused rapist-murderer committed the crime while he was on duty, there’s no way the supervisor and the governor can deny responsibility.
The sexual crime is horrible, but the poor reaction to the crime is beyond words.
As the accused turned out to be a SRT staff member, society asked questions about the agency's recruitment screening process, as the man had a record of drug use. Worse, it appears he was involved in two separate rape cases in which the victims were too embarrassed to file complaints. The position allowed him to be in carriages at night when passengers, many of them female and young children, fall asleep and are not in a position to defend themselves. The passenger lists in their hands enable suspects to locate victims easily, just like a shopping list for finding convenient targets.
In this particular case, he was well prepared. He switched off the lights and opened the windows that allowed the noise to muffle his criminal act. Within about an hour, police say the suspect had brutally attacked the girl, raped her twice, and eventually threw her lifeless body from the car. And the suspect resumed his work as if nothing had happened.
Police say the suspect admitted he was drunk on beer and sexually aroused and that led to the crime. He admitted drinking many bottles of beer with his colleagues that night. I am sure this is not the first time they drank on duty, not to mention consuming ya ba on the part of the suspect. This leads to the question of how the SRT could tolerate such behaviour.
As the nation mourns Nong Kaem's death, the public was reminded of a rape case which took place 13 years ago. A rape victim wrote to share her trauma. On the night of July 16, 2001, the victim said she was raped while travelling alone in the second-class sleeping berth by an SRT staffer on a Bangkok-bound train from the South. Her rapist was sacked and the court gave its verdict in 2008, ordering the SRT to compensate her while giving the man a nine-year prison sentence.
Thirteen years later, the SRT is still dragging its feet, and the victim has received nothing but nightmares. Yutthana Thapcharoen, then deputy governor, once said about the previous rape case that the organisation would fight to the end because the reputation of his agency had also been damaged by the case. He added the SRT had nothing to do with the crime; the criminal act was a personal conflict between the victim (a female passenger) and the then suspect (a male outsourced staffer).
Of course, one may argue that the 2001 rape took place long before Mr Prapat took office. But he did nothing to correct the SRT's flawed approach towards rape cases.
The hundreds of CCTV cameras Mr Prapat wants to install won’t help if lax discipline is still widely accepted, and if staffers, outsourced or not, can take ya ba and drink while on duty. It could get worse if Mr Prapat eventually introduces women-only carriages.
With the train tragedy case, there is no choice left for Mr Prapat, except to submit his resignation. After all the failures, Mr Prapat can lead by example and nurture a culture of responsibility.
Sirinya Wattanasukchai is an Assistant News Editor, Bangkok Post.