You shouldn't be surprised
A woman in Kanchanaburi says she was shocked when the wife-beater husband she fled six years ago meted out similar harsh punishment to their son.
Social media activist Guntouch Pongpaiboonwe (aka Guntouch Jompalang) last week took Kanyarat (no surname given), 29, and her son, Nong Thai, 11, to police after the boy fled his abusive father and travelled across the province to seek his mother's help.
Kanyarat contacted Mr Guntouch after her son came to explain his plight. He said his father, Niphat, 34, who lives in Bo Phloi district, had been beating him regularly and forcing him to work to pay for Niphat's gambling and drug habit.
Kanyarat said she had two children with Mr Niphat, a daughter aged 13, and their son, Nong Thai. She left her husband six years ago after he abused her.
"He abused me virtually every day after the first couple of years including kicks to my stomach. I left him to stay with my mother. I intended to take my son but had no job at the time so left him with the father and his own mother," she said.
She and her son later fell out of contact and she was unaware of his plight until he sought her help.
She said her son told her that Mr Niphat would force him to go fishing and sell the proceeds to help pay for his vices. He would also force the lad to buy drugs from a local supplier. If he failed to do as instructed his father would hit him.
Kanyarat said her husband knew a bunch of druggies, former jailbirds who would gather at his place and take drugs.
"I didn't imagine such a thing could happen. Nong Thai was sad, quiet and subdued when I saw him. He ran to me for a hug and I asked him to tell me everything," she said.
Police nabbed Mr Niphat at his home, and charged him initially with drugs and gambling offences. Assault charges would have to await questioning of the boy in the presence of a team of welfare and psychiatric workers.
The boy would be left in the care of a children's home for the time being, and enrolled in a state boarding school where the mother can see him easily.
Commenting on the case, Mr Guntouch said the boy knew all about drugs, which was not appropriate knowledge for an 11-year-old. He asked what kind of father would do such a thing and whether the suspect should still call himself the boy's dad.
Nong Thai's maternal grandmother, meanwhile, said she never met the boy as the father wouldn't let her have access. "He said if I tried to make contact, he would beat me too," she said.
He looked better on FB
A woman in Phayao and her internet lover from Lampang are nursing their wounds after their first in-person meeting took a turn for the worse.
Patcharee Kantordok
Patcharee Kantordok, 27, who has been married for the past six years but suffers from a depressive illness, struck up a furtive online relationship with Sarawut Meekhun, 32, whose FB profile she admired.
He appears with a shaven head and military-style T-shirt. When he asked if she wanted to be his partner, she agreed. The pair carried on chatting for many months before they decided to meet in the flesh.
Sarawut Meekhun
On Feb 11, Mr Sarawut took a bus and a motorcycle taxi from Ngao district in his home province to meet Ms Patcharee at home in Dok Khamtai district. Her husband, Thuan, 52, a builder, was at work and knew nothing about the arrangement.
Ms Patcharee said she went outside to greet her admirer but was unhappy to see the man looked nothing like his handsome profile picture.
He was bigger in the face, bearded, and with thinning hair.
Feeling betrayed, she ordered him to leave. The pair started to argue and Mr Sarawut, according to Ms Patcharee, kicked and punched her in a fit of rage.
The fight spilled inside the house, with Ms Patcharee picking up a meat cleaver and attacking him. He wrested it from her, and stabbed her in the head and arms, leaving wounds which needed stitches.
She fainted, but a neighbour who heard the noise alerted police and rescue workers, who took the pair to the district hospital. Mr Sarawut was allowed to return home to his home province of Lampang for further treatment, after police charged him with attempted murder.
Facebook profile of Sarawut Meekhun
Reporters caught up with Ms Patcharee after her return from hospital. She said she had learnt her lesson and wouldn't chat up strange men on the internet again.
Her husband, Thuan, said he knew his wife was chatting to other men. "I have warned her about it many times but she keeps going back to it," he said, adding he felt saddened by his wife's conduct.
"My wife talks to other men to ease stress when I am not around. I still love her but cannot accept what she did. Once she is recovered we will talk again about the future of our relationship," he said.
Sex when you can't feel it
An enterprising man in Pathum Thani offered "sleep porn" to customers in a Line group and sold them sleeping pills on the side.
Naruebet charged with filming sleep porn.
Anti-Trafficking in Persons Division police nabbed Naruebet (no surname given), 28, an employee of a sub-district municipality office in the province, after discovering he was selling clips on the internet of young men he drugged after meeting them at hotels.
Police say he would drug his victims and once they were in a sleepy, semi-alert state, undress and masturbate them while filming the encounter.
Later he would upload the clips to a Line group he created peddling sleep porn, in which perpetrators surreptitiously have sex with their victims while they are asleep or unconscious.
The clips were captioned with viewers told that they depicted friends who drugged each other's drinks and had sex. While the victim can be seen clearly, the perpetrator's face is obscured.
One victim told police had come to know the suspect through a mutual friend and agreed to meet him at a hotel in Thon Buri.
He said the suspect gave him a white powder to inhale and shortly after he fell asleep. He could not remember what happened next, but found out later the suspect had made an indecent clip of him and shared it with the Line group.
Arrested in Muang district, Naruebet denied drugging his victims and claimed they agreed to stage the scenes with him by pretending they were knocked out. However, he admitted creating the Line group and inviting victims to make indecent clips for sale to members.
He also admitted selling sleeping drugs to members of his Line group.
Police confiscated two phones, a tablet computer, and some white powder. They charged him with seeking to make a profit by exploiting others and introducing indecent content to the computer system.
Underwear fashion king
Police in Bangkok stumbled upon a 20-year collection of stolen women's underwear as they investigated a theft complaint.
Nathawut, the serial underwear thief, points to his collection of stolen women's underwear.
Bang Yi Khan and CSD police nabbed Nathawut, or Au (no surname given), 38, after a woman from soi Somdej Phra Pinklao 1 complained her underwear had been stolen from the back of her place.
She said the items were taken even though the verandah where they were drying has a steel mesh fence keeping people out.
CCTV images showed the thief, later identified as Nathawut, shoving his hand through a gap between the wall and the mesh fence and grabbing the items.
Images released to the media showed him expertly climbing the fence of a house, clambering over the roof of the place next door and helping himself to items at its rear. The theft took just four minutes.
Police tracked the suspect to his apartment, in the same soi as the victim, where they stumbled upon a huge collection of stolen underwear going back 20 years: 516 bras, 72 pairs of knickers, and three pairs of women's pyjamas.
Mr Nathawut said he had been pursuing his fetish for women's underwear since the age of 18 when he was living in Krathum Baen district of Samut Sakhon.
He was working as a labourer at a workers' camp. He would go out at night looking for underwear, steal it and take it back to his place. He was caught once 10 years ago, he said, but the two sides settled the matter so he did not face legal action.
Mr Nathawut works at the apartment as a handyman, where the owner pays him 2,000 baht a month and gives him a free room. He swore he would quit his habit once he had served his time, though he admitted he said that last time he was caught, too.
Police, who charged him with theft, have invited other victims to come forward and inspect the goods if they think their underwear was among the items stolen.