There is nothing particularly outstanding about the tiny rural school of Wat Ban Pathong Tha Noen Samakee, 360km northeast of Bangkok.
It is just off the main highway that runs all the way up through the Northeast. While it is located in Nakhon Ratchsima province, on a map it appears closer to Khon Kaen. This is the heart of rural Thailand.
The school is a collection of wooden and concrete classrooms. The front boasts a faded pink concrete wall, behind which is an equally faded playground of slides and swings.
It has only 83 students. That is a tiny handful by the standards of Thai schools, which can carry as many as 3,000 students. It is hardly on the A-list of choices for school directors, that top position in every government school that all administrators aspire to. Thus, when the school director of Wat Ban Pathong Tha Noen Samakee retired in September, nobody was clamouring to fill his shoes.
The civil servants, whose job it is to find such a school director in this educational zone, work for what is known as Primary Education Area 6. For the sake of brevity, we'll call it Primary Education 6.
It is probably not far from the truth to say they were scraping the barrel when it came to candidates. But that is no excuse for what they did, which ultimately propelled them, and this little rural school, into the national media spotlight this week.
In November a new school director by the name of Nathapop Boonthongtho, 51, arrived; an overweight fellow with a ruddy face. But he didn't just start a new job three months ago -- he also allegedly started a not-so-clandestine affair with a Year 8 girl in his very own school.
The two apparently hung out together in public places. They were said to have sent each other cute Line messages, which went viral this week. Nathapop supposedly promised to marry her on Feb 14 -- Valentine's Day -- something I am guessing every schoolgirl wishes to hear a man say. But let us not skirt the issue. This was not love. If the accusations turn out to be true, this was textbook paedophilia.
It all blew up this week and both Mr Nathapop and the girl have done a runner, apparently in different directions. Primary Office 6 has announced that Mr Nathapop may -- just may -- have criminal charges levelled against him. Worse, he may be sacked from the civil service. One normally has to bludgeon an entire village to death before one is sacked from the Thai civil service. The normal punishment for paedophilia, corruption, rape and murder while on civil service duty is to be shunted to what they call an "inactive post". Heaven forbid otherwise; they may lose their social and retirement benefits.
All this covers up the real story. If found guilty, it's not just Mr Nathapop who should be jailed. Every single one of those Primary Office 6 civil servants should be locked up with him and, in a perfect world, have the key thrown away.
That's because Mr Nathapop only made it to this tiny rural school because he was booted out of his old one -- where he was similarly accused of conducting an affair with a student there. The only difference was this wasn't a Year 8 girl -- the last one was in Year 6.
He evaded conviction after he transferred 200,000 baht to the family of the girl in question, they dropped the charges and he then quickly left the school.
His old school is just 28km from the new one. I would hazard a guess that news travels fast, and when the school committee and locals heard that a suspected paedophile was about to be their school director, they protested. They wrote a letter to Primary Office 6, which chose to ignore it. They were, after all, the ones who decided to send him there. Mr Nathapop started work, and the rest is history.
It is difficult to remain cool, calm and collected when faced with such facts. One doesn't know quite how to act when government officials responsible for the education of youth shunt a suspected paedophile from school to school, hoping his reputation won't follow him and manifest. On the contrary -- nothing is better for a paedophile than new territory.
Few books in recent years have moved me as much as Betrayal did. It is a book about the Boston Globe newspaper's investigation into the network of paedophile priests within the Catholic Church in the US at the turn of the millennium. You may know it as the movie Spotlight, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2016. While the movie is very good, nothing prepares you for the book's detailed accounts of systematic molestation that was swept under the table for decades by the Catholic Church.
Its message was that the only thing worse than paedophilia is a system that protects it. The Catholic Church knowingly took steps to cover up its rampant paedophilia, the very worst being the Vatican itself, recalling cardinals who oversaw the suppression of child molestation back to the fold to be given obscure roles in the Holy See. The church was effectively closing its wings around these wrongdoers. If only the church had done the same to its child victims.
Well-known paedophile priests were shunted from diocese to diocese, while victims who dared to make waves had the full weight of the church hover precariously over their heads. Some priests were sent to special centres set up to "cure" them of their desires, and the fact the church had such centre tells you how rampant the problem was.
The Catholic Church is not such a main player here in Thailand, where Buddhism is the preferred choice of spiritual comfort. But look at the similarities in the two events. I read the story from Nakhon Ratchasima this week and the ghosts of Betrayal started hovering around me.
Mr Nathapop's Facebook page shows pictures of him dressed in his full civil service regalia. It makes you want to raise your hands and wai him out of respect. His profile picture has the words "Nathapop Loves the King". In another picture, he professes his love for his mother. This is a man who ticks all the boxes of Thai respectability which, ironically, opens the door to grant him access to schoolgirls.
This column does not set out to attack Mr Nathapop himself. If he truly is a paedophile, yes he should be punished, but he should also receive some form of medical or psychiatric attention. Until the facts of the accusations are known. I think we can all agree he needs to be kept as far away from children as possible, right?
Well, maybe not everybody. Primary Office 6 knew about the scandal at the previous school. It seems being accused of having an affair with a Year 6 girl -- who would be aged around 12 years -- warrants no more than being moved from one school to another.
We can at least be thankful a committee has been set up to examine all this. And who is investigating this gross miscarriage of justice and dereliction of duty?
It's the Primary Office 6 itself. And, boy, have they taken some really strong punitive steps.
They have "moved him to an inactive post within the Primary Education Service." As of tomorrow, he must rock up to Primary Education 6 to continue his career working with children.
