 |
| Strike – arrested in Pattaya for offences in Hawaii |
There is no question at all whether foreign law enforcement agencies should monitor their country’s child sexual abusers when abroad and make sure every step is taken to severely punish them if they interfere with foreign children.
But how much pressure are they under for results?
And are they willing to ignore evidence to the contrary so they can show results back in their home countries.
This site has been approached several times before with claims that foreigners have been ‘set up’ both in Pattaya, Thailand and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It is perhaps something we should have looked at harder.
But cases in Pattaya at the moment are striking bad chords. The latest concerns an international businessman based in Bangkok, a New Yorker,, who was arrested two months ago for alleged offences against one Cambodian and one Thai boy in an apartment in Pattaya seemingly at least 18 months ago.
Further the Pattaya Police were aided by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation which allegedly reported it had ‘information’.
The boys gave evidence to police and identified the American businessman concerned (or at least one did) and they identified ‘the offenders’ motor-vehicle on the premises.
What’s more Thai police identified (Name redacted)’s partner as the leaseholder of the apartment where the alleged offences happened and the ‘offender’ supposedly lived.
But the alleged offender (Name redacted) was totally shocked. He worked in Bangkok as an engineer for an international company and was married with a baby son. In Bangkok however he lived in an apartment block of which he was the juristic person. The offences are on the charge sheet are alleged to have been committed between November 15th 2012 and January 22 2013 quite some time in the distant past and quite a wide spread of dates to put on a charge sheet.
‘I did not have the time – and certainly not the inclination. People who do this should be locked up for life,” he says.
Well, married men can be sex offenders too, but serial paedophiles usually like to work alone.
But there were more odd things about this case. The boys were shown a five year old passport photo of him when he had a beard.
Yes that’s the man, they said (or one did) but (Name redacted)insisted he had not had a beard for four years and and had witnesses who could prove it.
Later however they identified him (or one did) beardless from a picture taken at the airport.
And the delivery van reported seen at the location indeed did belong to (Name redacted) because yes his company did have a lease on the building in question and the vehicle was registered to his Bangkok address.
In fact (Name redacted) had 25 per cent of a private company in Pattaya ‘Big Juice’ which imported juice making machines and sold fruit juice to bars and restaurants in the city and the truck was the ‘Big Juice’s’ delivery vehicle which he bought and provided. His partner rented rooms above the premises for 10,000 baht (US$300) a month.
But (Name redacted) himself took little part in the business or at least rarely visited the premises, witnesses said in statements seen by this site. He states that he did not have a key to the premises and had little reason other than to make cursory visits to his his partner, again this is confirmed by his partner.
He visited Pattaya only at weekends to stay with his wife and son in a totally different part of town where he supported her ‘deli’ business.
But that was only during the weekends, when he was not abroad, or out of town on sub-contracts for the Electricity Generating Board of Thailand such as in Mae Moh, Hat Yai, Wang Noi or Korat.
And in Bangkok where he had his own apartment his Japanese company recorded every time he went to the toilet (access was by fingerprint ID)
Needless to say his career is over ‘I am absolutely unemployable’, he says. His company has dismissed him, not because of his ;guilt or innocence,’ he says, but because of the ‘bad smell’ associated with such cases: “My picture is all over the net as a paedophile.”
“For people in my profession and position HR (Human Resources) always use the Google search engine to find and investigate possible new talent. What do you think will come up? What do you think of my chances over 4 or 5 other candidates? The media was presented with my case as a fair accomplit and the photographers and cameramen were brought in.”
But journalists have to be circumspect about about people crying innocent, even in Thailand. Despite being married and living in Bangkok he could have slipped into Pattaya occasionally for a bit of under-aged sex in his private pad; that is if you do not believe the witnesses,. who said he could not enter the Pattaya premises at night because he did not even have a key to premises of an apartment which were already occupied by a wanted paedophile.
Yes that last bit came as a bit of a surprise.
 |
| Strike with a beard in Pattaya |
But then it was revealed that in December 2013 nearly one year after the alleged offences the US Embassy’s Regional Security Officer in Bangkok responding to a request from the Federal Marshalls Hawaii Fugitive Task Force worked with the Royal Thai Police Immigration department removed a certain bearded American and wanted paedophile called Steven James Strike from the apartment in question. Strike had been in hiding in Pattaya for 21 months.
For what? – For serial offences against a young boy in Maui, Hawaii.
When I say revealed. I do not mean by the FBI. The FBI was well aware of this arrest but did not tell Thai police.
The Embassy officials first visited the boys to talk to them and then they attended his arrest in Pattaya, claims (Name redacted)
(Name redacted)says he begged them to tell Thai police about 47-year-old Steve Strike, originally from Wisconsin. They kept shtum.
Strike had arrived in Thailand in March 2012. His Education Visa was due to expire on December 18 2013 – ten days after he was arrested.
The FBI in fact had no special information to give about (Name redacted) and point blankly refused to pass back information about Strike to Thai police. It appears the Thai police have still not been informed officially.
Soon the FBI refused to take any more calls from him. He had volunteered, he says, to undergo a lie detector test. He was still begging them to come clean with the Thai authorities. The FBI could not interfere with Thai justice – the standard Embassy answer.
Further one agent went on in correspondence elsewhere to suggest that (Name redacted) and Striker ‘may have been’ room-mates.
It might defy belief that xxxx whose work place was in Wireless Road next to the US Embassy in Bangkok where the FBI and ICE are located, would be room-mates with anyone 140 kilometres away.
(Name redacted)said he was told by an FBI agent in Bangkok to put the Strike issue aside: ‘Forget about Strike. You are in the Thai legal system. Get a lawyer!’
The suggestion that he and Strike had been room mates was he said made by the FBI agent Randall Devine to the Maui prosecutor of Strike – Ms Kim Whitworth. Devine is now based in the Wilshire Boulevard, LA, offices of the FBI.
The Cambodian victims also identified an orange motorcycle in the Mid Town Village premises as a motorcycle used by the offender and victims have confirmed that motorcycle, which had been left there by an Irish national, was used by Strike as his main form of transport.
But their testimony is hardly necessary because Strike was arrested by Pattaya Police for being drunk while riding that motorcycle on May 13 2013 and bailed in the sum of 20,000 baht.
But it gets worse. When the Federal Marshalls called with Immigration Police to arrest Striker they never thought to take his computer and hard drives – yet this man was a known paedophile.
(Name redacted)s’ Pattaya based partner handed them into police after Mr. xxxx’s arrest – the Thai Immigration Department had left them in the room with all his belongings. No FBI official or Embassy official requested them. Eight months later they are now being looked at by police in Bangkok.
For police investigating child sexual abuse the data on these drives might easily give a clue as to what Strike was up to in Thailand for over a year and might even totally exonerate (Name redacted), and give Maui prosecutor more information on Strike’s activities in Hawaii. But the urgency to get Strike back to the United States and proclaim their arrest may have seem greater than the need to check who he might have abused in Thailand. The FBI did take (Name redacted)’s computers through – and found no what is termed as ‘ contraband’.
Steve Strike has been approached by lawyers in prison in Maui to see if he will admit to offences in Thailand. It seems he would have, had he been able to make a plea bargain. But there is no deal there. This was quashed, says (Name redacted) by the innuendo that he and Strike might have been room mates. The prosecutor in Hawaii, he has been told, wants Strike to go down for the full 20 years.
“Unfortunately you like many Americans you believe that the FBI cares for its citizens abroad. I have been dealing with the FBI for 33 years in my practice and I need you to understand that the FBI is only interested (like most cops) in putting people in jail….I am sorry if I burst your bubble.”
Further the two Cambodian boys had ‘escaped’ from a children’s home.
 |
| Goudie – ‘lawyer’ for the condemned |
It appears they often do. This may be because firstly they are not kept under lock and key, secondly they have been used as witnesses in other cases of child sexual abuse brought by foreigners in Pattaya and thirdly, unfortunately these children make their cash in the sex trade.
Currently the matter has been referred to the U.S. State Department and Department of Justice. It has also been raised at a senior level in Thailand. This is inconvenient because US law enforcement agencies cannot at the moment it appears speak to someone above the level of colonel (It is a political thing).
The initial complaint came from the children’s home,where the boys first are said to have confessed to their guardians.
The Women and Children’s department of the Thai Police Region 2 carried out the investigation, and the FBI appear to be part of a cover-up.
On the local grapevine FBI are coming in for a lot of stick, perhaps because people believe they should know better and there appear to be similar cases. It us not disputed that FBI agents have done some exemplary work in tracking down fugitive paedophiles in South East Asia.
But there are currently widespread allegations of payments made by them to ease the course of justice, or injustice, depending on your viewpoint.
But these payments are accountable and expenses have to be paid and would have to adhere to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Moreover tales of wrong doing can increase with the telling.
Believing that the Thai authorities now know and accept what has gone on (Name redacted)states:
‘There have been a large number of law enforcement failures in both countries. It can be noted that Thai law enforcement made many accidental mistakes (and assumptions) but it is clear U.S. law enforcement has been negligent and intentionally obstructive in its actions and concealed critical evidence of a known paedophile’
 |
| Miller |
Indeed there is a strong resemblance between(Name redacted) in his passport picture and a bearded Steve Strike but in cases which result in long prison sentences – and a total destruction of life as they know it for the defendants – great care should be the norm in ID procedures.
Meanwhile unless the authorities decide otherwise xxxxx could face an a long in Pattaya sentence unless somebody steps in.
The Pattaya Court recently dished out a 38-year-sentence to an American man found guilty of child sexual abuse.
 |
| Ian Tracey |
In this case, which also involved the FBI – the defendant Gregory Miller*, a school teacher at an international school, the Supreme Court has declared a mistrial.
A retrial has also been granted in the case of Briton Ian Tracey* who was released from Pattaya Prison earlier this year.
The victim in his case said in court that Tracey was not the man he had had sexual relations with. He had made an earlier admission to police because, he said, he was threatened with jail himself.
 |
| Andrew Tracey |
Tracey believes he was mistaken for another Briton Andrew Tracey, from Wickford, Essex, who has since skipped bail. The witnesses in that case are believed to be the same Cambodian boys.
*Both Ian Tracey and Gregory Miller were at one stage the clients of Alba Laws – the company of fake Scottish lawyer Brian Goudie, aka Goldie, a self professed authority on paedophiles. Goudie is on trial for cheating Gregory’s 76-year-old mother out of 7.9 million baht and is in turn suing this author for portraying his as a fake lawyer in the photo-shopped picture above.
(To be continued)
 |
| A Flying Sporran Inquiry |
I think, F.B.I. or all law enforcement agencies should be stop phedophile before they depart from country.
From the U.S website "The Innocence Project"
Eyewitness Misidentification
Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in 72% of convictions overturned through DNA testing.
While eyewitness testimony can be persuasive evidence before a judge or jury, 30 years of strong social science research has proven that eyewitness identification is often unreliable. Research shows that the human mind is not like a tape recorder; we neither record events exactly as we see them, nor recall them like a tape that has been rewound. Instead, witness memory is like any other evidence at a crime scene; it must be preserved carefully and retrieved methodically, or it can be contaminated.
When witnesses get it wrong
In case after case, DNA has proven what scientists already know — that eyewitness identification is frequently inaccurate. In the wrongful convictions caused by eyewitness misidentification, the circumstances varied, but judges and juries all relied on testimony that could have been more accurate if reforms proven by science had been implemented.
The Innocence Project has worked on cases in which:
• A witness made an identification in a “show-up” procedure from the back of a police car hundreds of feet away from the suspect in a poorly lit parking lot in the middle of the night.
• A witness in a rape case was shown a photo array where only one photo of the person police suspected was the perpetrator was marked with an “R.”
• Witnesses substantially changed their description of a perpetrator (including key information such as height, weight and presence of facial hair) after they learned more about a particular suspect.
• Witnesses only made an identification after multiple photo arrays or line-ups — and then made hesitant identifications (saying they “thought” the person “might be” the perpetrator, for example), but at trial the jury was told the witnesses did not waver in identifying the suspect.
Variables impacting accuracy of identifications
Leading social science researchers identify two main categories of variables affecting eyewitness identification: estimator variables and system variables.
Estimator variables are those that cannot be controlled by the criminal justice system. They include simple factors like the lighting when the crime took place or the distance from which the witness saw the perpetrator. Estimator variables also include more complex factors, including race (identifications have proven to be less accurate when witnesses are identifying perpetrators of a different race), the presence of a weapon during a crime and the degree of stress or trauma a witness experienced while seeing the perpetrator.
System variables are those that the criminal justice system can and should control. They include all of the ways that law enforcement agencies retrieve and record witness memory, such as line-ups, photo arrays and other identification procedures. System variables that substantially impact the accuracy of identifications include the type of line-up used, the selection of “fillers” (or members of a line-up or photo array who are not the actual suspect), blind administration, instructions to witnesses before identification procedures, administration of line-ups or photo arrays, and communication with witnesses after they make an identification.
Decades of solid scientific evidence supports reform
As far back as the late 1800s, experts have known that eyewitness identification is all-too-susceptible to error, and that scientific study should guide reforms for identification procedures. In 1907, Hugo Munsterberg published “On the Witness Stand,” in which he questioned the reliability of eyewitness identification. When Yale law professor Edwin Borchard studied 65 wrongful convictions for his pioneering 1932 book, “Convicting the Innocent,” he found that eyewitness misidentification was the leading cause of wrongful convictions.
Since then, hundreds of scientific studies (particularly in the last three decades) have affirmed that eyewitness identification is often inaccurate — and that it can be made more accurate by implementing specific identification reforms.