Andrew Drummond

“I will die in Thai jail” says man known to children as ‘The Ghost’

Other versions of this story by the same author

Link to Daily Mail ‘Former Catholic lay preacher, 78, jailed in Thailand for raping under-aged girls

The SUN - Sick Brit jailed for child rape

From Andrew Drummond, Bangkok 

A British pensioner known to street children as ‘The Ghost’  was today jailed for 14 years on two cases of child rape, after a history of child abuse complaints dating back 18 years
Maurice Praill, 78, a former Catholic lay preacher and video shop owner, was jailed for the rape of two under-aged girls,  by the Thai Supreme Court. 
Judge Charoenchai Assawapirya-a-nan confirmed a sentence imposed more than eight years ago. 
He said there was no way the child victims could have lied because they gave so much detailed evidence including how Praill cut up his Viagra tablets and his use of KY jelly.
Praill, from Harold Hill, Essex, was led off to prison in the Thai provincial capital of Chonburi. “Paedophile I don’t use that word,” he said. “I pay to feel”
The girls were paid, he insisted.
He said he was stunned at the verdict and insisted that the elder of the two victims, aged 14, wanted to marry him afterwards.
 “I expect I will die in prison if I do not get a pardon.”
Praill had been repeatedly arrested in Thailand for child sex offences, and released on bail, by the police and courts, since he sold his business  in England and retired in the resort of Pattaya, 100 miles east of Bangkok in 1990.
He insisted before being led away in a blue prison bus: “I just like helping young people, sex or not, never mind, it was not the main thing’.
For the first few arrests in the 90s, local newspapers reported, he just ‘paid fines ‘at the local police station, another way of saying he paid off the police and victims.
But then Praill, the stepfather of former Irish International and Crystal Palace footballer Jon Goodman, was  sentenced to 14 years in December 2001 on the rape charges of two girls aged 13 and 14.
 He had been able to stay free by getting bail while petitioning the Appeal Court, which confirmed his sentence, then he went the country’s Supreme Court, a total eight year process.
Meanwhile Praill was arrested again in 2007 for the rape of two girls aged 11 and 9 and again given bail. That case has not gone to trial.
Then in March last year he was arrested in Pattaya for abusing an eight-year-old boy, and bailed again for the equivalent of £6000. That case too awaits trial.
Praill, who ran a video hire business in Chingford, Essex , called Phoenix Entertainment, was nickname  Phi  or ‘The Ghost’ because of  his frightening appearance, said Sudarat Sereewat, Director of the FACE (Fight Against Child Exploitation)  Foundation, and a member of Thailand’s National Child Protection Committee.
But local expatriates called him ‘Davros’ a fictitious villain, and creator of the Daleks,  in the BBC TV children’s sci-fi  series ‘Dr.Who’.
When he first arrived in Thailand Praill kept a diary, now with the FACE Foundation, which detailed his attempts to buy up schoolchildren as his ‘wives’. 
But far for being their benevolent benefactor he wrote how he paid sums of just £2 and £3 for what he referred to as ‘my conjugal rights’ and baulked when they asked for more.
He also complained in his diary how British government were taxing his pension.
In February 1992 he was trying to lure a girl 12-yr-old called ‘Ann’ to his rented house but she left demanding money for her school.  ‘She does not want to provide me with even minimal conjugal rites,” he wrote bitterly.
He fortified himself with the sex drug Viagra and Vitamin C capsules and trawled three locations in Pattaya, the Royal Garden Centre  the Siren Bar and the ‘Made in Thailand’ market where he knew young girls hung out and found another 12-yr-old called Lek .
He wrote how he provided ‘lacquer’ for Lek and her friends , who sniffed glue in his front room, and of his desire to conquer her.   But each time  he tried she complained ‘I don’t want to’ or ‘It hurts’.
“She makes me horny.  How long can I take this?” he asked his diary.
Then on Wednesday May 6th 1992 he announced in triumph that his grooming had been successful: “About 10 p.m. I have the best session ever. She seems to enjoy it.”
Praill went on to marry the girl in a Buddhist ceremony after she became 15 and he had paid the parents a dowry of £1000.  Monks blessed and Praill later boasted: “A policeman played the organ at the wedding party.”
He had employed the girl’s parents as his household staff.  But there may have been another motive for the marriage.  In his diary he wrote how Lek knew a ‘virgin’ working in a local tropical garden and elephant t show tourist attraction, whom she could bring to the house.
His marriage lasted only three months before his young bride walked out to be with friends her own age.
FACE Director Sudarat Sereewat said: “The Supreme Court decision is good news for children in Thailand and for those fighting to suppress child abuse. 
“Maurice Praill, I feel, should never have been given bail to continue with his abuses and interfere with witnesses and had already complained to the Regional Police.  It was a difficult case because Praill would pay the families.  Children are now safe from him.”
Abusers in Thailand have easily been able to play the system in the past. Police often negotiate compensation payments for the victims and for their own time.  Parents do not want their children to go to court and would much prefer monetary compensation.