Boy ‘lured away by paedophile’ found after three years

Police successfully located the boy, now aged 13, this week. 

The victim still remembers his mother, who had been heartbroken over his years-long disappearance. 

“When I see my son’s face again, I feel like I’m being reborn,” the mother said yesterday. 

She lodged a complaint with police in late 2013 that her son had gone missing. 

According to the mother, her son was addicted to playing games and often frequented the gaming zone of a superstore in the family’s neighbourhood, in Bangkok’s Rat Burana district. 

“When he left home on December 2, 2013, he said he was heading off to school. But he never returned,” she recalled. 

She said she decided to check the gaming zone where her son had spent much of his time, and was told that the boy had left the establishment with a man. 

During the past three years, the boy was reportedly given Bt150 a day for food and playing games by his abductor. 

“I sent him to a gaming cafe in the mornings and picked him up in the evenings,” Wissanu Sriworn, the self-confessed sexual offender, said. 

Because the boy was addicted to games, it was easy to control him, he added. 

Police were eventually able to locate the boy at a gaming cafe in Bangkok’s Thon Buri district. 

The Metropolitan Police Bureau’s acting chief, Pol Lt-General Sanit Mahathavorn, said the suspect would be facing legal action, regardless of whether the boy agreed to stay with him or not. 

“His actions constitute crimes, [including] taking away a son from his mother,” Sanit said. 

The young victim, meanwhile, will be placed in an emotional-rehabilitation programme. 

According to police, Wissanu was also wanted for a sexual assault against three young boys in Phitsanulok province. He allegedly committed that offence while being ordained as a monk in April 2010.