Kids 'Sitting Ducks' for Pedophile Teachers

Oct. 18, 2007— -- Amid the bars and nightclubs of Bangkok's Khao San Road, the city's main backpacker hangout, fliers advertise English-language teaching jobs available to virtually anyone capable of reading the posters.

Teaching English has been a mainstay of countless Westerners looking to live in Asia, or simply looking for enough cash to keep traveling. In a region hungry to learn the international language of commerce and diplomacy, established schools and fly-by-night "language centers" employ transient tourists, recent college graduates and sometimes, inadvertently, sexual predators looking for young victims.

Canadian Christopher Paul Neil, 32, is the most recent alleged pedophile accused of exploiting the region's demand for English teachers and lax hiring practices in an effort to rape children.

Though technology once kept the face and identity of Neil hidden behind a computer generated swirl, Interpol and Thai police now believe he is hiding amid Bangkok's winding streets.

Since discovering pictures online three years ago of a man seen raping 12 boys, some as young as 6, in Vietnam and Cambodia, German police have worked to identify the suspect whose face had been digitally obscured. Neil, who is believed to have taught at a Thai school from 2003-2004, was caught on camera at the Bangkok Airport entering Thailand last week from Seoul, South Korea. A student at a Korean school in the southern city of Gwangju identified Neil has having taught there for three months.

"It is really a matter of access to children. How do foreigners access children in this region?" asked Rosalind Prober, president of the Canadian children's advocacy group Beyond Borders, by phone from Bangkok.

"There are many ways, depending on the skills you have. While some men pay for sex, teaching offers the perfect venue for access to others. ... These men are highly manipulative and experienced. … Schoolchildren are simply sitting ducks. There are lots of cultural mores about welcoming foreigners and many cultural taboos about complaining about teachers."