Urgent Safety Crisis: How a Terrifying Encounter Forced Us to Move and Seek Protection in Thailand
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By the grace of God, we were able to take our son Sam to college at Asia Pacific International University (APIU) to learn to be a nurse. APIU has the best nursing school program in Thailand. While we were away from our home, we left the two oldest girls here, Preaw (24) and Ice (23). While Preaw was preparing to shower, she saw someone looking in the window. She was able to make a video and catch the man in the act of looking in. He ran away quickly, but with him wearing a very unique red-colored shirt, she was able to quickly identify him as the groundskeeper of the property we live at.
She immediately called us crying, and we told her to leave and go somewhere safe until we could return a few days later.
Although, you can’t see much. You can see his head looking into Preaw’s room and into the bathroom on the other side of the wall. I went with the police and to get your head where his is, it is very hard to do! He was trying very hard.
We messaged our landlords, who live in Australia, and told them about the situation. They called the perpetrator and asked him what had happened. He said he was checking for termites in our house made of concrete. The landlords are taking his side and making things harder for us to get out of our lease and move.
Preaw explaining to the police when, where and how it happened.
Our whole job with our kids is to make them feel safe, and with a sexual deviant like that around, we will never feel safe or feel like we can leave our kids with their teachers and go to the city or the states and have our kids be okay.
We got back last night at around 11 p.m. and saw his motorcycle in the usual place, at the small house about 100 feet from our house. Even after dealing with the landlords and their questioning, he thought it was okay to come and sleep at our house. We have been back for almost a day now, and when we would usually see him three or four times, we have not seen him yet. Our landlords have gone silent, and we think they are realizing the money they will lose if they acknowledge that he was doing something bad.
We went this morning and filed a police report about this situation, but since he is allowed to be on the property, they are not sure what they can do. One of the officers investigating went to the academy our kids attended and recognized some of our kids from the pictures we have around the house. They seemed to believe that he was not checking for termites because there weren’t any there. There was a big wasp nest, but he did not think it was important to remove that. And they saw how easy it was for him to see into our house.
Police Investigator, Bank
We now have to pay $100 for the police to come and check our house twice a day because retaliation is kind of a way of life around here. They gave us their personal number and encouraged us to call them if anything happens. In Thailand, when you accuse someone of something or get the police involved, they take it as a personal attack and retaliate. We are worried his family or friends from our village might try to do something to us or our kids. They encouraged my wife to register for a gun permit and keep a gun because they said retaliation is fairly common. We are not sure what we will do with that, but we want to make sure our kids will feel safe even if we aren’t here.
We have a lot of changes happening very quickly, and we have to move ASAP! We are now seeing the need for us to have our own place and not rent. We will be working on seeing what we can do about building a house on my wife’s property, but in the meantime, we will be moving closer to the city because finding a house that is large enough to suit our needs is very hard in the country.
Looking at where he was hiding to see inside our house
Please pray for us that we can get everything dealt with and find a house before the end of the month! We would like to find one sooner, but it doesn't seem reasonable to find one and move everything and everyone before then!