ANECDOTE

An Australian, Bradley Pendragon, was charged with beating and raping two Thai girls, aged 8 and 11 in a Bangkok hotel room in October 1993. Pornographic photographs made of the assaults show the youngest girl crying as she was orally raped. Pendragon was arrested after a series of pictures was sent to a Bangkok child protection agency by a photo-processing laboratory in Chiang Mai. Captain Soontorn told the Bangkok Southern Criminal Court that he rescued the girls, who had been sold into prostitution by their family, after they had been working in Bangkok's Patpong bar district for about four months in November 1993. The Thai pimps were allegedly paid between $250 and $500 by foreign clients, but the mother and grandmother received only $20 or $40 a time. Pedragon is already serving a sentence for the rape of a nine-year-old mentally handicapped girl in the northern city of Chiang Mai - the first conviction of an Australian for sexual assault of a minor in `Thailand.