Following tourist complaints that the Diamond Blue Sky Bar in South Pattaya had boys as sex workers, undercover police checked the place at about 12.30am and found Thai boys aged 11 to 17 on the gay bar's ground floor, said Tourist Police inspector Lt-Colonel Wutthichart Luansukhon.

On the second floor, which is divided into small rooms, police allegedly found US citizen Ronald D Sims, 44, a kindergarten teacher from Kansas, having sex with the boy in one of the rooms, Wutthichart said. Police took them together with bar manager Jare Rathum, 27, and some 20 other boys to the Tourist Police station, he said.

Jare confessed that the bar had been in business for a long time with many local boys coming in and out to sell sex to foreign tourists, for which they were paid a salary of Bt15,000, police said.

Jare also allegedly said Sims was a customer paying the boy Bt500 to perform a sexual service.

Police charged Jare with running an establishment with persons aged under 18 and soliciting underage boys for prostitution, while Sims was charged with engaging in a lewd act with a person over 15 but not over 18, even though it was consensual.

Wutthichart said police had been assigned to crack down on foreigners committing sex crimes against children, youths and women in the precinct.

An investigation found that Sims, who had been in Pattaya for two weeks, was frequenting the bar, so police had been shadowing him and followed him to make the arrest.

The Nation

Pattaya