Thai trafficker who lured children to his home with computer games gets record 374-year jail sentence

Yuttana Kodsap, 31, was found guilty of child trafficking for the purpose of pornography

He lured children aged seven to 12 to his home, where he filmed sexual acts with them and sold the videos on a chat app, police said

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The trafficker filmed sexual acts with children and sold the videos on a chat app. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 5:00am, 18 Oct 2019Updated: 6:21am, 18 Oct 2019

A man in Thailand who lured minors to his house to film sex acts with them has been sentenced to a record 374 years in jail for child trafficking, in a ruling that lawyers say will send a deterrent message.

Yuttana Kodsap, 31, was found guilty of child trafficking for the purpose of pornography, after he lured children aged seven to 12 years old to play computer games at his house, where he filmed sexual acts with them and sold the videos on a chat app, police said.

A court in Thailand’s southern province of Phang Nga sentenced him to 374 years in jail for his crimes and ordered him to pay 800,000 Thai baht (US$26,000) in compensation to each of the five victims, according to court documents provided to the Thomson Reuters Foundation by the Court of Justice.

The case was the second trafficking case in Thailand in which offenders were sentenced to more than 300 years in jail. Last year, the criminal court sentenced three men to up to 309 years each for trafficking children for prostitution.

In both cases, courts capped the imprisonment period at 50 years in accordance with Thai law.

Papop Siamhan, an independent lawyer with expertise in human trafficking, said child prostitution cases resulted in long prison sentences because they often involved several laws and many children.