Christopher Neil, the Maple Ridge, B.C., man who gained international notoriety in 2007 as one of the world's most wanted pedophiles has been sentenced to six more years in a Thai prison for abusing a second little boy.
Neil, 33, was already serving three years and three months in jail after pleading guilty this past summer to abusing a 13-year-old boy in 2003. On Monday, Thailand's Criminal Court said that it had also convicted him earlier this month of abusing that boy's little brother, who was nine years old at the time of the abuse.
Neil, who had denied abusing the younger boy, was also ordered to pay $1,800 to the victim's family.
"The boy testified that Christopher Neil paid him about $15 to $30 to perform various sexual acts with him back in 2003," Steve Chao told CTV Newsnet from Beijing on Monday.
Neil is expected to serve the six-year-sentence consecutively with his earlier three-year-jail-term.
Neil made international headlines in the fall of 2007 after Interpol used high tech software to determine his identity in child porn photos. His face had been digitally altered in the photos, showing a swirl of colours. Police managed to "unswirl" the images, allowing them to see Neil's face.
They then gave the images to media outlets around the world in one of the most publicized pedophile manhunts in history. Neil was caught after flying to Thailand from South Korea, where he was a teacher.
Chao, who interviewed Neil after his arrest, said prison guards got a different image of the Canadian than the one convicted for sex crimes against children.
"Christopher Neil is a very polite man, a very intelligent man. He's soft spoken and very gentle, and that's what other guards told us," Chao said.
He noted, however, that Neil appeared nervous during the CTV interview. At the time, he told CTV that the evidence against him would not hold up in a Canadian court.
