A 42-year-old former music teacher at a Bangkok international school has been sentenced to five years in jail for trying to orchestrate the abuse of young girls in the Philippines while he was teaching in Thailand.
Last Friday British national James Alexander, a former teacher at Bromsgrove International School, was convicted of plotting to abuse children by the Leeds Crown Court, which also banned him from all foreign travel and placed him on a permanent sex offender list.
“Alexander clearly tried to manipulate and exploit the poverty of the vulnerable in order to gratify his sick sexual desires,” said the UK National Crime Agency’s senior investigating officer, Hazel Stewart. “He believed he could abuse Filipino children safely from his home and wanted to visit the Philippines to carry out the sexual abuse himself.”
The Leeds native was arrested by the agency last year on June 30 upon arriving to the Manchester Airport from Thailand, where he had lived since 2017.
The agency busted Alexander after he sent money to unidentified facilitators known for live-streaming child abuse from Illigan City in Northern Mindanao, Philippines. The agency said one suspect in the Philippines has been arrested and several children placed under protective care.
After arresting Alexander, investigators found evidence on his devices of at least 15 money transfers to abuse facilitators between August 2017 and this past June. During that time, he asked the facilitators to send him images of girls under 13 posing indecently.
Investigators also said they found numerous illicit photos of minors on Alexander’s phone along with messages in which he described how would like to abuse children as young as 4.
What’s more, Alexander tried to arrange travel to the Philippines to abuse children in person, but there are no records of him ever traveling there.
While living in Thailand, Alexander worked as a part-time DJ while teaching at Bromsgrove International, which is located in the eastern district of Min Buri. He was dismissed from the school shortly after he was arrested. The agency said no evidence of abuse was found during his time at the school.
Reached for comment today, the school declined to respond.
Reader Interactions