January 2009 Sick Brit jailed for child rape THE stepdad of a professional footballer known as ‘The Ghost’ to street children in Thailand was today jailed for 14 years for child rape. Maurice Praill, 78, given his spooky nickname because of his frightening face, had allegedly abused local children in the South East Asian country for more than 18 years. Today, he was locked up for the rape of two under-aged girls. The sicko said he was stunned at the verdict and insisted the elder of the two victims, aged 14, wanted to MARRY him. After the sentence, read to him at the Provincial Court of Chonburi, he said: “I just like helping young people, sex or not, never mind, it was not the main thing”. Asked today if he considered himself a paedophile, he said: “That word is not one which I use. I call it ‘pay to feel’. “These girls were paid.” Praill, from Harold Hill, Essex, had been arrested several times in Thailand for child sex offences and released on bail by the police and courts. Local newspapers reported that in the early 90s he just ‘paid fines’ at the local police station, another way of saying he paid off officers and victims. But then Praill, the stepfather of former Irish International and Crystal Palace footballer Jon Goodman, was sentenced to 14 years in December 2001 on the rape charges of two girls aged 13 and 14. He took the case to the Appeal Court, which confirmed his sentence, but still allowed him to appeal to the country’s Supreme Court, a total eight year process, retaining his freedom. Meanwhile Praill, who ran a video hire business in Chingford, Essex, called Phoenix Entertainment, was arrested again in 2007 for the rape of two girls aged 11 and nine. That case appears now to have vanished from the criminal court system. Then in March last year he was arrested in Pattaya for abusing an eight-year-old boy, and was again given bail. He is still due to appear in court again in June this year for that offence. Sudarat Sereewat, director of FACE (Fight Against Child Exploitation) Foundation, and a member of Thailand’s National Child Protection Committee said Praill, was nicknamed Phi or ‘The Ghost’ because of his frightening appearance. When he first arrived in Thailand he kept a diary, now with the FACE Foundation, which detailed his attempts to buy up schoolchildren as his ‘wives’. He wrote how he paid sums of just £2 and £3 for what he referred to as ‘my conjugal rights’ and baulked when the girls asked for more. He took Viagra and trawled three locations in Pattaya, the Royal Garden Centre and Siren Bar and the ‘Made in Thailand’ market, where he knew young girls hung out and found another 12-year-old. He wrote how he provided ‘lacquer’ for the girl and her friends, who sniffed glue in his front room, and of his desire to conquer her. “She makes me horny. Her body is firm,” he wrote. “How long can I take this?.” Then on Wednesday May 6, 1992, he announced he had his way with the girl, describing it as “the best session ever”. Praill went on to marry the girl in a Buddhist ceremony after she became 15. He had employed the girl’s parents as his household staff, and paid them a £1000 dowry. But the marriage lasted only three months before his young bride walked out to be with friends her own age. FACE Director Sudarat Sereewat said: “The Supreme Court decision is good news for children in Thailand and for those fighting to suppress child abuse. “Maurice Praill, I feel, should never have been given bail to continue with his abuses and interfere with witnesses and had already complained to the Regional Police. Children are now safe from him.”