BRITISH MEDIA MOGUL SUES OVER SEX TRAFFICKING ALLEGATIONS AFTER BAILING HIS WIFE ON CHILD ABDUCTION & CHILD PROSTITUTION CHARGES.
A British online newspaper publisher, whose real money-making business is in the Thai sex trade, is suing a man who has allegedly accused him of being a sex trafficker.
In case 888/2567 scheduled to start tomorrow (Wednesday) in the Thai resort of Pattaya Bryan Stephen Flowers is suing Adam Ryan Howell over allegations said to have been made in a YouTube video.
This case could be controversial. Flowers is one of the biggest operators of bar-brothels in the Thai resort and now possibly Thailand. He is also a media mogul with a national news site in English and Thai and other provincial news sites in Thailand. (But his most successful is his flagship site the Pattaya News, which is often trawled by foreign tabloids.)
And Flowers has been in the middle of mafia wars in the Thai sex resort where foreign bar owners have been competing over ownership of young Thai women to feed to tourists.
Further Flower’s Thai wife Punnipa Flowers is accused in court of the very things he is contesting.
Together with two others, an English bar manager named William Reece and Jaranya Deeppair, a cashier, Punnipa Flowers is accused at Pattaya Provincial court of eight offences which include, human trafficking, child abduction and child prostitution.
This relates to a raid last year on the Flowers controlled Flirt Bar in Pattaya’s Soi 6 – a lane regarded as the cheapest and sleaziest end of the sex industry in Pattaya. The trial is due to end after the New Year.
Thailand’s Trafficking in Persons Unit said the charges related to a 16-year-old girl who was found to have been employed at the bar.
Flowers has twenty-seven bars offering sex workers with rooms provided where the acts can take place. It would still have been illegal, even if the girl had been an adult, but local and Thai government officials turn a blind eye as the sex trade bring in billions.
Flowers, 42, from Coventry, is a career sex merchandiser. He quit his business course at Worcester University in 2007 and arrived in Thailand initially to operate a website called Pattaya Addicts, primarily for sex tourists to Soi 6. He made money from selling advertising and organising ‘tours’ of Soi 6.
He then bought his first bar called the Night Wish with funds from his dad and a private investor, according to his own online biography.
All his sex bars bars come under the Night Wish Group. But, as a company, ‘Night Wish’ was dissolved many years ago. And Flowers deliberately does not appear to have his name, instead solely using Thai nominees, on any of the sex businesses, which operate strictly on a cash basis and also include a law firm, a security business, and the Rage Fight Acadamy. He is always advertising for foreign bar managers and sex workers on the Night Wish Facebook page.
The local foreign controlled English language media in Pattaya are notoriously unreliable. Foreigners start online newspapers to curry favour with local police and government officials, earn respectability and sometimes to deal with their enemies (A bit like the British national press then, but without journalists!) Flowers is no exception and makes frequent presentations to police and city officials.
The Pattaya People newspaper group is run by a Dane, Nils Colov, who, prior to his arrival in Thailand, was convicted and jailed for pimping in Copenhagen. Nils also rose to be leader of the ex-pat police volunteers.
The Pattaya Times was the baby of an American called Drew Noyes, who used it for extortion. Noyes fled Thailand back to North Carolina, after being convicted and sentenced to three years jail for extortion. He had got bail and his passport back while appealing his sentence.
Neither Bryan Flowers nor Adam Judd, the ‘editorial director’ of the Pattaya News replied to requests for comment. Adam Judd was formerly manager of the ‘Sexy in the City’ bar in Soi 6, part of Flower’s Nightwish Group.
Only one version of the Flirt Bar raid made it to the British media. No Pattaya online newspaper mentioned that the raid related to an under-aged sex worker. MailOnline, a voracious gobbler of unchecked stories worldwide carried this almost word for word from Pattaya websites.
Meanwhile in the mafia bar wars in Pattaya rival bars try to lure sex workers from each other’s business. This includes parking vehicles outside the bars of rivals displaying more attractive base rates for ‘hostesses’ and ‘coyotes’ and ‘PRs’ – different classes of sex workers.
Despite his claimed contacts Flowers failed in his bid to city hall to declare Soi 6 a traffic free street to stop this behaviour.
Whatever happens this will be a case to watch – not least for some interesting witnesses who might crawl out of the woodwork – and maybe to discover where all the riches go.
The defendent Howell could not be traced but there is no evidence that he is an operator in the Pattaya sex industry.
