Bangkok to set up crime hotlines

Bangkok to set up crime hotlines

BANGKOK (DPA): Hotline centers will be set up in Bangkok this year to deal with rising cases of violent crimes against children and women, a Thai politician disclosed yesterday.

The centers, to be manned by social welfare officials and psychiatrists, will field calls from victims of abuse who are usually afraid to approach police with their complaints, according to a Bangkok legislator Paveena Hongsakul.

Paveena has launched the Bangkok hotline program in response to a recent spate of gruesome rape-murder cases involving young girls. Earlier this month an ex-convict, freshly released from prison under a royal amnesty, raped and strangled a five-year old school girl in her kindergarten toilet.

Last week another rape-murder case was splashed over the front pages of Bangkok's tabloids involving a four-year-old girl. The chief suspect in the case was the girl's stepfather.