"Dr. Pinkaew" says "Somyot's" apology post to "Ms. A" is tantamount to whitewashing sexual violence into a husband-and-wife matter, pointing out that even invoking the claim that "she moved in to live with him" cannot erase the coerced consent that occurred beforehand. She calls on the labour movement and the democracy movement to jointly ban him and cut off the power circuit that enables predatory behaviour.
Following the case in which Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, a senior political activist, posted an apology after a young woman using the pseudonym "Ms. A" came forward to expose his sexually abusive behaviour — with Somyot claiming he had misunderstood and thought the woman had consented — Professor Dr. Pinkaew Laungaramsri of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, has posted a message on her Facebook account, Pinkaew Laungaramsri, as follows:
Somyot's apology was entirely predictable in the form it took — namely, it shifts the issue away from the accusations of abuse and grooming behaviour and reframes it as a relationship problem between two people who once lived together, quarrelled, and broke up. To put it more plainly, it is a whitewashing of violence into a husband-and-wife matter.
What we do not find in the apology is any acknowledgement of the exercise of power in the grooming behaviour that lies at the heart of the accusations — a pattern that has been carried out for decades.
I would translate "grooming" in the context of sexual abuse as "sexual predation" or "predatory sexual behaviour," because it refers to the process by which a person with greater power gradually builds trust, emotional attachment, and dependency — through offering mentorship, providing work, opening up networks, giving rides, offering praise, making the other party feel special or important — and then slowly pushes the boundaries of the relationship until refusal or withdrawal becomes increasingly difficult.
The issue, therefore, is not whether a 25-year-old and a 64-year-old can fall in love. The issue is: who holds power over whom, who is the one providing opportunities, work, networks, and status, and who is dependent on whom — and whether that power was deliberately wielded from the outset for the purpose of a sexual relationship. Grooming complicates the question of consent, because the freedom to say "no" within a process that binds the victim into the relationship across multiple levels is far from simple — especially when refusal may mean losing a job, losing a mentor, losing trust, losing a network, or being made to feel that one is betraying the movement. This kind of consent is coerced into existence at a moment when the victim feels uncomfortable but does not know how to handle what is happening.
Saying "she later moved in to live with us" does not erase the non-consent that occurred beforehand, and it does not retroactively prove that abuse never took place. Some people who have been groomed may love, admire, feel attached to, or remain in the relationship for a long time — but those bonds do not cancel out the exercise of power that occurred earlier. In fact, that attachment was the goal of grooming from the very beginning.
But the problem in this case does not lie with a single individual alone, because grooming cannot sustain itself solely through the capability of the perpetrator. It requires an environment that protects those with influence.
The activist community protects this kind of behaviour: by allowing "contributions to the movement" to be placed above scrutiny; by reframing accusations of sexual violence as private matters; by shifting the burden of vigilance onto women and younger generations; and by making it so that speaking about violence is seen as an act of destroying the movement.
And of course, by demanding that the perpetrator come out and apologise — and then, once he has apologised and said he will not do it again (meaning he will not misunderstand again?), declaring the matter closed.
This kind of apology does not change the power — the power relationship — that the predator holds within the movement in the slightest. It is an apology without scrutiny or any change to the conditions that would allow sexual abuse to happen again. This kind of apology is not accountability; it is a ritual cleansing of the reputation of a powerful person, so that he may return to the same space once more.
As for me, I unfriended this person last night. That is what I can do as an individual. But as for the labour movement and the democracy movement: a person who faces serious accusations of sexual abuse, and who still reduces what happened to nothing more than a private relationship problem, should not hold the status of a leader, should not be a mentor, should not be a provider of opportunities, should not be the one selecting people into the network, and should no longer have power over younger generations.
This is not a matter of "banning" someone out of anger. It is a matter of cutting off the circuit of power that allows predation to happen again. If the movement continues to choose to protect the prestige of an older generation over the safety of those with less power, that movement has no right to claim that it is fighting against authoritarianism any longer.
