The abduction of Caramen T.

End 1999, I was offered by a German group to carry out a project for them at Bayer Thailand in Rayong.

I was tired of living alone, working 7 days on 7 around the clock without having time for a personal life, and thus I accepted their offer.

I had recently suffered a Stroke and a Heart failure and I was ready for a change in my life.

I left Belgium in January 2000 and started to do the project at Bayer in Rayong (Thailand) as a Project Manager.

It was something new for me and a challenge.

One evening, after work, I was eating dinner with the German group at a restaurant in Pattaya.

The waitress was constantly looking at me and trying to be "over friendly".

When we wanted to leave the restaurant, the owner came to me and asked me if I would fancy to take the waitress with me.

She was "in love" with me and wanted to go live with me.

I denied the offer, but my colleagues started to tease me and at the end I found myself in a taxi with the waitress.

We started to be friends and in 28 January 2000, we did the Buddhist wedding.

My Buddhist wedding.
From left to right:
My mother-in-law, my wife, myself, my father-in-law.

After the project was finished in mid 2001, we stay together and moved to Nakhon Ratchasima where I was supposed to start a new company with a few others who had also been working on the project at Bayer.

Our rented house in N. Ratchasima.

Although my girlfriend guaranteed me that she could have no children (she was "cut"), a child was born in 2002.

The "immaculate conception".

We agreed to name the child "Carmen", the name of my aunt who passed away a few years before the birth of my daughter.

But at the City Hall, it was not possible to write "Carmen" in Thai script, and we settled with the name "Caramen".

Every Thai had a "Nickname" and we gave her the nickname "Samui".

Birth of Caramen.

For the sake of the child, Caramen aka "Samui", we married legally at the City Hall of Bangrak (in Bangkok) on 9 September 2003.

09/09/2003
The marriage at the city hall of Bangrak (Bangkok).

In 2004, I was looking forward to get a health insurance for our daughter.

I knew that the health expenses could get very high in Thailand and the Social Security was not from a high-standard.

If our daughter or my wife would have to stay a few days at the hospital, the bill could end with a 6 digit number.

I found a company who would do the health insurance, Bangkok Bank Insurance, and signed a contract with them for all our family members (including my grandson).

The health insurance contract of my daughter.

In the evening, while my wife was reading the insurance contract (printed in Thai language), my wife turned to me and said:

"Darling, do you know that if Samui (our daughter) would die in an accident we will get 2 million Baht?".

I looked at my wife and nodded "Yes, I know".

My wife continued with:
"What do you think if Samui would have a little accident and would die?"
"We get 2 million baht and we can make a new child."

I kicked my wife instantly out of the house and did not allow her to come anywhere near our child.

But a few days later she returned with a a lot of police officers and I had to let her in as we were legally married and she was the mother of the child.

I let my wife back in, but life was not the same anymore.

We had a few good times together.

But most of the times, my wife was away or she was quarrelling because she had not enough money for gambling.

My wife had no work and no income.

I was supporting the (extended) family with my pension.

I noticed that many times money was missing and I started to watch my money.

I found out that my wife was stealing money out of my wallet to support her gambling habit.

Mostly while I was sleeping.

I bought a little safe where I put my wallet and my valuables.

One day, while I was taking money at an ATM, I noticed that my daughter was watching me.

She never did this before.

When I asked her why she was watching me, she said:

“Mama asked me to look which PIN number you are selecting.”

I answered her that it was not a nice thing to do and from that day I made sure that nobody was watching my movements at an ATM machine.

I also had to change my code at the safe at home as my daughter saw me selecting the code and mama had told her to watch me opening the safe.

My wife had many times an “outburst” of anger and at such moments she destroyed many things in the house.

Top left: broken glass and dishes.
Top right: a bended lid which was thrown into a door.
Bottom: my daughter shows a box where the glasses were stored.

In July 25, 2010, my daughter wanted to play with her "in-line skates" at the house of Christian Gabel, a school friend.

I asked my wife to join us, but she had a meeting at the local "casino" with some friends.

So I went to the family Gabel, alone with my daughter.

I had a few things to do and I knew that my daughter was in safe hands, so I went to the IT-Center to buy some things.

But I was barely in the IT-Center when I got a phone call from the friends' mother, Katae, that I shall directly come back because my daughter felt down with her skates and was crying from pain.

I drove back as fast as I could and when I arrived at the friends house I found my daughter sitting on a coach and crying from pain.

Apparently, she had been trying to jump with the skates over a log and fell on her left arm.

I took my daughter in the car and drove to the nearest hospital, St. Mary.

On my way to the hospital, I made a halt at our house to tell my wife what happened, but she had no time and "it was not so important".

At the hospital, it seemed that my daughters left arm was broken at the elbow and an operation was needed to insert a screw to hold the arm together.

I signed the agreement for the operation and waited at the ICU for my daughter to come back.

A few hours later my daughter was brought to the ICU and the doctor said that everything went fine but he was required to fill a claim with the police as the accident was "suspicious".

The doctor called my wife and asked her to come as soon as possible to the hospital.

A few hours later, whilst I was waiting with my daughter at her room, my wife arrived.

The doctor told my wife that our daughters arm was broken long ago and never was taken care off.

The break was probably caused by a sudden pulling of the arm by another person.

My wife started to laugh and said that she remember that our daughter was playing with the fridge door a few years ago and my wife pulled her away from the fridge.

She heard a strange sound while pulling our daughter away from the fridge, but didn't think it was serious.

The doctor filed a complaint at the local police, but I never heard anything of it again.

My daughter and me at the hospital after the operation.

Later that year, in October, we would get a vacation with my daughter her school friends, Christian and Christopher Gabel, to Indonesia.

We had done this trip a few times and she enjoyed it.

Although I had already booked 3 tickets for the trip, my wife did not want to join us this time as she had "more important things to do".

I went with my daughter alone on the trip and my daughter enjoyed the holiday with her school friend.

When we came back, my house had been flooded a week before.

Inside my house there had been about 75 cm of dirty flood water.

Everything inside my house was destroyed and had to be replaced.

The house needed also to be cleaned and repaint.

My wife was away to her family in Chaiyaphum at the moment of the flood, but she returned home a few days before me.

I started to bring the old furniture outside the house, when I found a map labelled from a bank and filled with documents.

This bank was unknown to me.

I opened the map and found documents to ask for a loan at the bank.

My wife did not only had the guts to ask for a loan while I was on a holiday with our daughter, but she included in the loan demand personal documents which she had no rights on.

One of these documents was a foreign currency bank account on my personal name in which I kept 800,000 Baht as required by immigration for my Visa.

I told my wife to leave our house immediately and that I would ask for a divorce.

A few days later, my wife called me and said that she had pledged "a ring from my father" and that if the gold shop does not receive the monthly debt payment, the ring would be lost.

I found this rather strange as I had no ring from my father.

I told my wife to go to the gold shop with me and show me the ring.

At the gold shop, I was showed the engagement ring I received from my first wife which I was keeping in the safe.

Not the ring of my father.

The engagement ring which I got from my 1st wife.

I called immediately the police and wanted to file a theft as my wife had no right to pledge the ring and the gold shop should ensure that the ring was not stolen before pledging it.

In order to avoid police muddling, the gold shop returned me the ring and said that they would handle the case with my wife directly.

I left the gold shop and did not see my wife back until the divorce in 2013.

End 2012, I found that the time was ripe to ask for a divorce and I hired a lawyer to handle the divorce.

I asked my lawyer to see if we could divorce without the involvement of a court.

But my wife started to ask incredible financial demands and there was no way I would meet her demands after all she had done.

After a few weeks of discussion with the lawyer, I took the case in my own hands and made a final proposal to my wife.

I would give her 40,000 baht if she signed the divorce papers and would agree with giving me the "sole parenthood" of our daughter.

The 40,000 Baht was a Divorce settlement.

The ongoing wage for a normal person at that time was about 9,000 Baht per month.

If she would not accept, I would bring the divorce to the court with all the proof of her gambling and abuse of our daughter.

My wife accepted the divorce and on January 24th, 2013, the divorce was a fact.

The divorce agreement.

I had been taking care of my daughter previously, so it would be no problem for me to keep taking care of her.

I had a degree as a teacher and was far better in educating than most teachers in Thailand.

My daughter grew up with me and everybody was astonished to see what I had achieved in her education.

People who meet me and my daughter asked me to take care of their son/daughter too.

My daughter was offered jobs as a "Public Relations" person due to her knowledge of English and her overall knowledge.

I spend most of my days taking care of my daughter and giving her additional education.

For example, one day she came from school and she told me that she had trouble with the lesson of "Computer Parts".

So, I went with her to a computer shop, took an old motherboard, and started to teach her how every part looked in real, where it was located and what their purpose was.

The Crystal which was generating the timing pulses, the CPU, the GPU, the I/O processor, etc.

The boss of the computer shop had never seen before, a father teaching his son/daughter about computers the way I was doing, and was taking pictures to publish on Facebook and other Social Media.

She got many times felicitations at school for her work.

We also made an agreement that on the start of the summer holidays, she could chose 1 hobby.

The catch was that she would continue to do that hobby at least 1 year.

She learnt that way many extra curriculair skills.

Golf, knitting and crocheting, riding horses, Aikido, diving, design, music (Ukulele, guitar, keyboard, etc.), badminton, and many other skills.

At the time of the abduction, 16 years old, she had been teaching Aikido and she was playing in a music band.

Although, most of the teaching in music was done by me and the teacher at the music school asked me many times how something was done.

น้อง สมุย ครับ เรียน กับ เรา 8 ชม ครับ
Samui after 8 hours of study with us.

A few months before her abduction, she made a "PDF" presentation for the school about her skills.

Later she made also an English version of this PDF presentation.

Now, most of these skillls are gone and forgotten.

But she can speak "Dutch".

Thanks to the BELGIAN authorities.

My daughter resides now in a "Youth House Center" and everything, including school, is paid by the Belgian citizens.

She is allowed to stay there untill 2025.

After 2025, she is supposed to leave the youth house and look for somewhere to live on her own.

But at my visit in 2022, I was told by the manager of the youth house that the judge can allow her to stay longer there if there would doubts about her wellbeing.