L.A. Daily News April, 20th, 2010As a California State University Northridge associate professor, Kenneth Ng spends his days teaching students the principles of economics: markets, monetary policy, interest rates.
But in his free time, Ng focuses on a very different kind of market: sex tourism in Thailand.
For the past year, Ng has been running a website that offers insights into the Thai bar scene, such as where to meet beautiful women and how to negotiate fees for their services.
Ng, who has worked at Cal State Northridge, for nearly half of his 50 years, never actively advertised his moonlighting gig to his students or academic colleagues.
But he was outed by a group of foreign businessmen who were outraged by what they considered a disrespectful internet posting. They contact his employer and colleagues, hoping Ng would be pressured into taking down his site.
University officials say they will not intervene or discipline Ng as long as his extracurricular activities do not involve public resources.
And Ng, himself, is defiant in his refusal.
"I am not going to let anyone make take it down." Ng said in a recent interview. "That's just a personality thing."
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Since the L.A. Daily News published this article early last week, the debate has been heated among the American public over his website content. People were outraged by his website promoting sex tourism in Thailand. The former U.S. Justice Department official and the founder of the organization PornHarms, Patrick Truman says that if Ng's website content is "enticing and inducing" a person to travel internationally in pursuit of prostitution, he is in violation of federal law, U.S. Code 18;2422(a)-(b). As of last week, Change.org reports that the professor's sex tourism website was voluntarily taken down by Ng because of the petition and complaints submitted by the American public. Amanda Kloer at Change.org suggests that "A reduction in websites pushing sex tourists to Thailand can really have an impact on the sex industry there. Since sex trafficking is a demand-drive industry, few buyers looking for women or children means fewer traffickers willing to supply them. And that means, of course, fewer victims."
Even if he personally shut down his website, he should still face criminal charges for promoting sex tourism on the web.
ReplyDeleteI'm so relieved to hear that his sight was taken down. I wonder if he'll find a different venue for it since I doubt it was so voluntary. So grateful the public stepped up for this one!
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