Rory’s current lawyer has told the family it is highly likely this was a scam.<\/p>\n
Until the hearing, his parents remain unsure when he will come home. <\/p>\n
“We have no great confidence that things will be resolved now,” Helen said.<\/p>\n
“It is just the unknown that is scary. We don’t know for certain what will happen now and that is what keeps us up at night.”<\/p>\n
John added: “It is incredible that Rory could go to jail on a charge where the injured party says she knows it is a misunderstanding – and does not want to press charges.”<\/p>\n
Speaking to his parents over FaceTime, Rory said: “I’ll email my lawyer tomorrow to see what is happening but hopefully I will be home soon. <\/p>\n
“I don’t leave the hotel most days. Some days I try to go for a walk to get exercise.<\/p>\n
“I just need to stay strong and keep putting a brave face on.”<\/p>\n
The BBC spoke to a police officer at Chanasongkhram police station in Bangkok who confirmed that Rory was arrested between 9-10 March on the charges of theft by night for stealing a mobile phone.<\/p>\n
When asked about the claims that it had been a misunderstanding, the officer said there was no record about it and that “the offence has been done.”<\/p>\n
He said the case was now at the prosecutor’s level and said other details could be clarified in court.<\/p>\n
Under the Thai criminal code, such a charge is punished with imprisonment of one to five years and fined \u00a346 to \u00a3228, or 2,000 to 10,000 Thai baht.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Foreign Office confirmed it was supporting a UK resident arrested abroad and was in communication with the local authorities. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory’s current lawyer has told the family it is highly likely this was a scam. Until the hearing,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-548702","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}