“I have never had a dream. Since childhood, I have never thought about what I will be when I grow up, but I have thought that I will get a job that will earn enough to feed me. I have never thought of becoming a doctor or a nurse. I have never thought that far. Just look at my house. I think I can never reach that point…….” [Nim, 24th Feb. 2023]
This statement is part of an interview the Mirror Foundation had with Nim, the 17-year-old mother of the missing 8-month-old baby boy, last Friday night. It has not been published until today, as the foundation thought that the situation on Friday made it inappropriate to do so.
The foundation hopes, however, that this interview will reveal to society another side of the incident and to enable an understanding of the background of a young girl, up to the point of becoming a criminal suspect.
The interview was conducted before she admitted to police that she had dumped her baby into a canal near her house and the “accident” that led to her committing the act, which has led to her being charged with manslaughter and with providing false statements to the police.
“We have never had a home of our own. I either lived in a rented house or a small house at a fish pond, where my father worked as a guard,” she said, adding that her family was poor throughout her childhood.
Life at school was also tough for her, as she talked about being bullied and treated as “non-existent” by her classmates. “I stayed alone and did everything alone. I never had a close friend but had some acquaintances with whom we went places together. We never talked about our personal lives and we never did anything together at school.”
She said that she felt that she did not want to go to school and, one day, her father asked her why. She replied she simply didn’t want to. “Deep in my heart, I wanted to go to school. My grades were not bad,” she told the Mirror Foundation.
Nim admitted that she has never hugged her mother because her mother had hearing problems and could not hear what she said. The relationship with her mother gradually deteriorated, until she became bed-ridden and she had to take her to a hospital for physiotherapy.
“…but I love my dad and I will tell him everything, but I don’t like him when he gets drunk and often quarrelled with mother. It has happened so often since I was young and I didn’t like it. I cried as I tried to ask Dad to stop, but he didn’t stop.”
Nim said that she cried so often that, by the time she grew up, she was used to the situation “but it hurts.” She said that her grandmother told her not to bother with them when they quarrelled because they would, eventually, stop.
“…but my heart still cried,” said Nim, adding that she finally resorted to reprimanding her father instead of crying. “I felt that home was not a happy place for me.”
She said that she felt happy when she was out of the home with Pud, her partner, adding that, when she decided to live with him, she was happy because he would give her advice and consolation.
She admitted that she didn’t intend to have the baby, but never thought of having an abortion, adding, however, that both of them didn’t have any money for the child’s delivery.
“We have never had anything, only that which was given to us. I have never had anything after leaving the hospital.”
Asked by the Mirror Foundation what she would do if the clock could be turned back, Nim said that there is nothing that can be rectified now. “Today, I feel that I have nobody, nobody at all,” she said.
Nim confessed to the police, after over 3 weeks of questioning, that she put the baby into a canal near her home, in panic, after the boy accidentally fell from the arms onto the floor during a bath and suffered a seizure.
The detail of the incident remains unknown to the public. The Central Juvenile and Family Court in Nakhon Pathom Province has released Nim on bail, with a surety of 10,000 Baht on the condition that she remains in the care of her parents.
