Pornchai Moontri, Citizen of the Kingdom of Thailand

Pornchai Moontri waited 29 years for the image atop this post. His citizenship in the Kingdom of Thailand and his life in Divine Mercy have now come full circle.

November 3, 2021

High school and college students from Chile to China have accessed and downloaded one of my most-visited posts, “Les Miserables: The Bishop and the Redemption of Jean Valjean.” When I wrote it, I did not intend it to be a source for book reviews, but I'm happy to be of service. With over a century of reflection on this longest and most famous of Victor Hugo’s works, the redemption of a former prisoner and the Catholic bishop who set it in motion are what many people find most inspiring.

Jean Valjean is the main character in Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel, Les Miserables, about injustices in Nineteenth Century French society. At the time he wrote it, Hugo had been exiled by Emperor Napoleon to the Isle of Guernsey. Like the Amazon “woke” of today, Napoleon censored and suppressed many writers and their works.

After 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread, Jean Valjean was condemned to live on-the-run with self-righteous Inspector Javert in constant pursuit. Near starvation himself, Valjean stole two silver candlesticks from the home of a Catholic bishop. When caught, the bishop stated that the police were misinformed: “The silver was a gift,” he said. That set in motion a story of two of literature’s most noble figures, Jean Valjean and Bishop Bienvenue.

One of the great ironies of the novel is something I wrote about in the above post. After reading a draft, Victor Hugo’s adult son wanted the character of the bishop replaced with someone whose honesty and integrity would seem more realistic in Nineteenth Century France. He wanted the bishop replaced by a lawyer.

I hope most of our readers have by now divested themselves of the notion that everyone in prison is a criminal. It is not true and has never been true. And I hope readers recognize that there is nothing more essential for someone emerging from prison than a sense that he or she belongs somewhere. Being lost without hope in prison only to become lost without hope in freedom crushes all that is left of the human spirit.

This is something that, 16 years ago, I vowed would not happen to my friend, Pornchai Moontri. We were faced with the prospect that he would emerge from prison, and in a foreign land, after nearly 30 years incarcerated for an offense committed as a youth, an offense that someone else set in motion. The clear and compelling evidence for that is laid out in my post, “Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri.”

You know the rest of what happened. It is terribly painful to read, but no one should let that story pass by. Pornchai’s “going home” was far more complicated than most. He had a home as a poor but happy eleven-year-old. Having been abandoned by his single parent mother at age two, he grew up with an aunt and cousins who lived a simple, but by no means privileged, life. They loved him, and that counts for an awful lot in life. Then at age eleven he was suddenly taken away by a total stranger.

Pornchai at age 12 just after his arrival in America, and just before the events of this post took place. To the right, Pornchai prays at the tomb of his mother for the first time upon his arrival in Thailand in March 2021.

Home Is Where the Heart Is, Even If Broken

If you have been a regular reader of these pages, then you already know the circumstances that took Pornchai Moontri, at age 11, from the rice paddies and water buffalo of his childhood in the rural north of Thailand to the streets of Bangor, Maine. America was dangled before him with a promise that he would never be hungry again. The reality was very different. He was a victim of human trafficking. His mother, the only other person who knew of the horrific abuse inflicted on him, was murdered.

At age 14, Pornchai escaped from his nightmare existence into life on the streets of Bangor, Maine, a homeless adolescent stranded in a foreign land. On March 21, 1992, at age 18, he was attacked in a supermarket parking lot for trying to drown his sorrows in a shoplifted can of beer. In the struggle, a life was lost and Pornchai descended into despair. He was sent to prison into the madness of long term solitary confinement. Then, 14 years later, broken and lost, he was moved to another prison and was moved in with me.

In 2020, Pornchai was taken away again from his home — this time “home” was the 60-square-foot prison cell that he shared with me for the previous 15 years. During those years he had a dramatic Catholic conversion and committed himself and his life to Divine Mercy. He graduated from high school with high honors, earned two additional diplomas, and excelled in courses of Catholic Distance University. He became a mentor for younger prisoners, and a master craftsman in woodworking.

After 29 years in prison since age 18, 36 years after being taken from his home at age eleven, after five months in grueling ICE detention despite all the BS promises of a “kinder, gentler President” in the White House, Pornchai was left in Bangkok, Thailand on February 9, 2021 at age 47.

Sitting in my prison cell one night in late September 2021, a tiny number “1” suddenly appeared above the message icon on my GTL tablet. Unlike your email, the GTL tablet system for sale to prisoners is all about enhancing the GTL Corporation, not the prison or the prisoner. At $150 for the tablet, $.40 for each short message, $1.00 for a photo attachment, and $2.00 for a 15-second video, it feels exploitive. But after 27 years without electronic communication, the sight of that tiny number at the icon makes my heart jump a bit.

The message was from Pornchai Moontri in Thailand. It had a 15-second video clip that I wish I could post for you. We will have to settle for my description. In a dark prison cell in Concord, New Hampshire, I reached for my ear phones hoping that the brief video also had audio. It did. When I opened it, I saw my friend, Pornchai seated at a table in the dark with a small cake and a few lit candles illuminating his face.

Several people stood around Pornchai chanting “Happy Birthday” in Thai. There was a unified “clap-clap-clap” after each of several verses of the chant. Then, surrounded by the family of his cousin whom he last saw when they lived as brothers at age 11 in 1985, Pornchai distinctly made the Sign of the Cross, paused, and blew out the candles. There was an odd moment of silence just then. A sense that some hidden grace had filled the room. His cousin looked upon him with a broad smile, captured in the images below.

In my own darkness many thousands of miles away from this scene, I choked up as I took in this 15-seconds of happiness. I miss my friend, but my tears were not of sadness. They were of triumph. This was Pornchai’s 48th birthday and his first in freedom from the heavy crosses of his past.

And the Sea Will Surrender Its Dead

With the help of a few readers who contributed to the cause, I sent Pornchai some birthday funds to enable him to travel a few hours away for a week at the Gulf of Thailand to see the ocean for the first time in his life, and to connect with his cousin, now an officer in the Royal Thai Navy. As children in 1985, they lived together in the village of Phu Wiang (pronounced “poo-vee-ANG”), the place of Pornchai’s birth in the far rural northeast of Thailand. This seaside reunion with his cousin after 36 years was like a balm on the pain of the past as though the sea had surrendered its dead.

As I write this post, Pornchai is back in Phu Wiang, a 9-hour drive from Bangkok, accompanied by Fr John Hung Le, SVD and Pornchai’s Thai tutor, Khun Chalathip. Since his arrival in Thailand in February of 2021, this is his third visit to the shadowy memories of the place he once knew as home. I described his traumatic first visit there accompanied by Father John — to whom I am much in debt.

Then there was a second trip, again nine hours north accompanied by Father John whose order’s Thai headquarters were just a few kilometers from Pornchai’s place of birth. It is mind-boggling to me that the Holy Spirit had previously drawn together all these threads of connection. That second visit was his second attempt to secure his National Thai ID. It is generally issued at age 16 in Thailand to ratify citizenship and entry into adulthood, but through no fault of his own, Pornchai was not present to receive it.

The first trip to apply for the Thai ID was met with bureaucratic disappointment. I described that first pilgrimage to home in, “For Pornchai Moontri a Miracle Unfolds in Thailand.” Discouraged, Pornchai was told that he will have to return at some future date while documents are again processed through Bangkok and the Thai Embassy in Washington.

The second journey seemed more hopeful. Pornchai was accompanied by not only Father John, but by someone I wrote about in “Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri.” Pornchai was still told to come back later to apply again. He felt like the Tin Man standing before the Wizard of Oz pleading for his heart. Then, on October 11, 2021 the third pilgrimage was a success. Pornchai was elated to have the image atop this post, and so was I. It represents an accomplishment for which we both struggled for 16 years from inside the same prison cell where I sat that night watching the video of his first birthday in freedom.

That was 16 years together in a place not exactly known for happy endings, redemptive outcomes, and a state of grace. Pornchai and I handed our lives over to Divine Mercy. In the end, as you know if you have kept up, it turned out that even in prison Saint Paul was right. In a place “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” (Romans 5:20)

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A Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please visit our Special Events page for information on how to help me help Pornchai in the daunting task of reclaiming his life and future in Thailand after a 36 year absence. I am also doing all I can to assist Fr. John Hung Le, SVD, who delivers rice to impoverished families during the pandemic lockdown. Thailand’s migrant families have been severely impacted since the Delta variant emerged there.

You may also wish to read and share these related posts:

For Pornchai Moontri, a Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

Don’t forget to visit our new feature Voices from Beyond.

Pornchai, Father John Le, and Pornchai’s Thai tutor Khun Chalathip after Mass at the village Church of Saint Joseph in Phu Wiang, Thailand, October 24, 2021.