The sensual sons (my own English adaptation), the dark side of ancient Buddhism in Siam.
As normally known that, since the beginning, every wat has had ‘dek wat’ whose jobs are responsible of various kinds of wat chores (for instance, the 3rd photo on page 38/929).
But in the ancient days (and probably today, still), there was a special kind of ‘dek wat’ who were raised privately by senior monks and became secret tradition among them. These senior monks groomed these boys better than the others and used to them as sex slaves.
These boys were locally called ‘loog sawat (= the sensual sons)’ and kept in private collection.
There were often that these senior monks fought and injured each other over a beautiful dek wat in order to get him in his own loog sawat collection.
The records of this story had already been known since the reign of King Rama I who deemed these monks very perverted and shameful and a disgrace to the country.
Therefore, he enacted the law of the monks to be used to punish the offenders.
There was a part included in old record that mentioned about this story:
“When these monks meet ‘dek wat’ and are attracted to their youthful faces which make them feel sexually aroused. They try to approach them and lure them to their private cubicles then have sex with them. After that these dek wat become their possession. They groom these dek wat and have them trail along wherever they go making a very obscene sight to see...”
(Note: Photo taken in the reign of King Rama IV)