A Laotian-American woman from the Twin Cities was awarded nearly $1 million Thursday after winning an unprecedented civil suit in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis that sought to hold a former Minnesota man accountable for violating child sex tourism and trafficking laws.

A jury found Panyia Vang was entitled to $950,000 in damages. She said she was raped in Laos by Thiawachu Prataya when the Hmong-American man was visiting the country in 2006, according to Linda Miller, one of her attorneys.

The now-24-year-old was just 14 at the time and became pregnant with Thiawachu Prataya’s child. She later moved to the Twin Cities with her family and was reportedly forced into a traditional Hmong marriage with Thiawachu Prataya. He was legally married to another woman at the time.

Thiawachu Prataya, who was never charged with a crime, was accused in court documents of threatening to keep Panyia Vang away from their child if she did not submit to his sexual demands as a “second” wife.

The jury reached its verdict after a trial on the civil case this week, Miller said.

She hopes it will send a strong message to the broader community about the consequences that await those interested in going abroad to have sex with underage girls, she said.

“This was the first case using this statute, so this is just the beginning,” Miller said. “There are a lot of people who would like to go to Laos and have sex with children and they make excuses for themselves.”

The legal victory hopefully will help change that, Miller said.

Thiawachu Prataya’s attorneys did not immediately respond to calls for comment Thursday.

SPOTLIGHT ON A TABOO

Panyia Vang filed the federal lawsuit in 2012, but it was stayed for a time as both sides pursued trying the case in the court of public opinion on a planned NBC-TV show called “Law and Order: You the Jury.”

It caught the attention of producers after gaining local, national and international coverage as an unprecedented case that cast a spotlight on a taboo but acknowledged “open secret” within the Hmong community: the plight of Hmong child brides and polygamy.

The TV plans eventually were scrapped and the case started moving forward again in the traditional legal system in January.

According to court documents, Thiawachu Prataya admitted to traveling to Laos in 2006 and having sex with Panyia Vang. Married to a woman in Minnesota at the time of his trip, he has said that he didn’t know Panyia Vang was a minor and that the sex was consensual.

The two had talked on the phone before his visit and arrangements were made for her to make the 12-hour trip from her family’s rural home to the capital city of Vientiane.

Panyia Vang said she was under the impression that she would be auditioning for a music video.

Thiawachu Prataya, then 43, coaxed her to his hotel room with promises of new clothes, according to the lawsuit. Once there, he raped her repeatedly over the course of three days, she alleged in the lawsuit.

Panyia Vang became pregnant and had a child in early 2007.

She moved to the Twin Cities area on a visa from her father in 2009. Thiawachu Prataya, who lived in Minneapolis, now lives out of state.

Thiawachu Prataya denied the rape, sex tourism and trafficking allegations, according to court documents.

His attorney, Der Yang, previously called Panyia Vang’s allegations in the suit “disingenuous” and said they were the result of a “disgruntled mother” who lost a custody dispute.

VERDICT VINDICATION

The jury’s verdict Thursday left Panyia Vang feeling “fabulous,” Miller said.

“She feels vindicated,” Miller said. “Now the questions that many people, including her husband, brought up to her all the time have been answered and she can move forward with her life.”

Panyia Vang told the Pioneer Press via an interpreter in 2015 that she experienced a backlash in the Hmong community after coming forward with her story. Still, she said at the time, she believed it was right to stay the course and expose exploitation.

Sia Her, executive director of the Minnesota Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans, has been a vocal critic of child sexual tourism and international abusive marriages in the Hmong community.

The practice involves Hmong men returning to Laos or other countries in Southeast Asia to have sexual relationships with and sometimes marry significantly younger women or underage girls. In some cases, the men are married to wives in the United States.

Panyia Vang’s case helped elevate a well-known but seldom discussed problem within the Hmong community that has long been tearing some families apart, Sia Her said.

“We hope that this unprecedented case and the verdict send a strong message to practitioners of abusive international marriage that the United States will not tolerate the sexual exploitation of children,” Sia Her said in a written statement.

ADDRESSING THE ISSUE

Because of the work of Sia Her and others, the 2015 Legislature established the Working Group on Violence Against Asian Women and Children to study the issue of gender-based violence within the local Asian community and the prevalence of international abusive marriages.

The report was completed in recent months, and Sia Her’s office intends to use that to continue conversations aimed at curbing the issue.

Sia Her also intends to use the report’s findings to introduce to lawmakers proposals to help address the problem.

“‘Abusive international marriage’ is one of the most often whispered-about and identified problem in our largest Asian community, the Hmong, in Minnesota,” Sia Her said.

After Thursday’s verdict, Miller said Panyia Vang is anxious to move forward. She testified for some five hours during the trial, Miller added.

“I am just so proud of her and how she has grown and how she is going to continue to grow,” Miller said.