Leigh
Ramsay
Citipointe
church
322 Wecker
Rd
Carindale
QLD 4152 1st.
August 2012
Dear Leigh
This is my ninth letter to you in 10 days. I believe
that any independent observer (of which there will be several in days to come)
would arrive at the conclusion that I have tried as hard as I could in
successive letters to get Citipointe to enter into an agreed upon arrangement
with C whereby R and SM are returned to her care within a specific time frame
and in accordance with whatever benchmarks have been laid down by the Ministry
of Social Affairs. The problem is that C does not know what these benchmarks
are and has never been informed of them this past four years – despite many
requests from both herself and myself.
It has been (and remains) in the interests of
Citipointe to withhold this information from C, in the belief that the church
can continue to spin one yarn after another to her to justify its decision not
to return her daughters to her care and that she is not smart enough to
understand what is going on. Such contemptuous behaviour is the hallmark of the
way in which Cityipointe runs it’s ‘She’ refuge. The church advertises this
refuge on its website and presents to its Brisbane parishioners, as being
engaged in rescuing girls and young women from the sex trade. It is nothing of
the sort. It is an institution in which the daughters of poor parents are
forcibly indoctrinated into Citipointe’s particular brand of the Christian
faith. You then present yourself to the world as some kind of latter day Mother
Theresa and ask young Australian Christians to pay money to travel to Cambodia
to see the good work you are doing in what can best be described as ‘poverty
tourism’. No doubt R and SM, two attractive girls, are paraded in front of your
‘poverty tourists’ as examples of how wonderful the ‘She’ refuge is to have
rescued these poor girls from the sex trade. These Christian ‘poverty
tourists’, along with Citipointe church parishioners and others who open their
wallets to give money to the church, are blissfully unaware that at least two
of the girls in the church’s care (R and SM) have been effectively ‘stolen’
from their mother and are being held contrary to her express wishes.
I do hope, Leigh, that this last statement causes you
to reach for the telephone and instruct your lawyers (yet again!) to write me a
strongly worded letter threatening to sue me. Don’t waste your time. Commence
legal proceedings immediately. I would commence legal proceedings against
Citipointe myself if I had the financial wherewithal to do so – charging the
church, in accordance with Cambodian law, of trafficking. Yes, trafficking,
kidnapping. For the 15 months between the time Citipointe hoodwinked C into accepting the
church’s offer to help care for R and SM until the time you finally got a
document from the Ministry of Social Affairs, Citipointe had no legal right to
be holding the girls against their mother’s wishes and in the absence of any
legally binding contract. This was against the law. More importantly, it was immoral
and showed a total lack of respect and empathy for the mother, C, who was
grieving for the loss of her children and who today continues to grieve. C does
not want R and SM to stay one day longer at the ‘She’ refuge and, as I leave
for Australia, I have not only left her with enough money to take care of R and
SM herself but have promised to send her more from Australia to cover the
expenses involved in feeding, clothing and educating R and SM.
On my return to Australia I will see to it, through
my blog (which I will update daily) and through providing copies of my most
recent correspondence to the media, that Citipointe’s fraudulent claims
regarding its ‘She’ refuge are publicly known. I will also be writing another
letter to the Minister asking that Citipointe’s activities in Cambodia be
investigated and that the church be told that it cannot run what is effectively
an orphanage for children of poor families whilst presenting itself to the
world as a rescuer of young girls from the sex trade. Such hypocrisy is
breathtaking. And I will be writing to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the
Hon Bob Carr to ask DFAT to investigate Citipointe’s fraudulent public claims
regarding its ‘She’ refuge.
I look forward to hearing from Citipointe’s lawyers
and seeing you in court.
best wishes
James Ricketson
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