Leigh
Ramsay
322
Wecker Road
Carindale
QLD
4152
8th.
March 2013
Dear
Leigh
In
producing CHANTI’S WORLD it is imperative that I have all of my facts right;
that I cannot be accused, when the film
is screened worldwide of either (a) having made errors of fact or (b) of not
checking the facts at my disposal with those who may wish to dispute the facts
– in this case, Citipointe church. This is not simply a legal necessity but a
moral obligation for myself to fulfill to the best of my ability.
Over
a period of several years now I have invited Citipointe to dispute any of the
facts that I have presented in my letters, my emails and on my blog. Citipointe
has not taken advantage of my invitation to date but I offer it again. If the
church believes that there is anything contained in my letters, emails or blog
that is factually inaccurate please do point my errors of fact out to me. I can
guarantee that that Citipointe’s disputation of the facts will be presented in
CHANTI’S WORLD and that the church’s alternative version of the facts will be
presented.
I
have likewise several times offered yourself or some representative of
Citipointe the opportunity to appear on camera and to present the church’s
version of the facts surrounding Rosa and Chita’s coming to be in the care of
Citipointe church. I extend that invitation for one last time – with a
guarantee that the church’s position will be fairly represented and will not be
edited by myself to distort the meaning of what is said. If you are prepared to
accept this offer I will give you a copy of the entire unedited interview (or you can record your
own) so that the church will be in a very strong position to accuse me, in
public, of having misrepresented Citipointe in the way I have edited the
interview into CHANTI’S WORLD.
Given
that I will shortly be moving into post-production this is the last time that I
will be making either of these offers to Citipointe. If the church declines to
correct any errors of fact it believes I have made, if the church does not wish
to present its point of view, I will be reliant on my own observations and
those of others to let the audience know just how it was that Rosa and Chita
came to be in the care of Citipointe church and why it is that the church
refuses to relinquish control of the girls – despite the family being in a
position to care for them. I will include in CHANTI’S WORLD the statement,
“Citipointe declined to be interviewed for this film or to answer any of the
questions put to the church over the past five years.”
On
several occasions over the past close to five years I have, in interviews,
asked Chanti what the church as done to help her and her family. Other than
providing her with materials to make ITS NOT OK wristbands (a few cents per
wristband), the answer has always been, “Nothing.” This ‘nothing’ answer has
been confirmed by all around Chanti who have been familiar with her plight and
who have, on occasion, given food to the family when Chanti had none to feed
her kids.
In
yet another in depth interview with Chanti yesterday, however, in which I asked
her if she was 100% sure that Citipointe had never provided her with any assistance,
she recalled one time when the church had
assisted her. This was when Srey Ka was born – a few weeks before Rosa and
Chita first went to live in the She Rescue Home. Chanti told me that Citipointe
paid the hospital fees relating to Srey Ka’s birth and provided her with rice
for three months. So, my question for you, Leigh, is this:
Are
there any other occasions during the past close to five years that Chanti may
have forgotten, when Citipoine has in fact provided assistance to the entire
family? And what was the nature of this assistance?
Citipointe
paying the hospital fees for the birth of Srey Ka and providing the family with
three months of rice answers one of the other questions that has been nagging
me for years. On 24th October 2008 Rebecca Brewer wrote:
Regarding continued support to Chanti, we are unable to assist with
distributing this sort of aid. Our focus is to assist the children in our care
as needed and the work we do with the parents is limited. If we were to be seen
giving handouts to one individual parent it could prove very disruptive to the
rest of the community.
I
have, until yesterday, thought that it
was somewhat disingenuous of Rebecca to use the expression ‘continued support’
when no support at all, to the best of my knowledge, had been provided.
However, the sequence of events is now clear:
Srey
Ka was born a few weeks BEFORE Rosa and Chita began their residency with
Citipointe. It was the imminent arrival of Srey Ka into the family that Chanti
knew would push the family’s tenuous finances to the limit. A third child
would, Chanti knew, be the straw that breaks her camel’s back.
Citipointe,
aware of her plight said to Chanti something along the lines of, “Would you
like the church to help you? We will pay the hospital fees for the birth of
your new baby and supply the family with rice and help you take care of Rosa
and Chita until the family can get back on its feet again.”
This
seemed to Chanti to be an ideal solution to her immediate problems and so,
after asking me if I thought it was a good idea, she agreed to it. (At the time
I was earning a living as a taxi driver and not in a postion to provide regular
and reliable care for the entire family.)
Once
Citipointe had Chanti’s signiature on the 31st July sham ‘contract’
the church stopped providing Chanti with rice and Rebecca was able to justify
this with her statement:
Regarding continued support to Chanti, we are unable to assist with
distributing this sort of aid. Our focus is to assist the children in our care
as needed and the work we do with the parents is limited. If we were to be seen
giving handouts to one individual parent it could prove very disruptive to the
rest of the community.
This
interpretation fits in with all the facts that I have at my disposal and
provides a logical explanation for Rebecca’s use of the expression ‘continued
support’. The following year, when Chanti’s other children were suffering from
malnutrition and the family had to resort to eating the corpse of a dog found
at the side of the road, the church could justify this on the grounds that to
have provided ‘continued support’ for Chanti’s other children would have been
‘disruptive to the rest of the community’. Citipointe’s tortuous use of logic
to justify its manifestly un-Christian actions never ceases to amaze.
If
there is some fact or some facts that I have not taken into account here in my
recounting of the circumstances surrounding Srey Ka’s birth and Citipointe’s
provision of three months of rice because I am unaware of them please do let me
know what these are. When the film is completed it will be too late to do so
and any complaints you may make then will fall on deaf ears because the church
has passed up every opportunity I have given it to present an alternative set
of facts or to provide me with a point of view different from that of Chanti
and various other observers.
best
wishes
James
Ricketson
No comments:
Post a Comment