Ministry
of Social Affairs
788B
Monivong
Phnom Penh 3rd
August 2012
To
Minister of Social Affairs
Further to my letter of 1st. August. I am
now back in Australia and unable to have my letters to you translated into
Khmer. I trust that it will not cause offence or difficulty for you if I write
them in English now and send them via email.
I have, on my blog (http://citipointechurch.blogspot.com.au/)
given a fairly comprehensive account of my attempts, over a period of four
years, to get Citipointe to abide by the promises the church made to both Chanty and myself in 2008. I have not
been successful. Over the past few weeks, whilst in Cambodia, I have tried very
hard to work with Citipointe to formulate a plan for the re-integration of R
and SM back into the care of their family. Citipointe has not co-operated in my
endeavours at all. The church appears to be determined to retain custody of R
and SM until they are 18 years old despite the express wishes of their mother,
C and step-father, CH. Citipoint claims that it is retaining custody in
accordance with a contractual agreement the church has with the Ministry of
Social Affairs. Neither C nor
myself have seen a copy of this document. Despite many requests over a period
of four years Citipointe refuses to produce it or to inform C what her rights are and what she must
do to have her daughters returned to her care.
I wish to stress, yet again, that R and SM are not
orphans. They are part of a large family. Nor are R and SM victims of sexual
abuse or any aspect of the sex trade. They are merely the daughters of poor
parents who were tricked, four years ago, into accepting the help of Citipointe
church at a time of great need. Since that time Citipointe has refused to return
R and SM to their family.
The latest in a long list of reasons given by
Citipointe as to why it cannot return R and SM to their family is that the
community in which they are now living is not a safe one. Citipointe says that
the determination that the community is not safe (despite it being a typical
suburban Phnom Penh community) was made by Ministry of Social Affairs social
workers. No-one in the community, including C, has any recollection of these social workers visiting the
community. If these social workers did visit the community and find it unsafe
could you please provide both C
and myself with the reasons why the social workers found it unsafe and the date
on which they conducted their visit?
Citipointe church ‘She’ refuge is based on an
assertion that is not true – namely that the girls resident in the refuge have
been rescued from the sex trade, from sexual abuse and from trafficking. According
to the information that has been given to me there is not one girl at the ‘She’
refuge that meets the definition of the residents described on the ‘She’
website – namely that they have been rescued from some form of the sex trade.
Even if there are one or two girls who have been so rescued, the fact is that
the girls in the refuge are overwhelmingly the daughters of poor families. I
believe it is inappropriate for Citipointe church to be advertising on its
website that the girls have been rescued from the sex trade. I think it is also
inappropriate that Citipointe runs ‘poverty tours’ to Cambodia, bringing young Christians to your country to
interact with these children as if they were animals in a zoo. These children
have families, they are members of communities and should not be used by
Citipointe to raise revenue for the multi-million dollar church it operates in
Brisbane, Australia.
There are several highly committed and experienced NGOs
that actually perform the tasks of rescuing girls from the sex trade and
reintegrating them into their families and communities. They are to be
congratulated for the good work they do. When a girl is rescued from sexual
exploitation of any kind the task of re-integrating that girl back into her
family and community is complicated not merely by the traumatic experiences she
has had but because it may well be that her family or some members of the
community have been complicit in her being exposed to sexual abuse. This is
sensitive and very difficult work to be conducted by experts in the field. For
Citipointe to pretend that it is re-integrating sexually abused back into their
families and communities is hypocrisy of the worst kind. Indeed the very word
‘re-integration’ makes little sense at all in relation to the work that
Citipointe church does – namely, to take girls from poor families and take care
of them until they turn 18 whilst basically ignoring the needs to the remainder
of the family.
C is now adamant that she does not wish her daughters
to remain in the care of Citipointe church any longer. She has presented your
Ministry with a letter signed by herself and her Village Chief requesting that
her children be returned to her care. I trust that you will agree to C’s request. As I have mentioned
already, I am prepared to do all that is necessary to help support C in such a way that the family can
stay together and not be separated. I also wish for C’s children to be free to practice the Buddhist religion of
their parents and not be forced by Citipointe to become Christians. If
Citipointe rejects the assertion that it is forcibly indoctrinating the girls
in the ‘She’ refuge into the Christian faith, ask the girls that live in the
refuge how many hours they spend each day receiving bible oriented lessons and
how much time each day is spent in being instructed in the Buddhist faith of
their parents?
It is my belief that the time has come for Cambodia
to close all, or at least most, of the so called ‘orphanages’ in the country.
If the NGOs that run these ‘orphanages’ wish to help poor families (a noble
task) let them help the families within their communities - not by separating
the children from their families and communities and bringing them up in institutions. As you will be aware, the policies
implemented by many NGOs in the running of ‘orphanages’ are not dissimilar to
those practiced by the Khmer Rouge in the mistaken belief that breaking up
families was a good and ideologically appropriate thing to do. Let the NGOs who
wish to help poor families respect the Buddhist religion of these families
(most of them) and not try to force them to become Christians.
I trust that you will act as soon as possible of C’s request that her daughters be returned to her care.
best wishes
James Ricketson
